lens-artists: last chance

This week artists Tina (Travels and Trifles) invites artists to share “those images you’ve loved over the past 12 months, but have not yet shared.”

Reviewing photographs created over the year confirmed that the majority of images posted on WordPress were part of a skyscape project, Dawning … beginning anew.

Each image within the photo book Dawning … beginning anew is a telling of the sun’s seasonal movements along the eastern horizon and the circular messages of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The most dynamic is the ongoing changes, moment-to-moment … the multiple variables that paint the sky’s canvas.

So with this in mind, I decided to share the healing moments within the circular process of grief’s darkness to a renewal of life found within each dawn’s first light to its sun rise on this day … Winter Solstice.

summer solstice

The images above begin with the transition from today’s first light to dawn and then the beginning of winter solstice.

Winter Solstice messages the triumph of light over darkness, tells of the gradual return of longer days and stories the promise of renewed life.

For me the cherished moments … the aweness within the art of photography is seeing the world through a camera’s lens and hearing the click of the shutter. The rest is just a delightful dance with possibilities and a constant reminder, “you can’t make a bad photograph good, but you can make a good photograph bad.”

May your holiday be filled with the gifts of freedom within peace, joy, and love.

brenda

contemplative photography – flash of perception

“… sudden gaps in the flow of mental activity … suddenly you see …

“When the flow of ordinary mental activity is interrupted, mind and eye stop … your surroundings appear vividly. This is what we call flash of perception. …”*

*Andy Karr and Michael Wood, The Practice of Contemplative Photography

reweaving within grieving

the uncertainty within grief’s reweaving memories…

The personal story is a narrative of our unique sense of identity.  We create our identities through the stories we weave onto a tapestry that is formed against the background of our family mythologies. We pull threads from of an assemblage of recalled details from our pasts and weaved them into images that cast us in whatever role corresponds with our current situations, feelings, thoughts, or actions. The colored threads of this tapestry are often re-embroidered to reflect the creative and dynamic process of our perspectives as we shift in, out, and between various roles, feeling states, and cognitions.  As we reflect on our self-created images we are in turn affected by them; therefore, there is an unconscious re-weaving of our tapestries. ~The Meditative Journey with Saldage

autumn sun

December 1, 2025, Monday morning … last night’s snow powder left by the season’s first snowfall … mystery creating mist …

First snow! I see it young every winter, 
Yet my face grows old 
As Winter comes.

~The Diary of Izumi Shikibu (1002-1003 AD)*

*Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

shadows of squares -9

wabi-sabi … the beauty within the transition of summer’s fading light to autumn’s slumbering shadows

“We crossed it in a boat, and it is the Province of Sagami. The mountain range called Nishitomi is like folding screens with good pictures. On the left hand we saw a very beautiful beach with long-drawn curves of white waves. There was a place there called Moro-koshi-ga-Hara (Chinese Field) where sands are wonderfully white. Two or three days we journeyed along that shore. A man said: ‘In Summer pale and deep Japanese pinks bloom there and make the field like brocade. As it is Autumn now we cannot see them.’ But I saw some pinks scattered about blooming pitiably. They said: ‘It is funny that Japanese pinks are blooming in the Chinese field.'” *

*Trans: AS Omori and K Doi. The Sarashina Diary, AD 1009-1059 Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

Visit The Life of B to join November’s Shadows of Squares

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wandering through an alley’s shadows and light…

The magic of photo walks undertaken with an intention to be open to the silent, “see me.”

The desire of seeing and escaping from preconceived labeling and private musings.

Wakens one from blinding concepts of the mundane to the uniqueness created by light and shadow.

Visit The Life of B to join November’s Shadows of Squares

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The Art of the Egg or the Egg and I

“It occurred to me that I have done an awful lot of egg drawings and paintings. Not quite sure why. It is a subject I use in my drawing classes quite frequently and I tell my students that if they can draw an egg, they can draw anything. It is like a little creature, a tiny model – and symbolic of so much: new life, fertility, possibilities … It is the perfect shape to to practice tone and get the 3-D effect. Some love this exercise; some will never look at an egg again!”*

*Catherine Wells,
Director, Pointe-St-Charles Art School

Visit The Life of B to join November’s Shadows of Squares