These days I am using a fixed lens (no zooming) and resisting any kind of cropping or editing. This means that when capturing an image you have to be scrupulous about the composition. What you snap is what you get, an "in the moment" photo. It's good discipline for the eye, and does away with the need for post processing, . . .
A way of life
Clarissa Pinkola Estes posted a letter for her many fans last week. Her book Women who run with the wolves took 20 years and 42 rejection letters to find publication and become one of my all time inspirational books. In the letter she said.... "Stories are medicine. Medicine for the world. Heavy medicine carried . . .
Drifting and dreaming
The world blurs slightly and the living planet intensifies it's presence. Something draws the light and the focus. It enters the ear first, a buzzing maybe or a beating of wings. A scattering of dragonflies flutter across my closed eyelids. One of them, so self absorbed, hitches a ride on a floating leaf, and both of us . . .
Strawberries and the object of his desire
He is not a popular visitor for most soft fruit growers. As always the debt of gratitude I owe to my only photographic models outweighs the loss of any blackcurrants or strawberries that may have taken place during this shoot. I adore working with him, and surely he knows it. Sometimes he just lands on this rock to show . . .
Endings
This crop's life in the field, glowing in the evening sun. In the cycle of farming, beginning anew, harvesting seeds, some endings are also beginnings. . . .
Poppies, Monet and Moi
Photography is fraught with cliches. You couldn't get through a day without re-creating most of them. Even so, I'm in France, in a field of poppies and I stand awe struck and think, why not? I'm guilty as charged when it comes to romanticising the natural world. Even though I don't enhance or photoshop at all. (I'm . . .
Safe and sound in the Bluebells
It's quiet here and in spite of the proximity to the road, it remains wild. Darker than usual, fresh leaves block the sky. At dusk the light filters through at a rakish angle making long shadows and spotlighting the little blue flowers I have come to see. To get to the woods I have to hop a . . .
The mother shaped Hen Blackbird
It's been a busy time for myself and the birds around here. There are a number of nesting families very close by and I am watching their progress from my desk. There's a nest of Blue Tits just above the window, a pair of Great Tits under the granite bird bath, and a number of Blackbirds living in the willows. Out of the . . .
Wabi-sabi and the beauty of imperfection
Every year at least once I remember the lines of this poem. Usually it's during Autumn in the dazzling russets of dying leaves. This year it was while walking in Mount Congreve during Magnolia time. Magnolias were flowering on dark branches and there are some ancient specimens there, but it was the dying petals strewn . . .
Just do it!
Imagine it's a beautiful spring day and you spot a fresh water pool glinting in the sunlight? Imagine wanting to dive right in and feel the water splashing around you, clearing your head and lightening the load? Then just do it!! . . .
