Very terrible was the sound of rain…
Of what was I thinking
All the long night through
Listening to the rain against the window?
I was sheltered, but the storm was in my heart.
~The Diary of Izumi Shikibu (Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)
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.
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
Before my vision
The fire and smoke of burning
Arose and died again.
To bamboo fields there is no more returning,
Why seek there in vain?
~Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan, The Sarashina Diary
… sometimes a simple black and white monochrome image has a deeper expression…
have you ever noticed that the word industry contains dust?
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)*
just like darkness
it sneaks in…
autumn cold ~Issa (www.haikuguy.com)
Visit The Life of B to join November’s Shadows of Squares
late afternoon sun
paths of long tree silhouettes –
painting trunk shadows
Visit The Life of B to join November’s Shadows of Squares
Fujifilm X-T4: f/4 1/250 s 58.6 mm 400 ISO
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.)
In sorrow I gaze upon the sky of Autumn
The clouds are in turmoil
And the wind is high. ~The Diary of Izumi Shikibu
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.
“”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
a meditative journey 
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