art

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-artist: live and learn

As an autodidact, individuals who choose the subject they will study, their studying material, and the studying rhythm and time, in 2018 I began blogging a 52-week Photo Study that explored topics such as visual composition, creativity, point of view, the photographer, street photography, contemplative photography, landscape photography, and developing a personal style,

YOUR FIRST 10,000 PHOTOGRAPHS ARE YOUR WORST.” ~Henri Cartier-Bresson

After reading Henri Cartier-Bresson’s quote, I realized that one may just mindlessly click away 10,000 times with hope that…maybe, just maybe…accidentally…one image will be an A+ A+ A+ photograph (see the movie, “A Christmas Story”).

Then…a shower thought…maybe that one triple A+ image really only arises after 10,000 intentional shutter releases.  Can you just image being present to,  thinking through, and connected with each transient moment 10,000 times?   In reality this would be like setting out on a  journey of 10,000 steps knowing that one will never reach their destination.

Yet, what is an important part of a 10,000 endeavor?  To create a triple A+ image?  Or to undertake a photo study journey accompanied by fun, education, knowledge, experience, and exploration?  I’ll go with the fun of creating and opening myself to the beauty of Mother Earth so this photo study blog journey is an encouragement to–not create a triple A+ image– but to be more intentionally present with each click of the shutter.

Thank you Tina (travels and trifles) for this week’s photo challenge to explore and share one’s lifetime journey of learning.

saturday morning with pascal mercier

“”We live here and now, everything before and in other places is past, mostly forgotten and accessible as a small remnant disordered slivers of memory that light up in rhapsodic contingency and die out again.

Fujifilm X-T4: f/9 1/10 s 80 mm 400 ISO

“This is how we are used to thinking about ourselves. And this is the natural way of thinking, when it is others we look at: they really do stand before us here and now, no other place and no other time, and how should their relationship to the past be thought of if not in the form of internal episodes of memory, whose exclusive reality is in the present of their happing?” Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon, pp, 241-242