Yesterday, for my Saturday morning photo-prowl, I went down by the river, along the Kennebunk Bridle Path where I have not been all winter. It is still snow and ice covered, but between people walking dogs and sublimation of the snow, it is quite passible…you just have to walk carefully with a mind to the slippery patches. I found all kinds of interesting little bits to photograph in the worn snow and lacy ice, but the winter vistas across a particularly high tide on the marsh also caught my eye. I am still experimenting with the Sony NEX 3NL to see what I can do with basic exposures in Snapseed. This was shot in Superior Auto, and then processed as an HDR Scene in Snapseed. The image is really all about the light on the water…from its power to penetrate to the texture of the flooded marsh grass in the foreground, to the crisp reflections of the trees in the mid. And I like the level of detail in the trees and buildings and the way the clouds are brushed across the sky. It is a humble scene…nothing grand or showy…but compelling, I think, none the less.

Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom @ 25.5mm equivalent field of view. ISO 200 @ 1/160th @ f16. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.

And for the Sunday Thought: After a week in Florida, surrounded by some of the most amazing birds and palm-studded, exotic landscapes, it was just a bit of a challenge to return home to Maine, where we are in the dirty, old compressed snow phase of winter. Temperatures are still too cold to be outside for long, and certainly not at all without bundling up. And it is, on the face of it, so uninspiring. Home, and glad to be there, but it took most of a week to get me out the door to find something to photograph in this dregs of winter landscape.

Of course, once out there (and properly equipped with hat and gloves, fur-lined Crocs, long-johns and fleece vest under my coat and pants) I found my inspiration right where it always is…just behind my eyes, and waiting for the least little thing in the landscape to let it out. Yesterday it was exactly the subtle details of weathered snow and ice that I just disparaged that did the trick…along with the crisp light of a sun that has definitely turned the corner toward spring, flooding a flood-tide landscape with chunks of floating ice.

The thing about inspiration is: it is never in the landscape you find yourself in…it is not even in the self you find yourself to be…it is in the act..whatever action is your way (and it could be paint, or pencil, or poetry, or piano…or dance, or macrame as easily as photography). Inspiration is in the doing.

I sometimes (my best times) see the universe as this great flood of living creative engery, working itself out in time and space and matter…working itself out lovingly in all that is. There is personality there, intelligence, intent, a unending will for good, a love that will not be denied. There is artistry there. And I know that by grace I am, not just born, but twice born, to be a part, to play a part, to create a part of what is being so lovingly expressed. When I act, that life acts in me. It is in-sprit-ation after all. The breath of life, breathing in me, whenever I decide to do. It is easier to remember when I have a camera in my hand…not so easy when I am selling binoculars, or dealing with the corporate tangle, or blowing snow in the driveway…but it is no less true. Inspiration is in the doing.

I am thankful, then, that when I forget too long, I can take up my camera and be reminded. No matter how apparently uninspiring is the landscape of my life.