Tag Archives: Spirituality

The leaves are just about gone

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We have a lot of trees around our house; that is one of the reasons we bought it 30 years ago.  The walnut leaves have been gone for some time as have most of the hickory leaves.  Some oak leaves are hanging on but they are coming down too.  I went out today to work on finishing getting the leaves off the ‘lawn’ but  it was so windy I decided to wait.  No point having to do it twice.

The leaves at Fort Harrison are largely gone.


I expect these will be gone in the next few days.


But as leaves are falling the sycamores are standing out more.  And there are still a few hangers on.


Their going is not without its beauty as well.


Sic transit gloria.

Great day in the morning

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The average episode of going out to shoot is at least satisfying.  There are a few times that don’t get up to that level, but there are others that exceed it.  Today set a new standard.


Four of us from Photo Venture Camera Club went to Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge this morning.  It is hunting season there and we were confined to just a part of the area.  This, however, was more than enough.

There was a nice fog this morning which fortunately was still largely present when we arrived.  It helped produce photographs reminiscent of Michael Kenna’s work.


As the morning went on the fog lifted and the light was sweet.




The opportunity to be there was a great reward and to actually bring home images that in some way reflect what it was like is over the top.


What a great way to spend a morning.


I’ll be going back.

Hopes for a misty morning

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The mist closed in as I was on my way over to see my mother this morning and I had great hopes for some shots in the mist.  But I didn’t have my camera with me right then.  After seeing Mom and doing several small chores I collected the camera, lenses and tripod and got over to Fall Creek.  The mist was largely gone but there was enough for an accent.


Colors in overcast weather are nicely saturated and have their own kind of appeal.

For the last few days I have been visiting an area of the creek where it drops through small riffles and falls.  The beauty of having a long lens (400 mm, a strong telephoto) is that one doesn’t have to wear waders and get into the water to get close ups.


These little falls are gorgeous.  Slowing down the exposure a little stretches out the flow a bit without losing some of the detail.   With the water bouncing around as it does, three shots in a row will produce appreciably different photographs. Best to work with a tripod and keep snapping.

I like the contrast of the smoothly flowing and chaotic water one next to the other.

This one is my favorite:

There were areas of calm water as well.

There is a feeling of being removed from civilization here except that the bridge for I465 is 100 feet away.  This shot was taken upstream from under the bridge:

There is a little mist there.  More mist on the way home:


Luck favors the prepared.  Maybe next time we have a good mist I’ll be ready for it.

Poetry in motion

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Herb Blitzer, a friend from our camera club, and I went down to Fall Creek this morning.  Herb had earlier scouted one area while I had shot in another so we went to both.

On bringing the images home and putting them up for inspection, I was struck by how in different ways they seemed poetic.  Poetic in in a very broad sense.  They all evoke sensual and emotional reactions although in each case the experience is a bit different.  Here are two images that define the range:


I’m not going to write about what those emotions and sensual experiences might be, they will be very subjective and will vary from one viewer to another.


I guess the best I can do is show them to you and ask if you see poetry in them.  If you do, fine; if you don’t but enjoy them that’s good too.




And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.

A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.

From ‘Going for Water’ by Robert Frost

It’s about light

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Photography is about light.  I’m not talking about the extreme case where no light equals no photography.  Rather, it is the quality as well as amount that matters.


We often talk about ‘sweet’ light, that light that occurs not long after the sun has come up and shortly before it goes down.  Those indeed are special kinds of light.  But there can be decent light just about any time of day.


This light, with a little help from Photoshop, occurred about 11:00 one morning.

Especially if it is filtered through leaves and trees, light in late morning can be just fine.


Backlighting can be good just about any time of day.


And light can often be assisted by Photoshop as it was in this next example.


As I look at this last image, I can see that it needs some more work.  But that can be done in the evening, when the light is pretty well gone.

Dents, creases and folds in the water

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A lot of photographs of moving water use a long exposure to bring out the silky smoothness of the flow.  Here for instance, the exposure was .6 sec.  That’s pretty long for a normal exposure.


This one was even longer at 1.6 sec.


