Category Archives: Photography

Feeling Your Senses in Photos, Part 2: Curls and Wisps

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These dried leaves held together against the wind and temperature changes of fall-into-winter.

Without distracting myself with research to identify this plant, I want to sense it through the photograph.

The leaves are not summer green but brown with aged cell walls. Before the days shortened, fingertips could have felt the transformation of rain absorbed through roots and pulled upward into firm outstretched greenery.

Can you feel the chilly breeze dry your hand as it reaches out to touch the curls? Can you smell the damp moulder of meadow plants soggy in the snow? Can you hear the raspy crackle of the ringlets of leaves, one against another, barely able to be heard over the wind?

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From another angle, the dancing leaves.

Look closer at the soft furry surface in the sun. Feel warmth on old bones.

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Closer still.

Look even closer and see the seed fluff from another plant hooked on those furry edges. Caught temporarily, it will either blow away again in a stronger wind, be washed down by melting snow, or wait further and sprout when this plant falls to the ground.

What would it be like to rest, like this tiny seed, nestled in softness?

 

 

 

Feeling Your Senses in Photos, Part 1: Seed Heads

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A sparkle blast of sun on seeds–just what we need in the gray winter days.

 

That’s a brave thing, to start with “Part 1,” especially after not posting for two weeks due to a nasty head cold and some computer issues (neither of which is quite resolved, but getting there).

I like the idea of mixing senses: to take vision and see what we can “feel.” Can your fingers sense the softness of seeds, the velvet or raspy texture of dried leaves–just through looking at pictures?  Can you hear the light crunch as you press them between your fingers and smell the late fall moulder in them? What memories come up when you do that?

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Dried and curled in head of Queen Anne’s Lace (wild carrot), Vischer Ferry Preserve

Happy New Year, and thanks for your patience. Over the week, ignore any judgment you’ve heard on the winter weather and step outdoors. Take in what your senses gift you. What did you find? (Feel free to click on the Leave A Reply button and share.)

Solstice Sun

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Frost sparkling over a creek, Scotia, NY

Just some simple images today, light in the darkness. To meditate in the midst of what for many folks is frenzy and for others, sadness.

Allow the magnificence of nature to be your sanctuary; let it creep into your soul quietly and sweetly, and inhabit your senses.

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December sunset over grasses, Saratoga Spa State Park

 

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Sunset over the fields, Glenville NY

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Solstice sunset over farmer’s field cornstalks and the hedgerow.

Enjoy the glow, and the light increasing!

Snowflake Cookies, Snow and Ice and Stars

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Last week’s snowflakes on star shaped buds of ruby red stag-horn sumac

The photo post is late this week because I was up on Monday night until 10:30 pm making holiday cookies.  Actually it was only part one of three, of cookie making sessions. 

My friend Jenny and I have finally realized—after several years of exhaustion—that we can’t do the baking and decorating all in one crazy marathon that goes late into the night and morning. I don’t do well past 7 or 8 pm most nights! Tuesday morning I was self-compassionate (see last week’s photo thoughts) and knew I had to sleep in instead of post.

So until we finish sessions two and three, here are some photos of last year’s Modern Art sugar and gingerbread cookies. The icing is colored with natural dyes and therefore are more pastel than bright, more pink than the red of the sumac or holly berry.

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Snowflake in cookie form

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Stars in blue

Here’s one of my favorite ice photos recently, of frozen bubbles rising from a scarlet or red oak leaf. I can really feel the submersion, the weight of ice above, yet the air lifting like tiny beams of starlight from its surface. The leaf rests on the frozen water below, as well. 

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Suspended in frozen water and surrounded by visible air

Can you think of a time you felt support where you didn’t expect it? Sweetness or rest when you needed it or actively chose it? Beauty in a moment that popped right out in front of you? Especially when you were tempted into frantic movement? (None of that going on currently, no, no.)

Blessings and fruitful meditation to you, as we head toward more cookie baking and self-care, and into this weekend’s winter solstice.

 

Using What You Have: Snowstorm Soup

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The crystal patterns of yesterday’s snow: long shards that were light, but broken and folded in on themselves, made great snowballs.

