Posts in Category: Sunday
5/15/2011: After the Storm, Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday!
I woke to a rainy Sunday morning this am, so this shot from last Saturday seems appropriate. We had a day of rain which finally broke up, late in the afternoon. I took a run down to the beach to see what the light was getting up to. The sky was not as dramatic as I had hoped, but in this shot, the foreground detail, I think, makes up for it.
This was an experiment in the Nikon Coolpix’s HDR mode…the camera took three shots and stacked them for an extended range. Results right out of the camera are almost always disappointingly flat…unless the scene is exactly as the authors of the software envisioned it…but some work in Lightroom can produce a very pleasant extended range effect…very natural compared to a lot of HDR you see. And, since the images are captured very fast (8 frames per second), shots of moving water like this one are possible.
Nikon Coolpix P500 at 31mm equivalent field of view, f3.7 @ 1/640th @ ISO 160. Backlight (HDR) mode.
And for rainy Sunday thoughts…well, my mind is certainly in rainy Sunday mode already…thoughts are slow and pleasantly lagging and I am ready for a nap after an hour up. I am not sure exactly why rainy Sundays are so much more conducive to sleepy repose than rainy Thursdays (to pick a day at random), but they are. The day of rest is deeply engrained in us, perhaps? Maybe even at the cellular level? In our genes?
This scene, with its peaceful motion (in the water), its subtle light, and its restful balance fits the day. There is a quiet that is deeper than the flesh, when the soul lays in wait, on the threshold of revelation, and feels no need of motion beyond the gentle swirl of life around it. Rainy Sunday quiet.
4/3/2011: What is written in the ice?
Happy Sunday.
Patterns in the ice of shallow pools always catches my eye. I think they are formed by repeated melting and re-freezing, or perhaps by water that moves just slightly while freezing. Certainly there is some mixture of air and water caught in these interesting swirls. It always looks to me like someone has been writing there in the ice in some unknown script. I think of Palmer Method Penmanship…the elegant flowing hand of my grandparents…ink driven to words and sentences by the motions of the large muscles, so the thoughts flow across the pape.
Canon SX20IS. 1) and 2) 130mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80. 3) 95mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode.
Processed for intensity and clarity and cropped for focus in Lightroom.
Being Sunday: I see words in the ice, but then I am a very wordy person. I see words. I can remember as far back as my early teens, catching sight of an interesting word somewhere my environment…on a sign, on a cereal box on the counter in the kitchen, on the soup can I just threw in the trash…in a book a seatmate on the bus was reading…and having it register in my mind so vividly that I felt compelled to go back over my movements and the scene around me to find where it was printed. This still happens to me 60 years later (only now they are airplane seatmates not buses). It happened yesterday, while out shopping.
You might say it happened when I saw the patterns in the ice…only there…the word being written is just off the tip of my tongue…just beyond thought. Words, the fact that we have language, makes us, in a very real sense, who we are. Because we not only see the world around us, but name it, we can change that world, for good or bad, in ways other creatures can not. Language is power. Words have power, but they are power as well. We recognize this on the deepest level.
God, in Jesus, is described as the living word. Like the words written the ice, God is a word always just off the tip of our tongues…just beyond thought. We recognize that something of great importance and beauty is written, being written, and we reach for the meaning, without ever quite getting there. That too defines us.
In a very real sense it is enough to know, to recognize, that truth and beauty are written, in the ice, or in a living person, even if we can’t quite read it. And, if you believe the promise, they are written in our long lost native tongue…and one day we will catch the thought.
3/27/2011: Spring Snow Morning
Happy Sunday!
Before the season slips behind us and is forgotten…here is a shot from just a week ago, when we woke to fresh spring snow. We might yet see another storm. We have had snow in April within my memory of this place…quite a few times at that. This snow was typical of spring, with big furry flakes, but exaggerated enough to be interesting, as chronicled on 3/20 and 21.
This is Back Creek where it crosses Route 9 just before the end of Brown Street, and is always a pleasant view, even here where the snow is doing its best to obscure it. I actually took the shot out the window of the car, keeping the camera dry. Moderate telephoto zoom framed the little curve in the creek and the gap in the trees, and emphasized the falling snow.
