‘Photography has been my way of bearing witness to the joy I find in seeing the extraordinary in ordinary.”
-Harold Feinstein
I took these photos on a walk with my grandson around his neighborhood. He brought his little wooden camera along and we compared images as we meandered down the alleys. I am learning there are all kinds of way to see the the world around me. All of them beautiful.
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.”
― Charles M. Schulz, Charlie Brown's Little Book of Wisdom
The April weather plays havoc and we see it all, a bit of snow, hail, rain, thunder, and beautiful sun breaks. But among the havoc green shoots break through the ground, buds swell on the tress and start to open, and color once again enters my small world. I have hard, dark days, paired with ah-ha moments and by months end I find bits and pieces of myself in old haunts and comforting places. I walk into May with fresh eyes and maybe a bit of grace.
***
I took these photos with various lenses throughout the month, most of them in our backyard. The mushrooms however were captured in a drive-by in our old neighborhood, where I learned we can’t go back.
Life is meant to be lived in forward motion.
“I stared out the car window and understood that I was in a place where nobody knew my heart even a little bit.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home
This was the only quote I could find about staring out a car window and I find it to be pretty accurate. (Also, I loved that book.)
I take these photos out the car window. traveling south down Interstate 5. I play around with the settings of my camera as he drives. My window down, and my camera acting as a kind of protective shield after a hard week, I am pleased when I later upload the images. I decide to edit them a bit like film, and think once more about buying a roll or two for one of my old point and shoot cameras.
forget-me-not
sol 45
The focus is tricky and I dig out my camera manual to review my camera settings. I google the various “tricks” my camera might provide me as I play around with bending the lens back and forth, something a camera lens should not do. It is easy to become engrossed as time flies. I have shot a couple hundred images in the past week since the new lens arrived, all of them in our backyard. The process is slow going, arousing my curiosity in ways that are challenging and just plain fun! And that in itself is enough to keep me going. The past few years have been eye opening for me in so many ways, and this practice is part of that growth.
“I don't sit around waiting for passion to strike me. I keep working steadily, because I believe it is our privilege as humans to keep making things.
Most of all, I keep working because I trust that creativity is always trying to find me, even when I have lost sight of it.”― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
the view out the window
lensbaby sol 45
I spend time culling the archives of this space. Reading past posts that go back some ten years. As I travel down memory lane I delete many of them. I read post after post where I have rambled on and on about how I am going to work on this or that. Mostly trying different means and resources to ward off the depression that surfaces without much warning. The list is impressive, and I give myself a pat on the back for not giving up.
I notice how my photography has morphed and changed over the years. Having never really settled into a certain genre, I see the whole of my life in these old posts. The misspelled words and bad editing jump out at me often, but within those words I am transported back in time, once again finding the whole of my life. In the beginning I was driven by my need to share, both here and on social media but today, that drive is over. Wanting to just have a space where some of my photos can live, paired with a few words is the only intention I have now.
If someone were to ask me if I was aiming to be a writer or a photographer, I would not know how to answer. My editing skills, along with my knowledge about the settings on my cameras, are at best mediocre. But doing both of these things make me feel alive, and that in itself is worth noting.
***
I took these photos a few days back on a morning spent with Percy. The rain poured down, keeping us inside his house playing. Suddenly the wind picked the chairs up out front and blew them around as the two of us sat on the couch watching. I had just bought a new lens and had brought it along hoping to play around some with it. As I dug it out, I watched him follow suit.
“The old woman paid no attention to the camellia until that morning, when a fleck of pink caught her eye. The single saucer-size blossom was more magnificent than she could ever have imagined. More beautiful than any rose she'd ever seen, it swayed in the morning breeze with such an air of royalty, the old woman felt the urge to curtsey in its presence.”
― Sarah Jio, The Last Camellia
***
I spy the blooms as we are driving down their driveway on our way home. Five acres of trees, a beautiful garden, their home, and flowers tucked in here and there. I tell him to stop and I hop out and pick this stem, knowing I don’t need to ask permission. I bring it home and place it in the tiny vase, for I am a sucker for tiny vases. One lone flower alone in a vase that shows off every detail, no other flowers to compete with its delicate beauty. I dig out my camera and spend time with the bloom and its waxy leaves and let the calm wash over me, understanding this is what moves me. These are the moments that make up my story.
Their season is way to short for my liking.
“There is no closed figure in nature. Every shape participates with another. No one thing is independent of another, and one thing rhymes with another, and light gives them shape.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson
The lilac tree is getting ready to bloom.
