skyscape photography

saturday morning with pascal mercier

“”We live here and now, everything before and in other places is past, mostly forgotten and accessible as a small remnant disordered slivers of memory that light up in rhapsodic contingency and die out again.

Fujifilm X-T4: f/9 1/10 s 80 mm 400 ISO

“This is how we are used to thinking about ourselves. And this is the natural way of thinking, when it is others we look at: they really do stand before us here and now, no other place and no other time, and how should their relationship to the past be thought of if not in the form of internal episodes of memory, whose exclusive reality is in the present of their happing?” Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon, pp, 241-242

monday morning with pascal mercier

“Was it possible that the best way to make sure of yourself was to know and understand someone else?

One whose life had been completely different and had had a completely different logic than your own? How did curiosity for another life go together with the awareness that your time was running out? …” Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon, pg 97.

Fujifilm X-T4: f/4 1/750 s 65.2 mm 400 ISO

3.4.2025…7:35 am

“I anxiously waited for the dawn with uncertain hope.

The temple bell roused me from dreams

And waiting for the starlit dawn

The night, alas! was long as are

One hundred autumn nights” ~The Sarashina Diary*

*cited: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

life’s passages … 80

Fujifilm X-T4: f/5 1/2200 s 80 mm 640 ISO

life’s passages … 29

Sweet and sad

like love overwhelmed

with long sighs,

out of the depths of the willow

little by little

the moon appears ~Yosano Akiko

moon and venus conjunction

life’s passages … 13

Now I see her face,

the old woman, abandoned,

the moon her only companion ~Basho*

*cited: Trans. Sam Hamill, The Sound of Water

tuesday morning with yosano akiko

Purple butterflies

Fly at night through my dreams.

Butterflies, tell me,

have you seen in my village

the falling flowers of the wisteria? ~Yosano Akiko*

*cited: K Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi

night’s skyscape

skyscape

As I was wandering though YouTube I found myself watching a couple of videos that discussed the question, “what makes a good photograph?”

The most important thing I’ve learned so far is that each person’s response to an image is subjective. I’ve also heard that when we are watching the sun set with a loved one, we do not experience the same sunset. A lonely thought, don’t you think?

Yet, an important element of a good image is … storytelling.

So now I ask myself and you, “is there a story or two within a skyscape photograph?”

up

for the moment
straight above my pillow…
billowing clouds ~Issa (cited: haikuguy.com)

skyscape… Nikon D750 f/5.6 1/80s 98mm 400 ISO

skyscape photograph submitted in response to The Life of B’s monthly square challenge … the absolute rule – Your main photograph must be square in shape!

up

When I look up at
The wide-stretched plain of heaven,
Is the moon the same
That rose on Mount Mikasa
In the land of Kasuga? ~ Abe no Nakamaro (cited: http://jti.lib.virginia.edu)

skyscape … Leica D-Lux 7 f/5.6 1/400s 34mm 100 ISO

skyscape photograph submitted in response to The Life of B’s monthly square challenge … the absolute rule – Your main photograph must be square in shape!