Canon SX20IS at 60mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Sports Mode to catch the falling flakes in mid-air.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
When picking a shot for Sunday, I always look for something that speaks, however faintly, to the spiritual side of things. I am a firm believer that the spiritual is in everything…that it underpins everything and every moment…and that we can (and should) see it wherever we look. I am not talking about a Platonic reality here, where the eternal cast a shadow that is the temporal reality we experience, but a world of experience that is, moment by moment, and second by second, the living expression of the creative spirit of all. This instance of spring snow is a single character in a single word in a single sentence of one paragraph of a chapter of one volume of the endless story that is being told. It is being spoken. Here I have written that character down, caught it in a pictograph, and it has meaning beyond me, only because we are all part of that same story being told. Spring Snow Morning. From my piece of the story…now into yours.
3/20/2011: All in a day. Happy Sunday
Happy Sunday!
We woke to freezing rain yesterday, which, by full daylight turned to huge feathery wet flakes of snow. Not totally welcome as the last of the 3 plus feet of compacted snow from winter is just about gone from the backyard, and we are all (I think I speak for the general population here) getting a bit eager for spring in Southern Maine. It showed pretty heavily through noon, lightly covered any bare ground, and clung to bushes and trees and standing grasses.
This shot is out the window of the car at Parson’s Beach and gives a good sense of the density of the falling snow. In the dim light, I used Sports Mode, to force the ISO higher and the shutter speed faster, to catch the flakes, as much as possible, in mid-air.
And this shot was taken at about 3:15 that same afternoon, from just about exactly the same spot, looking the other way. The sky had cleared, the snow on the ground had melted away, and the sun had a touch of spring, even summery, warmth that made me, for one, hopeful.
And that is early spring in Maine…the most inconstant of seasons: Winter and seeming summer in a single day.
Both with the Canon SX20IS. 1) 160mm equivalent field of view, f4.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 400. Sports Mode. 2) 28mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode (biased for the sky by tipping the camera up and locking exposure…then processed for the foreground in Lightroom).
And being Sunday: certainly there must be a spiritual lesson in the rapid alteration of the season and the mood from morning to afternoon of a single day. Of course, the day itself is rare enough for record…in it we see the change that is spring happening in such an unmistakable way, in such an exaggerated way, that we can not miss it…so that the day becomes a parable for seasonality and, in a way, in this season, for the hope associated with the coming of spring. I know it makes me feel like throwing off care, like embracing a hopeful turn of mind, like renewing my trust. On a day like this I am reminded: Though dark may cloud the morning, I know who wins the day. And that is true in any season. It is just hard to miss on such a day.
3/13/2011: Point Loma Light, San Diego
I don’t know about you, but lighthouses always fascinate me. Not that I am a fanatic. We get lighthouse fanatics here in Maine, driving up the coast, light to light, and ticking them off. There is even a shop, just down route 1 from us in Wells, called the Lighthouse Shop, which does a brisk summer business, and supplies lighthouse nick-knacks to aficionados world wide on the web. Not one of those. Still, I do enjoy a lighthouse.
This is the “old” light on Point Loma overlooking the north end of the harbor in San Diego California. It is many hundreds of feet above sea level, and has been replaced by a tower light right on the point below (see below). As you can see from the flag, there was a bit of weather moving through, and, as you can see from the tourist in the door, it is now a museum. Lighthouse museums are unique (we have several in Maine) in that the main attraction, and almost the only artifact on display, is the building itself. They do have an extra lens, which is a study in itself, here on Point Loma in the shed on the left. Here it is, on the right, from a trip a few years ago.
