Tag Archives: Landscape

MAY 9, 2015

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The Jewel

How lucky I was to be out early that day because the world was completely suffused in morning fog. Everything was a blur in the mist and magical to see, or try and see. After about an hour of walking and shooting this gauzy world the sun burned though and lifted some of the ground fog, and for a moment, really, just a moment and then – whoosh –  the world was lit.

But that moment between the two was a delicacy that lifted my entire being.  What a world we are in, what a magical, remarkable, unexpected jewel of a world!

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MAY 7, 2015

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What Catches the Eye

Who knows why any one stops any time, anywhere? Why this trough, which is probably a truck tire track, filled with rain water in a gravel-bedded parking area. But there it is, the puzzle that all photographers deal with all the time. Something catches the eye, with no rational reason for it. Maybe it was the color of the light as the day waned, which, when seen against the new green of the hills at that hour set off the slightly warmer feel of the gravel, or perhaps it was the piece of sky that made its poem in the trough, falling to earth in a way that made me pause. These are the mysteries of this remarkable medium that so many of us are in dialogue with, and that makes it is so compelling.

So the dialogue continues.

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MAY 6, 2015

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Simple things

A late evening walk after a soft rain. Gianni accompanied us so we could all catch up with the events of the season we had spent in France. Suddenly he leaped over the edge to grab some flowers. His spirit, and the joy he takes in everything, reminded me of why we love Tuscany so much.

It’s not only nature that calls to us, but a friendship with a man of this land whose connection  to it is so natural and deep that it has added a respect for all things Tuscan to our way of thinking. And out of that has come a kind of image making that is open and relaxed and about daily pleasure. And so portraits and gestures, and landscapes, and still lives, and the simplest of daily comings and goings mark my days. Everything seems photographable.

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MAY 1, 2015

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May 1st.

It was a travel day. We left Bonnieux early in the morning after 4 months living there, on the first leg of our year long experiment living in Europe. So we said goodbye to the baker where our daily intake of baguette had become a morning ritual. Boy-o-boy, were they good! It was to be an 800 Km drive from Bonnieux to Buonconvento, so we broke it up into an overnight stop in Camoglie, a seaside town in Italy.

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Ah, dear old colorful, worn out, beautiful, generous Italia! Color! Like Italian opera. It is everywhere, and joyous to be in. Even though this blog is about one photograph a day, this kind of travel day is so refreshing in terms of stimulus, that I thought I’d simply lay down some of the eye candy that Camoglie offered on our arrival. Look at this! May 1, and they are already in the water!

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As we walked down the seafront I saw this crazy structure on the beach and immediately Fellini’s imagery came to mind. What was this wooden scaffolding all about? And how easily it fit in and seemed normal.

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This wall, part of the crumbling beauty of Italian cities struck me as something I might ant to use  as a background for a still life. I found myself collecting a few ‘wall’ images that day for possible printing as a field to look at some objects on. Just instinct talking, and I always follow instinct and try not to second guess it.

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And then came the giant Frying Pan. Another Felliniesque motif leading to the surreal landscape of Italian life.

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Sitting at dinner in the lovely hotel dining room on the sea, the long day coming to a close, a really good Italian seafood dinner in our bellies, the sun slipping into the sea, gave us a kind of perfect end to a long day on the road. More adventures on the road to Buonconvento to come.

APRIL 28, 2015

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Zing

No matter how many times I passed this field the ‘call’ from the space zinged me. And yet there is nothing there that has any remarkable element that defines the space as special. It’s just a low lying field with a scraggly border of mixed trees. No eloquent stand of poplars bending in the breeze, no spreading oaks or cypresses marking the space, no ‘features’ that gave me reason to look again. But I always did.

Perhaps it is this innocent quality that we need to be attentive to in the world at large. The minor note that resonates deep within us and calls us to attention for reasons that remain somewhat undefined or illusive. That way the call is purely from something native within each of us, which is vulnerable to being awakened by simplicity rather than by more formal or intellectual values.

From these lessons a secret may be learned about what it is that constitutes our inner voice when we hear it call out to us from unexpected external sources.

