Every morning its the same: race to unite kids with backpacks, lunches and homework. Most mornings we are successful. Somedays less so.
Uniting disparate elements to make something new and beautiful is perhaps what I love most about creating.
I take a lot of pictures. I can easily rack up about 400 in a day. I start shooting one subject, notice another, click off one, make an adjustment, click off another. I sometimes don’t even bother looking at the screen on the back of the camera to see what I’ve got. There are days when I download my shots, look through them on the computer and think, “Nothing outstanding here. Nothing even much better than mediocre.” Sometimes, though, I am surprised — taken aback, really — by one particular photo. Today, I took close to 100 pictures of Stella. A couple stood out from the rest. This is one of them. I reduced the image size to fit the Call and Response format. Otherwise, it is straight out of the camera. I don’t even know if I can explain why it’s special. I just know that it is.
I spent all day musing on “surprise” and trying to put together a response. I didn’t really come up with anything until, as I was cooking dinner, I turned around to call someone to do a chore and was surprised by this scene. The kindergartener was practicing his writing and had set up a store. I liked the composition so I grabbed my camera. A few Lightroom adjustments later and I’m surprised (and relieved) that I managed, once again, to pull off a shot for the day.
I’m not sure what inspired me to choose inputs. I think it may have been from Twyla Tharp’s book (I was devouring it while creating the list of calls so it heavily influenced my word choices). But the idea of inputs is an interesting thing. It makes me think of “GIGO” — garbage in, garbage out.
What kind of inputs are we using in our creative lives? Does it make a difference in our output? Certainly! I try to make sure that I follow a wide variety of characters on sites like instagram and flickr…the more diverse and varied are the images I see, the more I have to inspire and push me.
This house is filled with inputs, which in and of itself, is not a bad thing. When it feels like you can’t find five minutes to string together a coherent thought and act on it, though, all of those inputs coming at you (kids, noise, phone calls, interruptions) can feel rather burdensome.
Today’s Call inspired me to try something that I’ve attempted only once or twice before (with almost no success): a lens blur. I set up the bells, put my camera on the tripod, chose a long exposure and slowly moved my zoom lens in and out while the shutter was open. I’m happy with the result and may have to play more with the technique in the future.
I love to play with blur. I don’t often post those experiments but they are so much fun. I’ve done this spin version before and I will do it again in a week or so when we have more oranges and yellows. Most of our trees are still green so it doesn’t have quite the same dramatic effect. It takes a few tries, standing on one heel and spinning while pointing the camera up and trying to stay focused on one spot.
As soon as I call everyone to the table, this beautiful sheetpan full of biscuits will be destroyed and all that will remain will be a few crumbs and some sticky spots from honey drips.
Forces are conspiring to destroy our back deck and porch. Sometimes it bothers me, but they were incorrectly built to begin with, and there are just too many other renovation projects clamoring for our limited funds.
Nearly all of the kids have picked up guitars and played around with them (because Dennis owns so very many!), but none of them have spent as much time plucking, playing, learning and composing as Henry. He and his father have even built a guitar — a Flying V that needs little more than veneer, a few coats of stain and poly, strings, knobs and electric innards.
My husband is a musician. Some of you may not know exactly what that means. Let me tell you — it means that our bedroom is stuffed to overflowing with gear. Amps, guitars, keyboards, drums, speakers, cords and cables…all over the place. Filling one closet and hindering access to another. It would really get on my nerves, but when he plays and the kids all jump around and try to play too — well, all I can think is what great memories they will have of their father who played music.
Today was the Worldwide Photowalk. I was lucky enough to participate in a walk at the botanical garden down the road from my home.
While it was nice to wonder around the beautiful grounds with my camera gear, it was freezing cold and after about 10 mintues my toes had gone numb. But the light was gorgeous and there was steam rising from the three ponds.
I really wanted to capture something of the contrast between the chill morning air and the warm morning sunlight. But it takes more than just desire. It also takes more than just technical skill. It requires patience and thoughfulness. Two things that I have in very short supply.
After I got home and was able to review the photos, I realized that there were about three or four that would have been so much better if only I had paid more attention to the placement of the subject. I thought I was going slow and really trying to think before I clicked. I only took 149 photos during the two hour walk. And for me, that’s not a lot! But it was still not slow and precise enough.
So, my new photographic goal (since I desire to improve) is to slow down further still. Visualize the scene, really walk it and look at it with my eyes and MIND before putting that camera to my eye. Sometimes the camera blocks more than it reveals.
I have been gluten-free for 10 years (after figuring out I have celiac disease); Dennis for 7; the kids for 6. Generally, I’m satisfied with the food I can eat, but once in a great while, I desire a real pizza — with pepperoni and tomatoes — from the Wazee Supper Club, 15th and Wazee, Denver.
Trying to get Stella to eat something other than peanut butter and chocolate leaves me feeling weary.
It’s Friday. The little kids are in bed. It’s time to rest my weary feet. Exciting, no?