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The main shot at the head of the blog is with the Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent field of view, f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 80. Landscape Mode.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
And of course, being Sunday, there has always been a spiritual dimension to the lighthouses. Placed as a warning for ships at sea, they became the beacon announcing home to returning sailors. Even in danger they are a reminder that someone cares. On the final leg of the journey, they are our hope of return. As Christians we are instructed to be the light of the world, not to hide our lights under bushels but to let them shine brightly, to let our eye be full of light so that we are all light within…and told that our God is, in that sense that is so true that that it is beyond common sense, light, all light. Many churches, especially of the more evangelical mold, are named Lighthouse, and every church should be one: Both caring warning and hope of home. And, in truest sense (again beyond common sense) every Christian should be one as well. I suspect this imagery is pretty common across all the great faiths, and that is safe to say that each and every human being is called to be a lighthouse…that it is our nature and our heritage if only we would. Granted most of us need a bit of polish to the lens and a bit more fuel to the fire, but that does not dim the truth of what we are called to be. Maybe that is why we love lighthouses.
2/13/2011: Who Goes There
Happy Sunday!
Snow had fallen heavily the day before, but people had already cross-country skied and snow-showed the trails at Rachel Carson NWR, so, with care, a booted photographer could get back pretty far in the woods. These tracks must have been made just before the snow ended. Though I thought I was capturing the tracks, it turns out this is mostly about what the light is doing with the texture of the snow. A Black and White conversion brings that to the forefront.
Canon SX20IS at about 285mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 80. Snow Mode.
Processed in Lightroom for clarity and sharpness. Converted to B&W using the Green filter effect.
And, being Sunday: Like the image itself, our spiritual journey is often more about what the light does with the snow than it is about the tracks we, or others, leave. And yet, without the tracks, what is there to draw another’s eye? We are much more likely to stop to see the light on the snow if someone has laid a track across it. That seems to be a part of what it means to be human. “Who goes there” is our first question. But it eventually leads to the realization that there is a there to go and a going…and that every step, to the eye of the spirit, is through textured light!
1/16/2011: Venice?
When you read this I will staying at the Venetian Hotel, and walking by this scene every day on my way to and from the Sands Convention Hall…deep in the elaborate fantasy that is Las Vegas, Nevada. The expensive fantasy, designed specifically to separate folks from their hard earned cash, by promises of cash unearned, and pleasures without price. Not a place for Sunday thoughts, but I am always amazed that if you look kind of sideways at Vegas, determined to overlook the whole “sin city” thing, there is a considerable amount of beauty there. Take the scene above. Consider the creative energy and the love of form and color…the attention to detail and design…that went into manufacturing this little slice of Venice inside a hotel. Extravagant? Certainly. Fantastic? Absolutely. But then consider…where this stands is a short helicopter ride from the north rim of the Grand Canon. If you want to talk about extravagance and fantasy, that is.
Wonder is wonder…it all belongs to the creator, no matter how deeply the hand of man is in it…what has beauty proclaims the spirit at its root. Or that is what I think anyway. And maybe thinking that will keep me more or less sane for a week in “sin city.”
Sony H50 and Sanyo GC10. Processed in Lightroom for intensity and clarity.
12/5/2010: Bosque Sunrise!
Happy Sunday!
It is absolutely essential, on every trip to the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, to get out at least one morning for the dawn fly-out. For one thing November dawns under the mountains along the Rio Grande in New Mexico are spectacular, and for another, the spectacle of the geese rising in streams and leaving the ponds where they spend the night can be breath-taking, awe inspiring, thrilling. It makes the alarm clock and being out before breakfast worth it. It makes numb fingers and icy feet worth it. It makes, dare I say, life worth it.
It can be, for many people, a true life-changing experience…and opening of the eyes to unsuspected beauty and unexpected possibility…which fundamentally changes the way we see the world.
You can spot the first-timers by the light in their eyes, by the grins, by the voluble and visible delight as they troop back to cars and heaters and cooling coffee. But at least half the crowd (and we are talking several hundred, sometimes 500 or more, people gathered each dawn during the festival) are returnees…people who by their manner have seen this all before, and have come back one more time to feed something in their souls that responds in the Bosque dawn. Many of these folks, like me, have been coming to Bosque in November for 20 years or more, and still we are out at least one morning before sunup to catch the fly-out and the dawn. It is essential to our souls.
Church should only be so good!
Canon SX20IS at 560mm equivalent, f5.7 @ 1/640 @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom.
And here is the video.