To Dream of Its Rising

I confess, I had to look up the word 'orison'. It means prayer. You're welcome. When I was younger I always refused to look up words -- out of stubbornness I suppose. These days, I have no hesitance. I look 'em up straight away.

As I age in the world it will rise and spread,

and be for this place horizon

and orison, the voice of its winds.

I have made myself a dream to dream

of its rising, that has gentled my nights.

Let me desire and wish well the life

these trees may live when I

no longer rise in the mornings

to be pleased with the green of them

shining, and their shadows on the ground, 

and the sound of the wind in them.”  

― Wendell Berry

Tasting notes: Canon R5 digital camera, 24-105 L lens.

The Memory of Rainfall

A few years back, we had a terrible year of drought, and lost half a dozen or more trees. I got pretty tired of calling the tree guys. Later we had to find a person to grind out the stumps. Happens to the best of us, I suppose.

“Trees, for example, carry the memory of rainfall. In their rings we read ancient weather—storms, sunlight, and temperatures, the growing seasons of centuries. A forest shares a history, which each tree remembers even after it has been felled.” 

― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

Tasting notes: Leica Q. I never loved the Q, and we certainly never bonded, but I took a few nice images with it.

Different Journeys

For this trip, I wanted to keep things pretty minimal. Turns out, blogging with only a phone takes some getting used to. Watching people walking down Park Avenue near Grand Central Terminal was like watching leaves dropping from the trees in Fall.

“In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same path are alike.” 

― Paulo Coelho

Tasting notes: Leica Q.

A Short Trip to NYC

Albus and Fergie world headquarters will be relocating to NYC for the week. For fun, I’ve decided to post about trees, an important source of inspiration for my images over the years, especially the fine art work I do (but don't typically show here). Today's image was taken in NYC a few years back using the LX-100 camera that I was very fond of, that is, until dust started getting stuck all over the sensor. At that point we parted ways, but I do have a soft spot for these types of cameras. These days, a good phone would probably do just as well, and without the dust accumulation.

Tasting notes: Panasonic LX-100.

Entropy Always Wins

Objects in the landscape, trees, stones, or old human built structures, often transport me back or forward in time as I consider what to photograph. The fleeting existence of a spider web, the slow toll of entropy on the built environment. Different experiences of time. Red clay in the water and rust on the corrugated siding. It is all pretty similar at the molecular level.

Tasting notes: Canon R5 digital camera with nifty fifty lens.

Opportunities Missed and Taken

We were running an errand the other day, and had intentionally built extra time into our schedule to allow for stops to make photographs. Still, it was hard for me to overcome the part of my lizard brain that was obsessively focused on the goal of reaching our destination as fast as possible. I vetoed a couple of decent photo ops before I was able to slay that particular dragon. I had to remind myself that meandering a bit almost always brings rewards of some kind. Nevertheless, these days you have to be willing to spend a little extra time to get a decent photograph. You need to decide how you're going to manage the abundance of warning signs, advertisements, and safety features, not to mention the other humans. I had to just 'deal' with the cigarette smoke; fortunately, it didn't permeate the photograph. 

Tasting notes: Canon digital camera with nifty fifty lens.

Teal Appeal

I noticed that a number of the windows in a recently renovated office building were in a serious state of decay. For me, the texture of the delaminating film was an interesting subject to photograph. I couldn’t help thinking that some poor schlub was probably fired because of this mistake. But what I really want to know is, who picked out the teal window shades?

Good light to you this weekend.

Tasting notes: Canon M6ii, 22 mm f/2 lens.