Author: brenda

lens-artists … everyone should see this

This week’s lens-artists challenge is hosted by Joanne. She writes that “Often times we see something that inspires us” and wish others could see what we see. She invites lens-artist to share some inspiriting photographs of things/people/places.

At this time of my life my travels are through books. As I wander through pages of someone’s thoughts and imaginations, it is often that I think of someone to share inspiring passages.

The Practice of Contemplative Photography Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes” by Andy Karr and Michael Wood is one such book. To be introduced to their Two Ways of Seeing opens me to a new way of being…being present during photo walks. The images below were created during pond walks.

“To see clearly you need to untangle perception from conception. To distinguish them you need to take out your (metaphoric) microscope and look closely at each one.

“Visual images appear when consciousness connects with the eye. Mental images appear when consciousness connects with the conceptional mind. …

What appears to conceptual mind is only an abstract, general image that encompasses all the views and pictures of a thing that you have ever seen. It is a very different kind of object from the specific ones that appear to the non-conceptual senses.

“The visual object that appears to the eye appears clearly, in great detail. You see–all at once–color, shape, texture, and the rest.

“The usual sequence of perception is that in the first moment, there is direct sensory experience. In the second moment, a concept and label arise, superimposed on the direct perception. …These moments of perception and conception are extremely brief. The sequence happens very quickly, so quickly that you don’t notice that a whole process is unfolding.”

Thank you Joanne for inviting me to continue my contemplation of how life is in a perception state of change and what I simply see within a moment transforms into an ideal/story/memory of a thing. What is difficult to embrace is possibility that no one actually sees what we see…

lens-artists: longing

I was introduced to the Portuguese word, saudade, which has no immediate English equivalent about 30 years ago. Saudade is a word that feels intimate as it named a life-long companion. It touched upon a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exit, for something other than the present, a turning toward to past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming, a wishfulness.

Over 30 years ago, I met a homeless woman who identified herself as a sundowner.   She described how each evening’s sun invited her to settle down along the side of her life’s path so that her journey could begin afresh in the morning sun.  She eloquently described an undercurrent of yearning that ebbed and flowed throughout her soul and how, in her past days, she found herself at the mercy of private memories, thoughts, and imaginations and had encountered, time and time again, various degree of discontent that wandered along side her aloneness.

As I heard the suffering within women who story their lives through the multi-colored threads of substance use, I find myself acknowledging a similarity within each of these unique stories with my own metaphysical search for someone, something, or some place that remains beyond the forever next horizon.  Each of our unique narratives reveal an unending wandering with satchels of discontent that tell of a spiritual emptiness and an emotional intimacy wit, “a homesickness for a place one knows cannot be.”

Thank you Egídio for your invitation to wander through loneliness.

one four challenge…week 4

This is the fourth of four editing challenges for Leanne and Joanne’s invitation to choose one image and then for four weeks share one edited change to that image. “You can do whatever you like with it, just do something different each week.”

Often times there is a stuck-ness that keeps me glued to a problem/challenge until a solution releases me … this fourth of four challenges has freed me from stuck-ness. This liberation has me dancing in the street – this wondrous misty-chilly morning!

A while back I found that Photoshop’s upgrades messaged that my computer had become ancient with a nonverbal suggestion that I either consider a new computer or explore alternative software editing programs. Enter Pixelmator Pro.

This fourth image invited me to explore Pixelmator Pro’s scale shape horizontally and vertically as well as the auto crop. Then I played around with the hue and saturation’s vibrance and then ended this editing challenge with color selection,

Fujifilm X-T4: f/4.5 1/900 s 80 mm 400 ISO

original
1st edit
2nd edit
3rd edit
4th edit

I hope you enjoyed this editing journey.

one four challenge…week 3

This is the third of four editing challenges for Leanne and Joanne’s invitation to choose one image and then for four weeks share one edited change to that image. “You can do whatever you like with it, just do something different each week.”

For awhile I found myself in a puzzle … how to create this image into something different? After a number of false starts I decided to insert a moon into the center with Snapseed’s double exposure and then to edit with their expand option. A unique image, I must say!

Fujifilm X-T4: f/4.5 1/900 s 80 mm 400 ISO

original image
1st edit
2nd edit

one four challenge…week 2

My second image for Leanne and Joanne’s invitation to choose one image and then for four weeks share one edited change to that image. “You can do whatever you like with it, just do something different each week.”

This week the editing began with cropping the image which brought the center of the flower to be the main focus area. I then finished in Silver Efex Pro 2.

My first edit was to crop the image and then explore structure, brightened mid tones, and chose golden bright in color balance. I slightly brought out the shadow within the center. I ended with vignetting.

Initial image
1st edit

Fujifilm X-T4: f/4.5 1/900 s 80 mm 400 ISO

monday morning with pascal mercier

He often complained in his last year that he didn’t understand what it really consisted of, the loneliness we all feared so much.

Fujifilm X-T4: f/4 1/75 s 60.8 mm 400 ISO

What is it that we call loneliness, he said, it can’t simply be the absence of others, you can be alone and not lonely, and you can be among people and yet be lonely. So what is it? … All right, he said, it isn’t only that others are there, that they fill up the space next to us. But even when they celebrate us or give advice in a friendly conversation, clever, sensitive advice: even then we can be lonely. So loneliness is not something simply connected with the presence of others or with what they do. Then what” What on earth? (cited: Night Train to Lisbon, p 319.)

one four challenge…week 1

My first image for Leanne and Joanne’s invitation to choose one image and then for four weeks share one edited changes to that image. “You can do whatever you like with it, just do something different each week.”

The photo below is my initial image that was auto adjusted within Capture One…white balance, exposure, contrast and brightness, high dynamic range, and levels. I cannot recall which of Fujifilm’s film simulations that was used during this photo walk.

Fujifilm X-T4: f/4.5 1/900 s 80 mm 400 ISO

My first edit was to crop the image and then explore structure, brightened mid tones, and chose golden bright in color balance. I slightly brought out the shadow within the center. I ended with vignetting.

I think I was much more creative during the time of Robyn’s challenge. Maybe over time this will change.

If memory serves, there was also a similar challenge that ended in 2016. This discussion brings to mind a quote I once heard, “no matter how much things change, they still remain the same.”

lens-artists: lines, colors and patterns

Photo composition is an essential element of any photographic image. A photograph has only two essential elements, subject, and composition (not camera settings). By composition, we refer to the way we place all the elements of the photograph inside the four sides of our frame. ~George Tatakis

Lines are horizontal, vertical, diagonal, organic, and implied. Ted Forbes  (The Art of Photography) wrote that while lines don’t actually exist in nature they are most likely the most basic element of visual composition. He further noted:

Lines serve many purposes in visual composition. They can divide the composition, they can direct the viewers eye, they can define shapes and they can make a statement to the feel or interpretation of the image by the viewer. Line’s speaking to the feel of a composition is extremely important.

For me going beyond the intellectual understanding of color theory: that is, to feel, see, sense, and be engaged with the multiple interactions of color within an image is a challenge.

It is my understanding that patterns are the repetition of shapes that are pretty basic and similar to each other. We will see them repeating at regular intervals within nature, design, works of art, architecture, and photography.

Thank you John (journeyswithJohnbo) for this invitation to refresh my understanding of these three tools of composition