Posts in Category: The Generous Eye
NM Sunflower! Happy Sunday.
Sunflower, just over the NM border from OK.
There is a substantial stone sign to mark the border crossing between Oklahoma and New Mexico on Route 56, and a more subtle shift in the landscape from high plains to volcanic plateau, but the real difference, at least this year, is sunflowers. Evidently New Mexico distributed tons of sunflower seeds this spring, and sprayed them along roadsides all over what I have seen of the state so far this trip. And it has been a wet (by NM standards) summer…with enough rain so that the sunflowers, watered by runoff from the roads, have prospered. Big, bold, beautiful sunflowers provide a foreground for the volcanic uplands and mountains of this section of New Mexico. It is great! It is wonderful. It is an act, intentional or otherwise, of worship and praise…guaranteed to lift the spirits of everyone who lives in, or visits the state.
We had to stop a few miles into New Mexico at a little roadside rest to take in the view, and I was compelled to photograph a few of sunflowers. The glancing, high altitude light of late morning, with in-camera HDR to keep the shadows and highlights in range, contribute to image that makes me smile…and I hope it does you too. It is just so cheerful. And yet it is authentic. This is not a pampered garden sunflower. You can see the wear and tear of life on the roadside all over the plant…and the great green hairy fist of the new bud adds a contrasting element and another dose of reality. This is cheerfulness in the face of adversity. This is a great big simile despite the challenges. This is praise for the good life even when that life is not easy. It says to me: God is great. God is good. And nothing life can throw at me will change my mind.
All that from a sunflower on the roadside? Certainly! Happy Sunday! And may it be a sunflower day for you!
Day Lily Illustration Effect. Happy Sunday!
Day Lily, Kennebunk Light and Power, Factory Pasture Road, Kennebunk ME
Yesterday my wife asked me to take the electric payment to the office (we have a municipal power company that serves the town) on my way to the store. I was reluctant to do it, but she shamed me into it :). While I was dropping it off, I saw the mixed stand of Day Lilies at the corner of the parking lot. The Day Lilies all over town this year are spectacular. There must have been a town “beautification” project sponsored by someone that featured Day Lilies at a bargain, and these yellow lilies in particular…because there are plantings of them along the brick sidewalks, in the median of streets, around banks and other businesses…everywhere! I have been meaning to stop and photograph some of the more impressive spreads, and here was one right at hand in the electric company parking lot. And, of course, I had my Sony HX90V with me. Life is good.
This is not quite a photograph…or maybe rather, it is slightly more than a photograph. The HX90V has a range of Picture Effects built in. I have never been one for such “features”…I like my photography straight-up mostly…but I have been experimenting with a few of the HX90V’s effects. This is the Illustration effect…it attempts to turn the photo into a drawing…simplifying colors, emphasizing edges, etc so that the image looks like something drawn, perhaps with markers and bright inks, rather than a photograph. This is all done in-camera, before the image is saved to the card, so that when you first open it, it already looks like this. It can be very interesting with the right subject. As I say, not a photograph exactly, but an interesting image.
It worked particularly well here. The simplification of the yellow petals is striking, and the background has an artfully rendered look. I like it a lot. I think it is actually beautiful.
And there is a lot to work with in the image and the situation for The Generous Eye and the Sunday Thought. If I had remained stubbornly stingy when my wife asked me to run the errand, well…I never would have seen this Lily. The Generous Eye begins with a generosity of spirit that leaves you open to the needs of others…and to any and every adventure. Then there is the generosity of the town and their lily planting program that inspired me to look at lilies more closely this year. I equate The Generous Eye, at least in part, with “having vision”…in the sense of being able to visualize a better tomorrow and do something about it. Someone, or some group, in the town had to have “seen” with a generous eye what the town would look like this summer patterned with yellow lilies. And then there is the generosity of the Sony engineering team, who worked to include this effect in the camera’s software. I always wondered why they bothered. I am sure not many people use the Picture Effects at all…most who buy the camera will never discover that they are there…and yet a lot of time and energy must have gone into creating them, and refining them to work as well as they do. That was generous of Sony in both senses I have already highlighted. Finally there is an element of “willingness to try new things” in the Generous Eye. As I already suggested, an adventurous spirit is necessary for a generous eye. If I had stuck to my prejudices (stingy prejudices) then I would not have tried the Illustration effect…and missed this image.
