There is always the dilemma . . .
do I cut the dahlias, bringing them indoors and placing them in a vase of cool water? Or do I leave them in the garden?
“I love this life. I feel like I am always catching my breath and saying, 'Oh! Will you look at that?' Photography has been my way of bearing witness to the joy I find in seeing the extraordinary in ordinary life. You don't look for pictures. Your pictures are looking for you.”
Harold Feinstein
“We can only point our cameras at so many things and explore so many ideas if we hope for any depth in our work—anything more than passing familiarity with our subjects or any of the insights that only come with time. The more depth, familiarity, and insight you hope for, the fewer subjects you will photograph.”
I am two bites in before I pause long enough to notice that the morning holds the perfect light. My toasted sourdough bread (made by one of my sons) and strawberry jam (made by the other’s wife), gets left behind as I get up to grab my camera. I am aware of an excitement and familiarity that has been lost to me for some time now, and I don’t question it, but rather welcome it. I play around until my toast is cold, and the shot of espresso gets dumped into a glass with ice and a bit of milk. I get up from the table. nourished in both body and soul.
“August is ripening grain in the fields blowing hot and sunny, the scent of tree-ripened peaches, of hot buttered sweet corn on the cob. Vivid dahlias fling huge tousled blossoms through gardens and joe-pye-weed dusts the meadow purple.” – Jean Hersey
***
As the last days of August dwindle down, I can feel fall in the air.
We have not had our fill of corn on the cob or tomatoes, and I have yet to go for a swim.
This is the summer that will always be remembered as the one that just would not let us be . . .
Pacemakers, broken bones, and now a 14 day run-in with Covid for him, my test coming
back negative, day after day, while I sit in isolation.
Is it wrong to feel that summer still owes me?
I expect summer to follow through with her promise - until September 22.
Then and only then will I switch up the peaches for apples and pull out my hooded sweatshirt.
I promise to open my whole being to the glorious days of autumn. I promise to not complain about
the rain, or the darkness that falls over the mornings.
I will dig out the fall scented candles and peruse cookbooks for soup recipes.
If only summer might last a little bit longer.
***
“But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed.” – Stephen King
A diptych is a combination of two images placed immediately next to each other to make an artistic statement or comparison. The photographs can be identical or they can be different; there are no hard and fast rules – they simply have to be next to each other. They do not even have to be joined together and can be separated by a border.
Alex on Pixel Curse
My first obsession with a diptych was way back in 2013 when I first came across Kirstin Mckee on Mortal Muses. She is an amazing photographer and her diptychs are stunning, AND she did a whole year of them! I have played with doing my own diptychs over the years, mostly by chance, meaning - I don’t often take two photos with the idea of putting them side by side. But sometime around the beginning of summer I got the bug to play around with some intention.
My influences were from all over. Social media of course, but also lovely places like Kim Klassen’s site where she shares amazing diptychs, and other amazing layouts on her blog. A few weeks ago she shared another wonderful diptych project by Michelle Mollinga and suddenly I was hooked.
I am not sure where I am going with this little obsession of mine, other than to just say I am going to keep at it as long as my heart desires and see what happens. They will live on their own page, which you can find in the navigation bar up top under projects, called Side by Side.
“Modern US consumers now get to taste less than 1 percent of the vegetable varieties that were grown here a century ago. Those old-timers now lurk only in backyard gardens and on farms that specialize in direct sales--if they survive at all. Many heirlooms have been lost entirely.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
A few years ago I went to a seed exchange. A room full of like-minded gardeners sharing all types of seeds. Many varieties I had never heard of, many of them heirloom, collected and shared, passed down through generations. When planting time came around, I eagerly dug out my tiny packets of seeds and followed the information written on the bag (mostly in longhand) eager to see what would grow.
I scattered a few flowers in tiny pockets throughout the garden, some flourished and still bloom today, while others barely came up. I remember planting a type of cucumber I had never heard of, but of course googled, where I read rave reviews. Of my six seeds only one came up (I suspect the birds took off with the others) but the one plant set some beautiful cukes. This year I actually found what I think was the variety in a catalogue and planted it again, with limited success. Five seeds, one plant.
But these beans . . . I planted one pole of them that year, and they flourished. They were from Italy maybe France, but unfortunately their tiny little packet, with the info on it is long gone. But each year I save some seeds to plant. Their flavor is amazing , almost butter like, not at all like the wax bean you think of when you see a yellow bean. Their colors is lovely and I can make a meal of them. Boiled for a couple of minutes, drained, a generous pat of butter added, and a bit of salt.
Hello August . . .
“For me photography is to place head and heart and eye along the same line of sight. It’s a way of life.”
― Henri Cartier–Bresson
When I broke my wrist the doctor asked me what my two favorite hobbies were - gardening and photography, I answered. If she would have asked for three, cooking would have been on the list too. All of these answerers rest on the notion that I don’t consider my grandson Percy, a hobby.
Gardening is seasonal, coming to a halt in the winter months, when I am definitely ready for a break. Cooking also goes in cycles. I might go days without cooking anything exciting and then go on a cooking spree where I try something new and different for a several days in a row.
But photography is something I do almost daily. I have said often in these pages that my camera centers me, slows me down, helps with depression and soothes my soul. But if I am truthful here I must tell you that I have not truly left our home town in 2 1/2 years. Keeping ourselves safe was hight priority, we had a new grandchild, and my husband was having some heart issues. We, along with the world, hunkered down. And just when things started to look like we might start going places again, he gets scheduled for a pacemaker, and I break my wrist . . .
But here we are five weeks later, his pacemaker doing its thing, my cast coming off in a few hours, and him coming out of Covid, where thankfully he was not too sick, and for some crazy reason, I didn’t get.
So what does someone (say an amateur, mature woman, hobbyist photographer) do when she feels she might need to take this hobby up a notch? She calls another woman photographer who she can knock some ideas around with, and she comes away with a project. A project without too many rules or restrictions, a project that doesn’t center around one photography style of genre, but rather focuses more on getting her out of the house, out onto the streets, down to the water, into the woods, and hey, maybe even out of town.
All with her camera in tow.
What if today. . . you were inspired and fed by your thoughts instead of being confined by them?
Marjo-Riikka Makela
She suggests instead of saying to my self I should, I should ask instead what if . . . ?
The wording makes a huge difference, and I am suddenly thinking of all kinds of possibilities.