 

When Governor Cuomo decided to give me (and many others) a snow day yesterday, I was delighted. 

As flakes sprinkled and flew outside, I dug through the fridge. Lighter and healthier breakfasts are calling me lately, and being at home I could make a fresh hot soup. I was out of miso paste. However, never one to waste, the day before I had taken the bones and skin of a natural roasted chicken and made a golden savory broth.

I took a few tablespoons and used that to steam frozen cauliflower. Cooked cabbage left from a different meal a few days before came next. The previous night’s dinner yielded some vegetables for tiny specks of color in a so far white yellow dish. Plop! In went the green and yellow beans and carrots sliced tiny.

Chickadees bobbled back and forth to the bird feeder. Snow movers scraped and pushed piles of snow. What else goes in here? I asked. 

Digging past makings for new meals, I found a container of onion chutney with sweet red pepper from a wondrous take-out meal (Shalimar in Delmar). That added some spice, fresh cumin seed, and a gorgeous reddish color.  It needed something salty yet, pops of flavor. Back to the freezer, and tucked in a bag, a thin sausage grilled in the end-of-September sun at Wiawaka’s Cancer Survivor Day where I had volunteered. Diced small, I mixed that in.

Perfection! A huge bowl of filling vegetables and warmth for my mouth. Colors to match the cardinals and sparrows and finches pecking for sunflower seed.

Out the window, more flakes danced past each other in cascades and wind blown veils. Later would come a walk outdoors:  giggles and digging out a car, snowballs thrown at cattails, and small neighborhood children glorying in the view from atop ten foot snow mounds, while parents shoveled and snapped photos. 

For now I had created something out of what I already had, richness from examining what had already been given me.

 

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Tasty warm soup, hurray!

What is in your hands right now that is wonderful, useful, delightful?

Look Up

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Winter tree shape on white birch bark, Five Rivers, November 2019

 

Sometimes when I walk through the woods, I look up from my feet and visions pop out.

A lone leaf wiggles frenetically in the wind. Sunlight breaks through the gloom to light up one small yellow oxalis flower. A red eft wriggles on rock, or a snake slides under dry oak leaves, or a tiny brown toad hops-hops-hops in the path ahead.

 

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I looked back and there it was–a bird’s nest lit by autumn sun. Five Rivers, November 2019

I say to myself–treasure these gifts, these moments. Pay attention.

Even in my office, captured by computer screen and phone rings and beeps, I look up and stretch my neck. Light from the window on the other side of the room captures me. Above trees, I see a horizon. I am reminded again: I don’t have to spend hours in meditation every day; I can take these moments over the day and their richness will feed me.

I just have to look up.

 

Prospect Mountain view

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Late October view from the top of Prospect Mountain, Lake George, NY.

I can see it is going to be difficult to hold to one (or two or three) photos each week. There’s so damned much beauty out there. Especially when so many worries pull—about health, work, friends, state of the world–we need multiple doses of the medicine of nature.

 

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View of Lake George from the second overlook.

The other weekend: Prospect Mountain in Lake George, just past fall color peak. Every stage of autumn, like every step on a path or into a river, is different and wondrous. The sun still glows on golden trees. Now the rust and orange and smoke start to predominate.

We take in three pull-overs with views. At one, a leather-clad motorcyclist speaks with tears in his eyes, of family sick with cancer. We nod and share enthusiasm about the gumdrops of trees coating the mountainside: colors of spearmint and lemon and berry.  Good wishes all around, each of us leaves bolstered, encouraged, somehow better.

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Late afternoon sun lights up trees on the way, Prospect Mountain, Lake George NY.

The road spirals up and up in angled late day sun. At the top, tourists stand precariously on ledges to snap selfies with Lake George Village behind them. We tromp in the 45 degree chill and breathe in the oxygen-rich Adirondack air. We sigh and sigh, and feel connected to things bigger than ourselves.

How do you care for yourself when life weighs heavy? What outside place in nature feeds you?

 

October milkweed

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Mid-October milkweed seeds, Vischer Ferry Preserve

Milkweed calls out the poet in me. 

