lens-artists photo challenge: morning

Stay at Home Order … day 25 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

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 (cited: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)


Sony RX1003 f/2.8 1/125s 25.7mm 80 ISO

in the silver dew
one sleeve cold…
morning sun

~Issa (cited: haikuguy.com)


Nikon D750 f/1.8 1/1600s 35m 100 ISO

A nightingale’s song
Brings me out of a dream:
The morning glows

~Ryokan


Sony RX 1003 f/2.8 1/250s 19.48mm 80 ISO

at dawn
not a soul in sight…
lotus blossoms

~Issa (cited: haikuguy.com)


Sony RX1003 f/2.8 1/126s 22.38mm 80 ISO

In the Autumn night 
The pale morning moon was setting 
When I turned away from the shut door.

~The Diary of Izumi Shikibu (cited: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)


The pale morning moon* … camping with my family in the “Snowies”

This week Ann-Christine invites us to look at our morning – or Any morning -maybe there is a special morning that we will never forget.

*The waning moon is called the morning moon because it can be seen after dawn

syme

Have we now come to the time in which to honestly acquaint

ourselves with private inner and outer moral guiding principles

and within this solitude with self

foresee how our individual choices/actions may impact the future of humanity?

I begin this contemplation with a clear knowing that I do not wish to wake from this time of mistrust and uncertainty to the prison bars of moral shame.

Stay at Home Order … day 24 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

“… Syme could hardly see for the patterns of sun and shade that danced upon them. Now a man’s head was lit as with a light of Rembrandt, leaving all else obliterated; now again he had strong and staring white hands with the face of a negro. The ex-Marquis had pulled the old straw hat over his eyes, and the black shade of the brim cut his face so squarely in two that it seemed to be wearing one of the black half-masks of their pursuers. The fancy tinted Syme’s overwhelming sense of wonder. Was he wearing a mask? Was anyone wearing a mask? Was anyone anything? This wood of witchery, in which men’s faces turned black and white by turns, in which their figures first swelled into sunlight and then faded into formless night, this mere chaos of chiaroscuro (after the clear daylight outside), seemed to Syme a perfect symbol of the world in which he had been moving for three days, this world where men took off their beards and their spectacles and their noses, and turned into other people.

That tragic self-confidence which he had felt when he believed that the Marquis was a devil had strangely disappeared now that he knew that the Marquis was a friend. He felt almost inclined to ask after all these bewilderments what was a friend and what an enemy. Was there anything that was apart from what it seemed? The Marquis had taken off his nose and turned out to be a detective. Might he not just as well take off his head and turn out to be a hobgoblin? Was not everything, after all, like this bewildering woodland, this dance of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse, the glimpse always unforeseen, and always forgotten. For Gabriel Syme had found in the heart of that sun-splashed wood what many modern painters had found there. He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for that final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe.
As a man in an evil dream strains himself to scream and wake, Syme strove with a sudden effort to fling off this last and worst of his fancies. …

cited: The Project Gutenberg Ebook of The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesteron

The above photographs were created with a Nikon D750, f1/8, 35mm, 100 ISO. Shutter speeds of 1/3200 to 1/4000.

returning to the basics

Stay at Home Order … day 21 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

“A haiku is not a poem, it is not literature; it is a hand becoming, 
a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean.  It is a way of returning
to nature, to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our 
falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature.  It is a way in
which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very
day in its hotness, and the length of the night, become truly 
alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent 
and expressive language.”

–  Haiku: Eastern Culture, 1949, Volume One, p. 243.

Nikon D750 f/5.6 1/640s 300m 400 ISO

This month I’ve continued with my intention to study and implement composition elements as offered through an on-line education site, Udemy. Thus far, I have completed two of their photography courses.

The Art of Seeing Photography training for the Artist in you

Art of Seeing Photography composition

It is my intention for the next 30 days to “focus” on the basics of composition, both within camera and digital darkroom.

The image above was created by moving closer (telephoto lens) at a construction site with simplicity in mind. I learned in the second class that if photographers find the environment to be boring…they need to move in closer. Also, beautifully composed photographs will include 3-5 rules. It is my thought that the above image includes:

space

golden points, right to left

lead room

close-in with blurred background

sharpness

Do the shadows meet the rule of odds?

Does this photo include the element of dark figure on light background?

Do you have any constructive feedback about the above image? Do you see something I may have overlooked? If so, I would enjoy reading your thoughts. Thanks!

the beauty within the mundane

Stay at Home Order … day 18 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

pink!!!!

Nikon D750 f/1.8 1/4000s 35mm 200 ISO

Northeastern Colorado’s mundane landscape that speaks of the transition of spring’s awakening from late winter’s fading is a time in which I find myself yearning for colors other than the various shades of browns, yellows, and blue skies.

Nikon D750 f/1.8 1/4000s 35mm 200 ISO

After reading Fletcher and Hewitt’s ebook (A Journey in Composition) I set out to explore if I could open myself to the beauty within this time through various compositional elements of photography: leading lines, repetition, points of interest, complementary colors, and vanishing points.

