lens-artists

lens-artists: the power of juxtaposition

As I visited various lens artists I was amazed how photographers would “see” and explain juxtaposition within their images. As a visual leaner I was then WOWed by the photographs in 500px … the expertise and creative use of juxtaposition, amazingly inspiring.

I then traveled through my media file to see if there were any images that may fit into examples discussed within the 500px article. So … hesitantly I offer the images below: near versus far, big versus small, human versus object, light versus dark, and side by side placement. I hope you enjoy.

near versus far
big versus small
human versus object
side by side placement
light versus dark

Thank you for visiting … I hope you enjoyed this brief journey encouraged by of Patti’s invitation to “to explore juxtaposition as a photographic technique.”

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-artists: what astonishes you

The beauty of the world as seen through a camera’s lens. I’ve found over the years that a simple photo walk opens one to the amazing beauty of the world…seen as if it is the first time.

The art of photography transforms a current photograph to an image that looks as if it was created during the 1960-1970s.

How a camera’s setting will add a dimension of unique art…

Hop on over to Wandering Dawgs to join a journey through what astonishes you with Beth

lens-artists: designs and shapes

Well…this week’s lens-artists challenge is, indeed, a challenge. While visiting a number of lens-artists’ post I sense that this challenge is one of joyful engagement. I, on the other hand, am stumped. It must be like speaking/writing English with limited understanding of grammar … that is, if it sounds right then it must be clear, coherent, and effective communication. Yes, no, maybe?

So I went to Google and engaged a question and answer session with AI. AI tells me that shapes in photography are geometric (circles, squares, triangles) and organic. Shapes define composition, create structure and evoke emotion.

Photography design is the art of using core principles like balance, contrast, and emphasis, along with elements like, shape, and color to create visually compelling images.

While my photography is guided by an understanding of various elements of photography, the major guiding tool is … yep, the subjective experience.

Thank you Tina (Travels and Trifles) for this challenge.

P.S. AI defines subjective experience as …an individual’s personal, internal, and first-person perspective of consciousness, encompassing unique sensations, feelings, and interpretations of the world. Unlike objective events that can be observed by others…

lens-artists: last chance

This week artists Tina (Travels and Trifles) invites artists to share “those images you’ve loved over the past 12 months, but have not yet shared.”

Reviewing photographs created over the year confirmed that the majority of images posted on WordPress were part of a skyscape project, Dawning … beginning anew.

Each image within the photo book Dawning … beginning anew is a telling of the sun’s seasonal movements along the eastern horizon and the circular messages of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The most dynamic is the ongoing changes, moment-to-moment … the multiple variables that paint the sky’s canvas.

So with this in mind, I decided to share the healing moments within the circular process of grief’s darkness to a renewal of life found within each dawn’s first light to its sun rise on this day … Winter Solstice.

summer solstice

The images above begin with the transition from today’s first light to dawn and then the beginning of winter solstice.

Winter Solstice messages the triumph of light over darkness, tells of the gradual return of longer days and stories the promise of renewed life.

For me the cherished moments … the aweness within the art of photography is seeing the world through a camera’s lens and hearing the click of the shutter. The rest is just a delightful dance with possibilities and a constant reminder, “you can’t make a bad photograph good, but you can make a good photograph bad.”

May your holiday be filled with the gifts of freedom within peace, joy, and love.

brenda

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

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

autumn 2020
autumn 2020
autumn 2020

how I envy maple leafage

which turns beautiful

then falls ~Kagami Shikoo

autumn 2020
autumn 202
autumn 2020

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…

lens-artists: longing

I was introduced to the Portuguese word, saudade, which has no immediate English equivalent about 30 years ago. Saudade is a word that feels intimate as it named a life-long companion. It touched upon a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exit, for something other than the present, a turning toward to past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming, a wishfulness.

Over 30 years ago, I met a homeless woman who identified herself as a sundowner.   She described how each evening’s sun invited her to settle down along the side of her life’s path so that her journey could begin afresh in the morning sun.  She eloquently described an undercurrent of yearning that ebbed and flowed throughout her soul and how, in her past days, she found herself at the mercy of private memories, thoughts, and imaginations and had encountered, time and time again, various degree of discontent that wandered along side her aloneness.

As I heard the suffering within women who story their lives through the multi-colored threads of substance use, I find myself acknowledging a similarity within each of these unique stories with my own metaphysical search for someone, something, or some place that remains beyond the forever next horizon.  Each of our unique narratives reveal an unending wandering with satchels of discontent that tell of a spiritual emptiness and an emotional intimacy wit, “a homesickness for a place one knows cannot be.”

Thank you Egídio for your invitation to wander through loneliness.