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APRIL 26, 2015

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Local Color

Near Bonnieux there is a town called Rousillion, famed for the red clay cliffs left there millions of years ago when the seas retreated. We decided to show our Italian friends a little local color, which, even on a grey day, is surprisingly intense. The place has a scale to it that always thrills me and makes me pay attention to the little things, could be just the small gesture of the woman reading the text and the way she carries her weight.

Perhaps it is the mass and the color that forms itself into a background for everyone appearing on the stage in front of it that projects the gesture so forcefully, even when so ordinary. I have seen it every time I visit there, whether it’s families, or school groups, or individuals, something always presents itself in this clear way.

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The friend that accompanied Gianni and Giorgio didn’t hesitate to dig right in to the clay itself, and within a few minutes she was rubbing it into her hands and then all over her face. Like a native American Indian she felt the magical quality of being in the space and let it all work on her.

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APRIL 21, 2015

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First Thought, Best Thought

Driving on a back country road to visit a man who saves plant seeds from all over the world; someone who has resisted Monsanto and their ideas about patenting seeds so farmers must buy only from them, or be punished if they don’t, we came across this landscape. I don’t know if it is a monument to someone’s idea of the civilization we are living in, or the fallen ruin of what in this part of France are called Bories, stone dwellings built centuries ago by migrant shepherds.

But whatever the reason, the apocalyptic image called out to be walked around. Of all the images I made this first one held the immediacy of the surprise, and the right scale for the TV set perched on the pile. And even though there were some strong alternates they stay behind on the contact sheet. Why is that? The old Zen saying, ‘first thought, best thought’ may be true as a photographic maxim too.

Of course it doesn’t always work that way, and persistence and movement can bring wonderful new points of view and ways of saying what you want to say as you discover the unfolding possibilities. But often enough it is the joy of that instantaneous sighting that holds all the power and freshness of discovery.

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APRIL 18, 2015

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Eye Work

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There is a winery about 45 minutes away from Bonnieux which had some interesting contemporary architecture and site installations, so we were told. We made a trip there with some friends to have a look, a picnic and enjoy a spring day. Of all the works there  – and there were some by well known artists – this cage of color strips provoked me into a playful mood and made me feel the ‘quality’ of the dappled light I had experienced in the woods I walked through to get to it.

How do you judge if a work works? If you feel something when you come near it, or within its space, and the feeling brings up a range of fresh sensations and thoughts, then I think it is a ‘living’ work, and becomes like nature in some strange, new way. This jungle gym of color strips made my eye work hard and set up spatial conditions and confusions that kept me engaged, and playful, which is what a work of art can do. I know that photographs, which are so tied to the material world that it is often hard to make them seem special, can, at their best moments, lift us from the bare facts and bring us a new understanding.

APRIL 17, 2015

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Simple Seeing

The days in Provence were gentle, and spring began to flow like fragrant water over the land, lighting it up with color and sending the perfumes of the earth everywhere. It was an amazing experience to not only see the color, but know how the color smelled. Not quite like those old ‘scratch and sniff’ perfume ads that magazines tried out back in the 80’s, all of which smelled like room freshener. No, this was a high that made the experience of seeing all the more intense.

And yet a photograph like this is as plain as can be. No special equipment, no filters, no tricks of the light, no photoshop to intensify what was already a heightened reality. Simple seeing, which is always a great test of the persuasive power of the moment you are in, stated simply, is a truth, if you will, of the fact that you were there, and this is what you witnessed.

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APRIL 14, 2015

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The Wonder of It

The snow bursts of cherry blossoms in the Luberon Valley drove me mad! The scent of the blossoms, their whiteness in the newly warmed spring air, the way they shivered in the faintest breeze, called me in close, as if to stand inside their space was to bring me closer to spring itself.

This search for the essential nature of anything that calls out to me has been my long time practice, and I find that in moments like this I want to be part the experience, not photographing it from the cool distance of the observer, but becoming integrated in it somehow. And this tree – one of many in the long lines of orchard trees – brought me close to that kind of trance state, where I stood, spellbound, and felt as if I could have stayed forever watching the barely discernible flutter of petals, while listening to the steady hum of the bees.

It almost doesn’t matter to me at that point what the photograph looks like in the camera, what matters is keeping the simple wonder of it all alive.

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