Against the backdrop of gray grasses and tan marsh reeds, the popped open pods pull my eye.  Silver-white seeds twist and spill out; drops of morning dew spangle like holiday lights. 

These particular seeds remind me of a teenager hanging her hair upside down, to brush it full. There’s a sense of movement into the future, a sense of letting go into the unknown and yet beautifully seasonal, as summer gives in to autumn.

(This is for Beth and family, who have been particularly enthusiastic about photos of milkweed, with those memories of childhood fields of wildflowers.)

What do milkweed seeds call to, in you?

 

A New Beginning: Diane’s Photo of the Week

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New England asters ready to unfurl in the fall (Vischer Ferry Preserve, Rexford, NY, Oct 2019).

A little explanation–

Yes, it has been quite a while. Yes, with a few posts here and there. No, not what I had envisioned or desired when I began this writing endeavor.

But life changes.

The transition to day job has not been instant or even short, and certainly not easy. Balance, balance, balance, I say to myself each morning, sometimes with gritted teeth but more and more with an ease that surprises me. Each day I discover something lovely.

Last week I took a promotion to a new position and a new department. At my former job, in lieu of writing essays and posting online here, I determined to do the small things that I was capable of. I brought in one of my photos each week and posted it on the outside of my cube.

It’s what I could handle.

My workmates came by to witness, comment, enjoy, question, compare, express memories about their own nature places and photos, and even give preferences about which photos they needed to see that week—bright colors or flowers in winter, cooling water or ice images in August, signs of seasonal change, details and broader vistas. The previous week’s photo stayed up, and acted as a comparison, a talking-point.  At one point I had three photos up at once–the needs had grown! The photos became a Monday or Tuesday morning joy for many, a way of connecting that grew and expanded over the days until the next Diane’s Photo Of The Week was pinned up.

As I took in the departing hugs and best wishes, I was invited (ok, ordered, thank you Kelly!) to continue this tradition online. Here I begin Diane’s Photo of the Week, five work days after the move out of my old cube and yes, I know, on a Wednesday (chalk it up to technical difficulties).

You can subscribe by email or RSS feed to get a bit of what I shared for almost two and a half years with my dear Guidance & Counseling office family. You could also just drop by this virtual outside-of-my-cube, whenever you get up from your desk and need a break. Feel free to leave a comment and join the conversation.

Thanks for wandering by.

Things to notice about the photo

Take a look at the velvety and furry texture of the the outside layer of greenish bracts on the foreground flowers. Bracts (also called phyllaries in some sources) protect the petals of the aster until they open and then form part of the underneath support. (The tightly curled purple petals trying to burst out make me smile. I understand that desire to grow.)

Actually, there are two kinds of petals on an aster.  The interior orange ones you can only see in the blurred background flowers here are called disk florets since once the flower opens they form a flat disk in the center. The purple ones that are uncurling are the ray florets–yes, those ones doing a modern dance wave and gesture as they “wake up” in the fall.

What does this photo make you think of or remember?  Is there something you are feeling ready to wake up to this autumn?

 

Nature Art Show at Emma Thacher Nature Center

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Red oak leaf in ice, on the Red Belly Trail, Partridge Run. Come and see other photos I took  in the winter woods!

On Saturday, March 5, 2016, from 1 to 4 pm, I invite you all to visit Emma Treadwell Thacher Nature Center, 87 Nature Center Way, Voorheesville NY for the opening reception of their 13th annual Nature Art Show. I have three photographs in the show–come celebrate  nature as interpreted by over 50 artists, in the center nestled next to Thacher Lake. The opening reception includes live music and refreshments, and there are trails to walk outside near the nature center or back at John Boyd Thacher State Park (don’t miss the escarpment overlook).

The show runs through March 25 and the Center (free admission!) is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9 to 5.

Directions: If you approach from John Boyd Thacher Park on 157 (off 85/New Scotland Road), you will drive THROUGH Thacher Park, take a right on 256 (Ketcham Road), pass the small Farm Stand on the right, and soon after take a left on Nature Center Road (small sign for Nature Center), which is gravel and leads to the parking area & center.