PS: I did this all on my phone…I was too weary to even get up and go to the computer.
As the sun vanishes below the horizon, the shadows grow darker and longer.
I’m happy I got a shot of milkweed pods before all the fuzz vanished.
There was the huge tree asleep yet in the paling moonlight, and small and hopeful Sylvia began with utmost bravery to mount to the top of it, with tingling, eager blood coursing the channels of her whole frame, with her bare feet and fingers, that pinched and held like bird’s claws to the monstrous ladder reaching up, up, almost to the sky itself. … Sylvia’s face was like a pale star, if one had seen it from the ground, when the last thorny bough was past, and she stood trembling and tired but wholly triumphant, high in the tree-top. … The birds sang louder and louder. At last the sun came up bewilderingly bright. Sylvia could see the white sails of ships out at sea, and the clouds that were purple and rose-colored and yellow at first began to fade away. Where was the white heron’s nest in the sea of green branches, and was this wonderful sight and pageant of the world the only reward for having climbed to such a giddy height? Now look down again, Sylvia, where the green marsh is set among the shining birches and dark hemlocks; there where you saw the white heron once you will see him again; look, look! A white spot of him like a single floating feather comes up from the dead hemlock and grows larger, and rises, and comes close at last, and goes by the landmark pine with steady sweep of wing and outstretched slender neck and crested head. And wait! wait! do not move a foot or a finger, little girl, do not send an arrow of light and consciousness from your two eager eyes, for the heron has perched on a pine bough not far beyond yours, and cries back to his mate on the nest, and plumes his feathers for the new day!
— Sarah Orne Jewett, “The White Heron”
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
— Vaclav Havel
It is one of the paradoxes of life that the more you read and learn the more you realize how little you know. Which, in my case, prompts me to order more books from Amazon.
Equating death with beauty seems paradoxical, but in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
I never fail to draw strength from reading about Christian martyrs, who saw death not as an ending, but as a much-anticipated beginning. The martyrs featured in today’s Magnificat took Jesus’ words to heart and were fortified by them as they faced death:
Among the valiant victims of anti-Catholic persecution that swept through Japan in 1613 stands a married couple, Adrian and Joanna. Adrian Takahashi Mondo was a Catholic officer whose prince he served commanded him and seven others to deny their faith or incur the death penalty. Adrian and two fellow officers steadfastly refused, whereupon they were condemned to die by immolation in Arima together with their families. Adrian’s wife Joanna was among those to be executed in the flames. When on October 7, 1613, the martyrs were led out to die, their executioners begged for their forgiveness, a forgiveness that was joyfully granted by Adrian and his companions. A fellow Catholic among the spectators named Gaspar held up an image of the scourging of Christ to give the martyrs courage. The condemned Catholics as well as the faithful among the onlookers recited together the Creed, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary. Afterward, the martyrs’ remains were buried at the foot of a cross in a cemetery of Jesuit missionaries.
My fingers grasp the linen.
My eyes check edge alignment.
I make sure the folds are crisp,
The fabric without wrinkle.
The tablecloth you left me
Must be completely perfect,
Before I pack it away
Forever.
…seven loads later, I can actually see my kitchen floor. That’s the price of going a whole week without doing laundry.
I was watching this video on double exposure this morning. I love Kai — he hates communists and is very funny. However, he does use some colorful language that we (ahem) try not to use over here. If you follow the link be careful that little ears aren’t nearby.
Unfortunately, the day was grey and rainy and I didn’t have enough bright light to really burn out parts of the picture…add to that the baby had to be taken to the doctor again, and it left me with precious little time to experiment.
I like it though. So you may see more of this process in the future!
I painted the petals on what might become a yellow flower two days ago. The crucifixion scene is something I started almost a year ago. After adding the words on the cross and some of the words on the Blessed Virgin, I put it away for awhile. “Is it too much?” I wondered. “What will other people think?” It took me until the day before yesterday to answer, “Who cares?” And I added more words from the Bible to Mary’s cloak.
I’ve spent a lifetime worrying about what other people think. It feels good to be able to honestly say, “Who cares?” Making no claims about my artistic skills and with no formal training, I’m pursuing something I love. It’s all a process: picking up the paintbrush, giving myself permission to screw up, daring to try something new, and being able to say, “I’m doing this for me.”
When I see bugs and spiders, I tend to look the other way (or race into the house for the camera if it’s not already in my hands), but not when it comes to stinkbugs and earwigs. To them, I show no mercy.
When Jesus was criticized for eating at the house of St. Matthew, He responded, “the healthy do not need a physician but the sick do, I have not come here for the righteous but for sinners, it is mercy I desire, not sacrifice.” The Church is not a museum for saints, but a clinic for sinners. The word ‘mercy’ comes from the Latin word Misericordia. … Miseria means misery, pain, sorrow, and cordia means heart. And so it means to take another’s pains to heart: to feel their pain and sympathize with them.
— President of the North American Congress on Mercy, Fr. Matthew R. Mauriello, in his opening remarks Nov. 14, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C.