We’re used to seeing nice smooth flow.  That is a trick of the camera and also of  our brains.  We interpret the scene as smoothly flowing.   Photographing water up close and at more normal photographic exposures shows something quite different:


Dimples.  This is a function of surface tension.  Once again, enter a different world than the one we think we inhabit.


Most of these pictures were shot at 1/100 sec. or faster and a  different picture emerges.


That looks like a hole in the water.


Would you expect to see something like that?  I wouldn’t have.


Surface tension.


When I see this, I wonder what else we are missing.  It’s all right there in front of us.  All we need to do is look with a camera.  And wonder.

Mid autumn? Late autumn?

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Autumn begins at the autumn equinox which this year was at 11:09 PM EDT on September 22.  The winter solstice marks the beginning of winter and that will be at 6:38 PM EST on December 21.  If you find the half way point between the beginning and end of autumn it falls on today’s date, November 7.  So it is mid autumn today.  But if someone asked you, would you say today is mid autumn?  Without thinking about it I would say we are in late autumn.

Most of the leaves have turned color.


A lot of leaves are off the trees.

Although there are some left yet.


Daylight savings time is past and it gets dark earlier.  It’s getting colder.

In my subjective, personal accounting of the seasons all of that says that it is late autumn, not mid autumn.


And that adds up to my still need to clean the gutters.  It’s supposed to be warm this week, maybe I’ll do it in the next few days.  Unless I can find something more important to do, such going out to record the changing season with a camera and Photoshop.

Wondering around outside home

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I could have titled this post ‘Wondering around our lawn’ but anyone who has been to our place would take exception with the term ‘lawn’.  So this, in its own way, will be a testament to weeds.  And leaves.  Always some leaves this time of year.


So I just ‘wondered‘ around outside to see what there was to see.  Perhaps I never grew up but I still can’t get over the beauty of little things right there in front of us.


What would it cost to have something like that created for you?


These berries belong to an exotic and will likely not be eaten but they are still striking in appearance.

Did you ever look closely at how leaves attach to branches?


And there are the spider webs again.  I seldom notice them except when I’m doing close up work.  I’m listening to E. B. White read ‘Charlotte’s web’ in the car so I do look closely when I see a web.  I found it interesting that Charlotte saved Wilbur by posting writing on the web.  I’m not up to her level but I’m trying with my own posts.  On the web.


I wouldn’t turn down a trip to Glacier NP or the Tetons but I really don’t need to go far to find satisfying subjects.

Little things.  There are lots and lots of little things and they would like to be seen.  Maybe it’s my job to do that and encourage others to look to.  Go out and wonder.   You won’t be disappointed.

How are you going to look at it?

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Autumn.  The time of the year when growth stops and withering takes over.

Plant life is now turning from the vertical to the horizontal and the ground will be richer.   Is this a matter of death or might it be life?  In each of these images, both answers are present.


Try getting down on the ground to get a shot and you might learn what I did today that while the plants are dead they sometimes offer gifts in the way of new plants in the form of stickers on one’s clothing.  Generous gifts.

They aren’t all stickers, some take wing.

And some are berries.  But all could well produce new life next year.

So is it death?  Is it life?  Yes.

More autumn leaves

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We had a lot of wind the other day (close to tornado conditions) and a good many leaves came down.  The hickory and some of the maple trees are nearly bare but the oak and sycamore leaves are hanging on.

Here are some leaf images from this autumn I haven’t used yet in these posts.


No texture there except what was in the leaf which was suspended on a thread from a spider’s web.  Unfortunately the thread is not visible.


More surface tension.  Expect to see more of these, I find them fascinating.


I was supposed to be photographing something else when I saw this.  Sometimes I’m grateful for a limited attention span.


This is one of my (recent) favorites.  It is a straight photograph superimposed on the output of a leaf scanned in a flat bed scanner.

Here are a couple more leaves that I ran through the flat bed scanner.  Notice they are three dimensional; the lid of the scanner was left up so they didn’t get flattened.  This is the leaf (a day later) that was scanned and used as the background in the image above.


I especially like the three dimensionality.


And here is one final image.  This started out as a standard digital photograph and textures were added.