landscape photography

lens-artists: walking the neighborhood

This week’s Lens-Artists, walking the neighborhood, challenge is offered by Travels and Trifles.

During the heat of the summer, walks occurred during the early morning with its cool(er) temperatures. This time of day parking lots are mostly empty, one may greet people who rise early to walk their dogs or to begin their day in quiet contemplation. Well … there are people who are multi-tasking on these morning photo walks as they open their eyes to see life through a camera lens and begin the challenge of 10,000 steps walking to the groceries to buy Skyr and raspberries … hum. Skyr, blackberries and nuts … hum, hum. Blue berries, anyone?

As my great-granddaughter is known to have said, “It sounds like a parfait!” I read that parfait is the French word for “perfect.” Creamy vanilla skyr is the best! Hum, hum, hum!

Thank you Tina for this challenge. It was fun.

seven squares: dawn

About a year ago, I moved into 55+ apartment … second floor with east facing windows. East facing windows offer moments of awe as the sky transitions from night to dawn.

Most days I feel tied to this apartment since Jeff passed. This sense of being tethered brings to mind the work of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe.  With a brief review of his life and a collection of his work within Aperture I read: 

Choose one subject, anything will do — your own house, or the house opposite, or the next house — and in place of a tripod, drive a stake into the ground, nail a board on top of this, and make a screw hole in the board for the screw of your camera . . . Photograph your subject at every hour of the day, on fine days, and at intervals on dull days, photograph it after it has been rained on for weeks, and after it has been sun-dried for months. (cited: Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, the Aperture History of Photography Series: Aperture 1979).

While I dreamt of photo trips during those long-hours filled with work and family responsibilities, I find Frank Sutcliffe’s creative work serves to move me toward greater acceptance of being “tethered” during this time of transition with the challenge to open myself to the “transitory effects” of nature that transforms the landscape close to home.

For the second seven squares, there was a personal invitation to explore landscape minimalism with 7 different Fujifilm film simulations offered through the FujiXWeekly app. The first is image was created with the Retro Gold recipe.

Retro Gold

Chrome 11
Super HG Astia
Acros
Moody Monochrome
BW Superia
Night

I appreciate The Life of B’s seven squares challenges as they invite me to stretch this emotional tether and open an awareness to the beauty around me. Thank you

lens artists: sense of scale

Sofia has invited photographers to explore the use of scale with images. She writes that scale is “… something that attracts our eyes more often than we think and intuitively we look for ways to convey the size of what we’re seeing.”

While the sun appears small within the wide expansion of the sky, the sun’s dawn invites an awareness of the expansive nature of the morning’s horizon.

Thank you Sofia for this invitation to explore sense of scale.

7.19.2024 @ 6:02:59 am

O for a friend–that we might see and listen together! 
O the beautiful dawn in the mountain village!– 
The repeated sound of cuckoos near and far away.~The Sarashina Diary*

Fujifilm XT-4 … f/5.6 1/600s 60mm 160 ISO

*cited: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

saturday morning with alan lightman

Fujifilm X-T4 f/5.6 1/60 s 60.8 mm 800 ISO

“In a world where time is a sense, like sight or like taste, sequence of episodes may be quick or may be slow, dim or intense, salty or sweet, causal or without cause, orderly or random, depending on the prior history of the viewer. Philosophers sit in cafés on Amthausgasse and argue whether time really exists outside human perception. Who can say if an event happens fast or slow, causally or without cause, in the past or future? Who can say if events happen at all? The philosophers sit with half-opened eyes and compare their aesthetics of time.

Fujifilm X-T4 f/5.6 1/60 s 46.6 mm 800 ISO

Some few people are born without any sene of time. As consequence, their sense of place becomes heightened to excruciating degree. They lie in tall grass and are questioned by poets and painters from all over the world. These time-deaf are beseeched to describe the precise placement of trees in the spring, the shape of snow on the Alps, the angle of sun on a couch, the position of rivers, the location of moss, the pattern of birds in flock. Yet the time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.”*

*cited: Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams