Nikon

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!

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

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.

lens-artists photo challenge: simplicity

Across concealed blue skies – drifting signs

Imaginary birds and dragons – aimless shifting stories

Gathering and dispersing – water droplets and star dust

In flight – clouds empty of clouds

Nikon D750 f/1.8 1/800 35mm 200 ISO

This week Patti (P.A. Moed) invites us to “get back to the basics” and to share how we understand simplicity.

As I was re-reading the basic rules for the board game Go, I came to understand that while the game builds upon 6 simple rules it is an incredibly complex game with more possible configurations for pieces than atoms in the observable universe.

The true origin of Go is unknown. One of the legends tells us that it first emerge in China during the reign of the legendary Emperor Yao (2356 BC- 2255 BC) who created the game for one of his children.

Kano Yoshinori (Graded Go Problems for Beginners) outlines the 6 general rules as:

1) Go is played by two people (I enjoy playing alone as it feels more strategic than competitive) taking turns playing their moves, one stone at a time.

2) One side plays with black stones, the other white.

3) A move consisted of placing a stone on an intersection of the board. Stones can also be placed on the borders of the grid.

4) Once a stone is placed on an intersection, it cannot be moved to another point.

5) When one player has more knowledge and skill, the “weaker” player places more stones on the board to compensate for the difference in strength.

6) In an even game, the side holding the black stone always goes first. In a handicap game, it is the white who plays first.

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

At first glance, nature appears simple. The seasons flow from one into another. Clouds move across the sky creating amazing characters and awakening imaginary stories. Yet, when one become more intimate with Mother Earth’s dynamics there are multiple configurations that are beyond my imagination.

Please be safe…

to simply believe

Stay at Home Order … day 9 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

So remote the mountains

the only callers to break

the tedium of my window

are top branches of sumac

just starting to change color

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

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

What is faith: a wholesome mental formation

belief, credence, credit, trust, hope, confidence, sureness, certainty, reliance, dependence, acceptation, reception, credulity, suspension of disbelief

The absence of faith is suffering. This time of uncertainty “…has brought me to a place and time in which to unweave and sort through the pseudo-beliefs I have simply, without question, absorbed through the lens of childhood fantasy and comprehension.  To begin this process is to reformulate beliefs through a process of mindfulness and analysis and then to know for myself, “These things are bad, blamable, censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill… These things are good, blameless, praised by the wise… These things lead to benefit and happiness.”

“It is not an easy undertaking to not simply believe what has been learned within family, school and church as well as conclusions reached through readings. The invitation to not simply follow tradition brings to the surface conflicts with compliance and opposition that come from an avalanche of values and guiding principles that outlines how I understand the roles and expectations of women.

“To not adhere to that which was surmised within family stories about an ancestor, who upon seeing a swarm of locust “knelt in his patch of grain and pleaded with his Maker to spare his wheat” and then saw them divide and not damage his remaining crops. Or within the story about the ancestor, who during a trip from New York to England, calmed the seas with a prayer, and while in England, after much fasting and prayer administered to a deaf and dumb boy who was subsequently healed. To not simply believe opens a door of pondering about generations of family members who intimately knew powerlessness and insecurity, who eased their feelings of incompetence through prayer, and whose conceptions blinded them to their neighbors’ plight.

“To not simply believe that I must endure suffering is to reject the axiom that there is an absence of fundamental faith and goodness. To not adhere to the assumed abilities of ancestors frees me from the belief that a sincere act of making amends for my sins will open the doors to Shangri-La.  To not simply draw upon scripture unbinds me to the shame that I don’t have the faith – even of the size of a mustard seed – to be deeded as “good and without sin” so what I wish for, even that which goes counter to nature’s laws, will be granted.  To ease the suffering within discontent is to not simply hold to be true that I am to acquiesce to pain until the final judgment of death, and only then will I be forever at peace, or forever condemned to an existence of even greater suffering.

“To not simply believe opens my ears to the incongruence within a belief in an all-knowing presence who, if not validated, punishes, absent of the grace within loving-kindness.  To not simply believe brings a compassionate acknowledgment to the painful efforts to sway God into granting me my desires through bargaining, sacrifice, negation, and suffering, and to finally surrender with acceptance to “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  To not simply believe sheds light upon the greed, aversion, and delusions that are intertwined into my conception of and relationship with life.

“I do hold that my beliefs and the subsequent desire for their illusive promises of validation, forgiveness, or reunification have set me upon an unending path of suffering.  These beliefs lead to harm and ill as they are like thorns that tear into my heart.  This searing pain releases resentment intertwined with envy, awakens alienation, and denies me the essence of Christ’s wisdom and loving compassion.

