the waiting room

April’s calendar … April, a month of increasing memorial days eclipsing birthdays.

When from the neighbouring garden the perfume-laden air
Saturates my soul with memories,
Rises the thought of the beloved plum-tree
Blooming under the eaves of the house which is gone.
~ The Sarashina Diary

April is my mother’s birthday as well as her memorial month. April … a month of revisiting moments … reacquainting with an amazing woman … a person.

When we were together, within our mother-daughter roles, were we strangers hidden behind our labels?

April is my great-granddaughter’s birthday. A month of celebration … of joy …. of cuddly soft buddies … of new beginnings

*cited: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan, digital.library.upen.edu

Fujifilm X-T4: f/11 1/6 s 80 mm 400 ISO

Fujifilm X-T4: f/8 1/25 s 80 mm 400 ISO

lens-artists: unusual crop

Contemplative and landscape photographs submitted in response to Ritva’s lens-artist challenge: encouraging photographers to deliberately defy traditional framing conventions.

Photographing what is … the morning’s light

landscape images cropped with a focus on negative space.

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-artists: lines, colors and patterns

Photo composition is an essential element of any photographic image. A photograph has only two essential elements, subject, and composition (not camera settings). By composition, we refer to the way we place all the elements of the photograph inside the four sides of our frame. ~George Tatakis

Lines are horizontal, vertical, diagonal, organic, and implied. Ted Forbes  (The Art of Photography) wrote that while lines don’t actually exist in nature they are most likely the most basic element of visual composition. He further noted:

Lines serve many purposes in visual composition. They can divide the composition, they can direct the viewers eye, they can define shapes and they can make a statement to the feel or interpretation of the image by the viewer. Line’s speaking to the feel of a composition is extremely important.

For me going beyond the intellectual understanding of color theory: that is, to feel, see, sense, and be engaged with the multiple interactions of color within an image is a challenge.

It is my understanding that patterns are the repetition of shapes that are pretty basic and similar to each other. We will see them repeating at regular intervals within nature, design, works of art, architecture, and photography.

Thank you John (journeyswithJohnbo) for this invitation to refresh my understanding of these three tools of composition