landscape photography

thursday morning with pascal mercier

Encounters between people, it often seems to me, are like crossings of racing trains at breakneck speed in the deepest night.

We cast fleeting, rushed looks at the others sitting behind dull glass in dim light, who disappear from our field of vision as soon as we barely have time to perceive them. Was it really a man and a woman who flitted by there like plantoms in an illuminated window frame, who arose out of nothing and seemed to cut into the empty dark, without meaning or purpose? ~ Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon, pg. 94

Fujifilm X-T4: f/4 1/1400 s 78.1 mm 640 ISO

monday morning with pascal mercier

“Was it possible that the best way to make sure of yourself was to know and understand someone else?

One whose life had been completely different and had had a completely different logic than your own? How did curiosity for another life go together with the awareness that your time was running out? …” Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon, pg 97.

Fujifilm X-T4: f/4 1/750 s 65.2 mm 400 ISO

lens-artists: serenity

This week Egídio (Through Brazilian Eyes) invites lens-artists to share images of serenity. What is serenity?

In the stillness 
Between the arrival of guests 
The peonies. ~Buson

Transient

A gentle awakening to unintended stilled silence?

Hidden, evasive, denied as yearning seeks another state of being?

lens-artists: my go-to-places

Dawns’ light

Sutcliffe rarely left Whitby [a port and resort community on the Yorkshire coast], where his portrait studio kept him busy, and said that he was ‘tethered for the greater part of each year by a chain, at most only a mile or two long.’  To most modern photographers this would seem a crippling restriction, but Sutcliffe gradually realized that it was an asset to him as a photographer since it forced him to concentrate on the transitory effects that could transform familiar scenes. …photographers should always aim for something more than ‘mere postcard records of facts.’ ‘By waiting and watching for accidental effects of fog, sunshine or cloud,’ he advised, ‘it is generally possible to get an original rendering of any place.  If we only get what any one can get at any time, our labour is wasted; a mere record of facts should never satisfy us.’

cited: Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, The History of Photography Series, p 8

Horsetooth Reservoir

Journeys with John invites lens-artists to “share where you go or what you do to help lift those spirits when this old world starts getting you down”.

lens-artists: five favs

As I spent part of the afternoon revisiting photo files in response to Tina’s invitation to share five favorite photographs, I began to ponder, “What are the variables within photographs that come together to create a place within the heart of the eyes?”

Photographs tell of silent, vague, faded memories. Photographs are of visual moments that have grasped one’s attention. Photographs share times of exploration, of travel, of life. Photographs are representations of impermanence, light and shadow, fantasy, composition, challenges, points of view, …

Even  in Kyoto—
hearing the cuckoo’s cry—
I long for Kyoto. ~Buson

an image created in 2013 that awakens memories of 1960s
an unforgettable smile
a telling of impermanence
a pear
a time of light and shadow

Thank you Tina for this quiet Sunday of reflection.

lens-artists: just one picture

One picture … an image holding a shared moment during a winter’s drive … a silent memory of the time … the time before hearing … hearing the diagnosis … prostate cancer, stage 4.*

*A 2013 study conducted at the Portland VA Medical Center and Oregon Health and Science University found that Veterans exposed to Agent Orange are not only at higher risk for prostate cancer, but they are more likely to have aggressive forms of the disease. (cited: US Department of Veteran’s Affairs)

Leya’s lens-artists challenge: “use only ONE picture. One that you find important, meaningful to you, maybe sending a message – and then explain why you picked just that picture.”