“Christ stood before self-righteous anger and commanded that only the one without sin was to cast the first stone of punishment and, at another time and in the midst of his own suffering, sought forgiveness for those who “know not what they do.”   Within these written words, I hear compassion speaking for the suffering intertwined within anger ungoverned by moral shame and moral dread.  Compassion is telling us how suffering, entangled into knots of mental, emotional, and social turmoil, deafens us to our guiding principles and blinds us to the horrors our moral shame will witness as it awakens from darkened ignorance.”*

The practice of the presence of God as being

comparable to that of consciousness

finally makes possible “full awareness” applied

to every thought, world, and deed.

~ Unknown

*cited: BC Koeford, A Meditative Journey with Saldage

a time of contemplation…

Stay at Home Order … day 8 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

The true person is
Not anyone in particular;
But, like the deep blue color
Of the limitless sky,
It is everyone, everywhere in the world.

~Eihei Dōgen

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


Yesterday my mother came to visit…it was a remembered touch that announced her arrival not as the frail woman with a fierce determination time had transformed from the woman who carried with her the stature of Danish Vikings…warriors, explorers, conquerors, survivors.  The English genes of a woman whose life was colored by an incessant search for union with God, an unquestioning moral and social mandate, and an aloneness I did not know. 

She visited as my mom and walked alongside me as I gathered the ingredients for homemade soup, she watched me — with discerning eyes — as I made the bed and gathered the laundry, and she sat with me as I flipped through a photo book of fading memories. Memories…the mundane moments swept away into darkness by brooms of discontent, negation, and yes…shame. The shame that arises from a felt sense of a marginalized family’s “being different.”

She woke the memory within the shifting images of a night when I saw her sitting alone within the silence of deafness nested within the silence of night.  Before her was a topsy-turvy pile of children’s scuffed and worn shoes. I watched her from the doorway, hiding as I did not want to be sent back to bed, slowly polishing each one and then matching them into pairs, forming a straight row — creating a sense of order.  When her eyes acknowledged my presence, she invited me to sit alongside her.  Moments passed as I felt her listening presence…a mother and a daughter sitting quietly in a dimly lit room, a protective barrier. 

As this remembering faded, I felt a gentle gaze that spoke of a silent loving-kindness. It was as if she came from a place of waiting knowing that the barriers that blocked me from being receptive to the multiple color threads that weaved her life had begun to weaken and fade and — for the first time — I entered, felt, and embraced her aloneness. And she, in return, eased the discontent that ebbs and flows throughout this time of uncertain isolation.

I have often wondered, since her passing, that if we had met – not as mother-daughter but as children in a playground would she have wanted to be my friend?

in the distance…

Stay at Home Order … day 5 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

Seeping through the dawn,

the voice

of a Canadian goose–

in the distance…alone

mountain village in spring

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

“The counselor was a friend of nature, nature was something quite special, nature was one of the finest ornaments of existence. The councilor patronized nature, he defended it against the artificial; gardens were nothing but nature spoiled, but gardens laid out in elaborate style were nature turned crazy. There was no style in nature, providence had wisely made nature natural, nothing but natural. Nature was that which was unrestrained, that which was unspoiled. But with the fall of man civilization had come upon mankind; now civilization had become a necessity; but it would have been better, if it had not been thus. The state of nature was something quite different, quite different. The councilor himself would have had no objection to maintaining himself by going about in a coat of lamb-skin and shooting hares and snipes and golden plovers, and grouse and haunches of venison and wild boars. No, the state of nature really was like a gem, a perfect gem.” (cited: Project Gutenberg’s Mogens and Other Stories, by Jens Peter Jacobsen, pg 7)

Information about COVID-19 to help you and your family/friends be safe through this stress-filled time.

we are solitary

Stay at Home Order … day 4 plus 14 seclusion retreat days

photo assignment: same lens (35mm) camera wide open (f/1.8) … 25th day

He never came —

the wind too tells

how the night has worn away,

while mournfully the cries of wild geese

approach and pass on ~Saigō (cited: B Watson, Poems of a Mountain Home)

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

“And to speak of solitude again, it becomes always clearer that this is at bottom not something that one can take or leave. We are solitary. We may delude ourselves and act although this were not so. That is all. But how much better it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it. … A person removed from his own room, almost without preparation and transition, and set upon the height of a great mountain range, would feel something of the sort: an unparalleled insecurity, and abandonment to something inexpressible would almost annihilate him. He would think himself falling or hurled out into space, or exploded into a thousand pieces… So for him who becomes solitary all distances, all measures of change; of these changes many take place suddenly, and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, extraordinary imaginings and singular sensations arise that seem to grow out beyond all bearing. …” (cited Rainer Maria Rilke, Trans: M D Herter Norton, Letters to a Young Poet)