Tag Archives: Spirituality and Photography

New Year’s Eve Day

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Last day of the year.  My photography buddy Becky and I went to the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art to see what was up for shooting.  We stopped next to the tree with these leaves because they looked interesting.

There are lots of interesting areas at the IMA and I don’t know that this one is intrinsically any more interesting than any other except that these leaves caught my attention.  Neither one of us anticipated that we would spend all of our shooting time this morning within a 30 yard radius of this tree.

I liked these tree tops.

And this leaf.

The day was quite overcast but I have found that a gray sky can be a plus.  I shot these oak leaves and branches and then forced the gray sky to white in  Photoshop.  It produces a somewhat painterly effect.  I removed some of the branches; it seemed to want to be a simpler image.  I may remove more before I’m through.

By many criteria – it was muddy, cold and damp – it was not very pleasant but it was well worth it to cap off the year with a shooting day like this one.

Go to Plan B

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The plan yesterday morning was to go out and shoot, come back in and write about it.  I did go out and shoot and I did come back in but that’s when the disappointment started.  raspberry_leaves_8724

The images were ‘nice’ but not something I would want to hang on the wall or even show anyone.  (So why am I showing them to you?  Stay tuned.)  It wasn’t as if there were no subjects.  Black raspberry leaves in the fall are gorgeous and backlit golden leaves can be treasures.leaves_8747

But that just didn’t seem enough.  These were standard, garden variety fall pictures.  Big deal.

I went to the camera club meeting last night and didn’t have great hopes for that either.  We were going to shoot indoors.  There would be models and good lighting, as well as a set up for macro photography.   These were some fine opportunities but I thought instead I would take my camera and tripod outside.  It was dark and lights were showing up some interesting opportunities.   night_8933

This was a lot better.  I was not able to previsualize what I would get before I opened the shutter, I was just hoping for something interesting (and undefined).night_8957

And that made it a lot more fun.

An appreciation of milkweed

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Yesterday I talked about the utility of milkweed – habitat for monarch butterflies, substitute for kapok in World War II – and said I would go back today to gather seeds for our butterfly garden.  I did that.  It was breezy and since I had my camera with me I planted it in front of a nice strand of milkweed floss and took a lot of shots as it danced in the breeze.milkweed_8662

It is easy to walk by milkweed and to notice the floss and seeds in only the most pedestrian way.  Unless we are looking, truly looking, they won’t occupy more than a moment of thought; visually, just a glimpse.

These little creations are striking when you take the time to look at them.  I could go on and on about this but I think the best tribute to them is just to show a few shots.  Words just can’t capture their subtlety and beauty.  (In each case I have darkened the background somewhat to help them stand out.)
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They speak for themselves.

Creative typo

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My brother and I spent part of  yesterday at Fort Harrison State Park.  A couple who were out for a walk stopped and asked what I was photographing.  I replied ‘Anything that will stand still long enough’ which is true enough that it didn’t seem to require any further explanation.   _MG_8452

What I was really doing would have required a bit more conversation but would probably have been worth the time to say it.  I was out wondering.  Not wandering, but wondering.

About a year ago I was emailing back and forth with a friend.  I was intrigued by a photograph she had done and asked how she got it.  She was busy doing other things and wasn’t paying attention to what she was typing and she wrote that she was ‘wondering’ around and saw the image.  That word ‘wondering’ captures it for me.  It was a typo but when I pointed it out to her and how great a choice of words it was, she agreed and now she goes wondering too.  Or maybe we’ve been wondering all along and didn’t know it.

Wondering.  Sometimes that leads to seeing something we might not have noticed before and sometimes it means asking ‘I wonder what will happen if I move the camera during the exposure?’ or try some other creative technique.  That is what I was doing yesterday beside Fall Creek.  Most of the images weren’t very interesting but some were, at least to me._MG_8455

It’s time to go out again.  I wonder what I’ll see?

This is turning into a favorite place

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My friend Becky and I went to Fort Harrison State Park the other day to see what there was to see and photograph.trees_7880_2

I find that sometimes it’s good to go out with someone else; each of us sees things the other doesn’t.  This doesn’t mean, though, that we end up shooting the same scenes.  Sure, there are some shots that are very similar to one another but the majority aren’t.  We could be standing side by side and the shots would still be very different.teasel_7765

The conversation was good and the shooting opportunities were plentiful.  It is always a source of wonder to me that what I bring back from one of these jaunts is nothing like what I would have anticipated getting.  So I usually just don’t try to anticipate.  Great encouragement for living in the moment.trees_7635_3

It is in those moments in the present that the connection is felt.  After a while the dialog with Becky drops off to brief exchanges as we walk from one place to another and the dialog with the scene picks up.  I have no idea what the content of that dialog is, it obviously isn’t words.  But it is there and it is in the connection.  I’m coming to think that these felt connections are traces and hints of our spiritual identity making contact with the world.  It is something to celebrate.backlight_7800_2

I have/had trouble praying

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From the time I was small, I’ve had a problem with prayer.  As long as I stick to standard prayers – the Lord’s Prayer and some other memorized prayers- I am alright but as soon as I go off into prayers for specific people or situations I get stuck and my mind wanders.  But that isn’t quite true, my mind also wanders during the Lord’s Prayer, any prayer or any time for that matter.rock_5343_2s

I got into a conversation about this with three of my friends, all of them solid church goers and dedicated contributors to the community.  All four of us admitted to problems with prayer.  All of us are men and one of us is a minister.   Now that I think about it we never did pursue that problem very far, perhaps none of us knew quite what to do.

Some weeks later and in a different context the minister friend recommended Barbara Brown Taylor’s ‘An Altar in the World:  A Geography of Faith.’  Ms. Taylor had been an Episcopal priest for several years before going into writing and teaching full time.  She had been named by Baylor University as one of the 12 most effective preachers in the English speaking world.  I had been prepared to take her seriously anyway but that pushed her book to the top of my reading list.  The deeper I got into the book the more interesting it got.  And then there was this:

‘I would rather show someone my checkbook stubs than talk about my prayer life.  I would rather confess that I am a rotten godmother, that I struggle with my weight, that I fear I am overly fond of Bombay Sapphire gin martinis than confess I am a prayer-weakling.  To say I love God but I do not pray much is like saying I love life but I do not breathe much.’  (p 176)

Now she really had my attention.  And to cap it off a few pages later she took her cue from Brother David Steindl-Rast, author of ‘Gratefulness, The Heart Of Prayer’, in suggesting that

‘Prayer…is waking up to the presence of God no matter where I am or what I am doing.’  (p 178)

Alright!  Prayer isn’t just a recitation of fixed passages or verbal requests for God’s attention.  I knew that all along but for a truly outstanding minister to admit she has trouble praying, as I suspect many of us do, was quite a revelation.  But she went further than our little group of four men had gone by pointing out that just being aware of the presence of God no matter what we are doing is a form of prayer.  And_there_was_light_7289_7289_2

If we are wiping a child’s nose, running a backhoe, mowing the lawn, watching a ball game, helping out in a soup kitchen, playing with the dog, any of these activities – and are aware of the presence of God, we are praying.  I think that would include the activity of photography.