Finally, I have to believe in The Generous Eye of the creator of all, who embodies generosity in all its forms and who loved every circumstance that lead to this image into existence. I am not who I am because I see God…I am who I am because God sees me…and God’s eye is always and all ways generous. Happy Sunday!
Early Northern Blazing Star. Happy Sunday!
Northern Blazing Star with Skipper, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, ME
I have never seen the Kennebunk Plains so thick with Northern Blazing Star. The budded plants are everywhere, in thick stands this year. By the first week in August, the second at the latest, the Plains are going to be purple with Blazing Star. Right now, there are only a few plants here and there in bloom, but the promise is there, and barring any unnatural disaster, it is going to be a very good year for Blazing Star. Of course, the Kennebunk Plains are managed, at least in part, for Blazing Star, which is endangered in much of its historical range, and only has the one major foothold left in Maine. Blazing Star is fire dependent, and patterned and scheduled burns on the Plains keep the population healthy.
And, when the Blazing Star is in bloom, it draws its compliment of insects. Bees of several species, lots of Skippers (like the one captured above, which might be the Least Skipper), Hairstreaks (mostly Coral), Swallowtail and Monarch butterflies, and lots of orb weaver spiders. The Halloween Pennant dragonfly hunts among the the other bugs. And the insects draw the birds: Clay-collared and Grasshopper Sparrow, Upland Sandpiper, (all at the limits of their range on the Plains), as well as Savannah and Song Sparrows. The Blazing Star is the base plant, or the most visible member, for a whole community of life…and because it is so beautiful, and so visible, protecting it has protected the whole community. This is good!
I feel privileged to live so close to the remnant population of Blazing Star…to track it year to year in my informal visits to the Plains, and to share it with you in my photos. Being on the Plains when the Northern Blazing Star is in bloom is, for me, a spiritual experience…a instance of natural, spontaneous, worship. Though the Plains buzz with life in August, and hundreds of people come to pick blueberries, for me there is always a hush…a reverence in the presence of the stands of this rare and beautiful plant. It is awesome in the literal sense of the word. I feel the awe, and can only give praise and thanks. Happy Sunday!
Blueberry Art. Happy Sunday!
Blueberries, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine. Illustration Picture Effect.
Last Sunday I posed a very studied and classical composition of a Wood Lily, and talked about how, as an image, it drew attention to the artist behind the photo as much as to the subject…and how that made it different from most of the images I take. It was a celebration of the act of creation, as well as a celebration of creation itself…of my small part in the ongoing act of creation, and well as what the creator of all as done. Now, if you think about it, every photograph I take is both…but not so obviously, or so consciously, so.
This “photograph” of low bush Blueberries on the Kennebunk Plains takes the concept even further. Here I used an in-camera Picture Effect to intentionally render the image to look like a drawing…clearly an artifact…rather than a photograph. Though it was taken with a camera, and recorded pretty much just as appears here on the SD card…it is intentionally un-photo-like. The image is simplified to basic shapes and tones, so that the pattern becomes as important as, actually more important than, the subject…the blueberries. If it went any further it would be abstract…as it is it balances on the line between abstract and real, tipped just toward reality. It demands to be looked at as an image, an artifact, a rendering…not as blueberries in the field. And, I think it is beautiful. Striking. Arresting. It rewards your attention. It, itself, not the blueberries.
But, of course, I can not, and do not, take any more credit for this creation than I do in any of my work. Actually, my only creative decision was to play with the settings on the camera…the software in the camera…written by engineers who never saw these blueberries, and certainly never envisioned this image, did all the work. The creator of all still put the blueberries in the field, and, I have to believe, inspired the software engineers in their creative play…so that I could play with the camera. No matter what else I did, I am still only pointing and saying “look at what the loving God has created.” If anything, this image makes me smile…it is fun in way a straight photograph would not be…it is playful. And I like that about it. Because, of course, I appreciate the sense of play that infuses the work of the creator of all in everything I see, in all my experience…and that only inspires even greater love…providing evidence of the playful love of the creator of all. Play is creative love in action. Always! Happy Sunday!