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silent sunday
Tag: black and white photography
inspiration: black and white
Image submitted for Dogwood Photography’s annual 52-week photography challenge 3: Inspiration: Black and White (Your inspiration this week is to simply take an amazing Black and White photograph of any subject you want.)
lens artists photo challenge: curves
Image submitted in response to Tina’s lens artists photo challenge: curves
wordless wednesday
early morning readings
“Man tends to regard the order he lives in as natural. The houses he passes on the his way to work seem more like rocks rising out of the earth than like products of human hands. He considers the work he does in his office or factory as essential to the harmonious functioning of the world. … He respects and envies a minister of state or a bank director, and regards the possession of a considerable amount of money as the main guarantee of peace and security. He cannot believe that one day a rider may appear on a street he knows well, where cats sleep and children play… He is accustomed to satisfying those of his physiological needs which are considered private as discreetly as possible, without realizing that such a pattern of behavior is not common to all human societies. In a word, he behaves a little like Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush, bustling about in a shack poised precariously on the edge of a cliff.
His first stroll along a street littered with glass from bomb-shattered windows shakes his fate in the ‘naturalness’ of his world. The wind scatters papers from hastily evacuated offices, papers labeled ‘Confidential’ or ‘Top Secret’ that evoke visions of safes, keys, conferences, couriers, and secretaries. Now the wind blows them through the street for anyone to read; yet no one does, for each man is more urgently concerned with finding a loaf of bread. Strangely enough, the world goes on even though the offices and secret files have lost all meaning. Further down the street, he stops before a house split in half by a bomb, the privacy of people’s homes—the family smells, the warmth of the beehive, life, the furniture preserving the memory of lies and hatreds—cut open to public view. … His walk takes him past a little boy poking a stick into a heap of smoking ruins and whistling a song about the great leader who will preserve the nation against all enemies. The song remains, but the leader of yesterday is already part of the extinct past.
He finds he acquires new habits quickly. Once, had he stumbled upon a corpse on the street, he would have called the police. A crowd would have gathered, and much talk and comment would have ensured. Now he must avoid the dark body lying in the gutter, and refrain from asking unnecessary questions. The man who fired the gun must have had his reasons…. ” ~C Milosz, The Captured Mind
lens-artists photo challenge: action
This week’s photo challenge is offered by Patti at P.A. Mood who challenges us to “freeze in action” nature, people, objects, or animals on the move. Or, she notes “halting” the movements within the sky, or on land, the playing field, or a busy street.
Here is a moment of two young boys interacting with water spouts.
delicate
Delicate…the dance
of light and shadow
between insight and ignorance
in life and death
from suffering to tranquility
weekly photo challenge: summertime
As the leaves begin their transition from green to yellows, reds, and purples it is nice to reflect upon the joys of summer.
lens-artists photo challenge: cooling
Images submitted for this week’s lens artists photo challenge: cooling
an egg…
“An egg? Really…an egg? Why an egg for this contemplative photography project.?”
Many, many years ago, I was brave enough to attended an introduction to drawing class offered through a local art museum. The first drawing lesson included the use of charcoal with a single subject–a white egg. This elementary endeavor to draw an egg opened my world to the gradients of the whitest white to the multiple shades of grays and then to the blackest black. The other art lessons within this art class also served to be an introduction to the dynamics of perception and awareness that flow within moments of silent contemplation.
So, why not use an egg as a subject in a mediative photography project? Two minutes “being with…looking at…contemplating” a white egg, a small white bowl, on a white piece of cloth for each image. Ten photographs within 20 minutes.
My commitment to the single egg wasn’t able to silence the whisper and restrict the impulse to, “include a small yellow ball.”