Nikon D750 f/1.8 1/4000s 35mm 200 ISO

Nikon D750 f/1.8 1/3200s 35mm 200 ISO

A Journey in Composition, an ebook written by photographers Christian Fletcher and Tony Hewitt, outlines their travel across the western United States. The ebook covers fundamental aspects of composition, including color and interpreted composition techniques while paying homage to the techniques of the old masters – Stephen Shore and William Eggleston.

flush of dawn

Stay at Home Order … day 15 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

At best of times,

hard to break away,

and now with the flush of dawn

cuckoo* makes it worse

by singing out!

~Saigyō (cited: Trans: B Watson, Poems of a Mountain Home)

Nikon D750 f/1.8 1/640 35mm 200 ISO

*In Chinese and Japanese poetry, the cuckoo is the bird of memory

this is because that is

Stay at Home Order … day 14 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

leaving the town

breathing easier…

firefly ~Issa (cited: haikuguy.com)

Nikon D750 f/1.8 1/4000 35mm 200 ISO

“The rapid increase of carbon dioxide concentration in Earth’s modern atmosphere is a matter of major concern. But for the atmosphere of roughly two-and-half billion years ago, interest centres on a different gas: free oxygen (O2) spawned by early biological production. The initial increase of O2 in the atmosphere, its delayed build-up in the ocean, its increase to near-modern levels in the sea and air two billion years later, and its cause-and-effect relationship with life are among the most compelling stories in Earth’s history.”

(cited: Lyons, Timothy W.; Reinhard, Christopher T.; Planavsky, Noah J. The rise of oxygen in Earth’s early ocean and atmosphere: Nature, Volume 506, Issue 7488, pp. 307-315 (2014).

“The oxygen holocaust was a worldwide pollution crisis that occurred about 2,000 million years ago. Before this time there was almost no oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere. The Earth’s original biosphere was as different from ours as that of an alien planet. But purple and green photosynthetic microbes, frantic for hydrogen, discovered the ultimate toxic waste, oxygen. Our precious oxygen was originally a gaseous poison dumped into the atmosphere. … (The atmospheres of Mars and Venus today are still more than 95 percent carbon dioxide; the Earth’s is only 0.03 percent.)…”

(cited: Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution

I am a portrait…

Stay at Home Order … day 13 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

Nikon D750 f/1.8 1/4000 35mm 200 ISO

Return within,
to the place where there is nothing,
and take care that nothing comes in.
Penetrate to the depths of yourself,
to the place where thought no longer exists,
and take care that no thought arises there!
There where nothing exists,
Fullness!
There where nothing is seen,
the Vision of Being!
There where nothing appears any longer,
the sudden appearing of the Self!
Dhyana is this! ~Abhishiktananda, Swami (Henri Le Saux)

Nikon D750 f/1.8 1/2500 35mm 200 ISO

“‘I am a portrait,’ repeated the Professor. ‘I am a portrait of the celebrated Professor de Worms, who is, I believe in Naples.'” …

“‘Do explain yourself,’ said Syme.”

“‘With pleasure, if you don’t mind hearing my story,’ replied the eminent foreign philosopher. ‘I am by profession an actor, and my name is Wilks. When I was on the stage I mixed with all sorts of Bohemian and blackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of the turf, sometimes the riff-raff of the arts, and occasionally the political refugee. In some den of exiled dreamers I was introduced to the great German Nihilist philosopher, Professor de Worms. I did not gather much about him beyond his appearance, which was very disgusting, and which I studied carefully. I understood that he had proved that the destructive principle in the universe was God; hence he insisted on the need for a furious and incessant energy, rending all things in pieces. Energy, he said, was the All. He was lame, shortsighted, and partially paralytic. When I met him I was in a frivolous mood, and I disliked him so much that I resolved to imitate him. If I had been a draughtsman I would have drawn a caricature. I was only an actor, I could only act a caricature. I made myself up into what was meant for a wild exaggeration of the old Professor’s dirty old self. When I went into the room full of his supporters I expected to be received with a roar of laughter, or (if they were too far gone) with a roar of indignation at the insult. I cannot describe the surprise I felt when my entrance was received with a respectful silence, followed (when I had first opened my lips) with a murmur of admiration. The curse of the perfect artist had fallen upon me. I had been too subtle, I had been too true. They thought I really was the great Nihilist Professor. …'” (cited: The Project Gutenberg Ebook of The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K, Chesterton)

May you be safe.

how many nights…

Stay at Home Order … day 11 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

“The sight of the leaves ever reminds me strangely of my own sadness. I cannot go within, but lie on the veranda; mayhap my end is not far off. I feel a vague anger that others are in comfortable sleep and cannot sympathize with me. Just now I hear the faint cry of a wild goose.* Others will not be touched by it, but I cannot endure the sound.

How many nights, alas!-

Sleepless-

Only the calls of the wild geese-

~The Diary of Izumi Shikibu (cited: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)

isolation

*Footnote within the Diary of Court Ladies of Old Japan notes that the “wild geese visit Japan in Autumn and fly away northwards in the early spring. They are never alone, and their cries calling to each other make the solitary woman feel loneliness more keenly.”

May you be well. May you be safe. May you find solace.