lens-artist: ephemeral

She with a cup of coffee, embraced within her chilled palms, both blanketed by the first light’s silence … her eyes looking, not seeing the eastern horizon’s slow transition from darkness to light. Suddenly, the sky’s canvas painted by the dance of the sun’s rays and clouds broke through her internal musings, “Wait, wait, please don’t move,” she pleaded as she began a search for her camera and trying so desperately, once again, to win her battle with … the moment by moment changes within life, the ephemeral nature of all that is…

across a concealed blue sky

aimless shifting stories...

gathering and dispersing – obscure particles

painting stories … anew,

moment by moment

Thank you Tina for the week’s lens-artist challenge: Ephemeral

saturday morning with joanne harris

“She’s growing up, I tell myself.”

becoming…Nikon D750 f/2.5 1/1000s 35mm 800 ISO multiple exposure, 3*

” Receding, dwindling like a child glimpsed in a hall of mirrors – Anouk at nine, still more sunshine than shadow. Anouk at seven, Anouk at six, waddling duck-footed in her yellow wellingtons, Anouk with Pantoufle bouncing blurrily behind her, Anouk with a plume of candy floss in one small pink fist – all gone now, of course, slipping away and into line behind the ranks of future Anouks. …Marching faster and faster towards a new horizon –“**

*becoming first included in July 31, 2019 post, Dreaming Dreams.

**Joanne Harris. Lollipop Shoes, p.33.

lens-artist: street details

at my feet
when did you get here?
snail
~Issa*

the street’s world of feet in action…

This week Ritva invites Lens-Artists to “… skip the classic street-portrait approach and reveal the often-hidden, magical world, of the details we never take the time to​ notice anymore.”

*haikuguy.com

lens-artist: dreamy

that village’s
floating bridge of dreams…
spring frost
~Issa

Ann Christine from Leya invites lens-artists to share their interpretation of the theme Dreamy. She introduces soft dreamy photographs as images created with soft light, soft focus, delicate tones, and other gentle aspects to produce an ethereal picture.

The dark sky dulls my dreamy mind, 
The down-dripping rain lingers– 
O my tears down falling, longing after thee!

~The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu

Thank you Ann Christine for this challenge…sometimes life’s realities need to slumber and awaken the gentle nature of dreamy.

lens-artists challenge: looking back – autumn

It stirs the soul

of even

the most

indifferent person –

first autumn winds ~Saigyo

Journeys with Johnbo takes us back to Patty’s June 2020 lens-artists photo challenge in which she invited artists “… join us … and share your images of this season.  What does autumn look like in your part of the world?  What does this season mean to you personally?” 

Images of autumn, 2020

how I envy maple leafage

which turns beautiful

then falls ~Kagami Shikoo

What is it about autumn that is personal … the joy of a new school year, crunchy sounds of leaves, sights of leaves swirling with autumn winds, memories of burning leaves and jumping into piles of leaves, scents of autumn, promises of snow, desires to fly with geese, and feeling autumn’s unique dryness.

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…