Tag: Photography

The Powerful Epiphanies

The Power of Spring

As epiphanies often go, it was unexpected, and oh so satisfying. This spring season has been particularly fantastic – there are bumblebees, butterflies, dandelions, ducklings – all tripping over themselves to give you epiphanies of life, miracles, hope and so on.

One such day, we sat watching lazy waves rippling through a large pine tree. The previous day had been a cold, and windy day, we had scuttled inside for warmth. The next day was warm, pleasant and entirely suited to lounging around watching wind waving through pines, firs, and gingkos. 

The house was filled with noises of spring – young children exclaiming at blueberries, standing on tiptoes and peering up at the oranges on the tree, running through the house in a mad scramble looking for juice packets and snacks while playing freeze tag or mock-cricket. 

When the next stampede grew closer, I wondered whether to move aside from the herd of stampeding rhinos, or sit my ground and continue gazing at the roses in bud, and the pine in the wind. I continued to sit, and luckily, the fellows stopped, and one-by-one they all flapped around, and flopped on the grasses. 

“What are you thinking about?”

The Ginkgo’s Wisdom

I told them, and they sat pondering for a moment, sipping their juice. I couldn’t resist the pull of a quiet moment, and an uncharacteristically pliant audience. “Did you know about the ginkgo trees?” I asked my young fellow admirers of wind and trees.

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Thrilled that they didn’t all know, I launched on the ginkgo train – telling them about how they were around from the days of the dinosaur, and how they all communicated to each other, and decided when to shed their leaves. The son said that one of the trees will slow down if it is going too fast in the color changing race, waiting for its fellow ginkgos to catch up.

“Like friends are supposed to be!” piped up another. 

I beamed appreciatively. “Yes – exactly like friends – all helping each other get there. Together.”

Read also: The night of the Gingko : By Oliver Sacks in the New Yorker magazine.

The day’s epiphany done, the playgrounds beckoned, and I let them all run off their sugar highs before expecting them to quieten down for the night. I wonder how the birds manage to quiet their brood when they’ve had a little too much nectar. That epiphany can’t wait for another day.

“A real artist is the one who has learned to recognize and to render the ‘radiance’ of all things as an epiphany or showing forth of the truth.” ~ Joseph Campbell

The Problem of Perspective

It was one of those clear, cloudless days. The temperature was just right, when we stepped out of the house. A lazy dragonfly and a helicopter flying overhead got young minds and old talking about the similarities between them, and of course biomimicry-based inspiration between them.

Even as ubiquitous as air travel has become, that sense of aerial adventure still kindles something special and adventurous in us. I remember telling my friends the other while reading When Women Were Dragons book by Kelly Barnhill that I hoped to become a dragon – if not for anything, but for the soaring power of flight, and the perspective such an act affords us.

Seeing the world around us in different perspectives is an endless fascination is it not? It is why the artist painstakingly sketches that wart on the nose, or that dimpled chin, or that shadow of the leaf with so much love and attention. Perspective.

Perspectives in Art

So what is it about our day-to-day lives that we can apply the same principle to? We have been trained or naturally possess the ability to view a problem from another person’s perspective, in order to see their perspective. It all helps of course -it is what makes us human.

That morning as we watched the dragonfly flit and the helicopter fly lazily overhead – probably on a routine patrol, I felt the urge to see things from both their perspectives. What would they see? A young boy and a lady out on a walk, certainly, but what else? The helicopter certainly would not have seen the dragonfly, but could the dragonfly have seen or sensed the helicopter? I think so.

Watching the skies is endless fascinating especially if you live near fairly busy airport zones. A few hours later, I sat on the porch with a toddler, and peered up again – the child had spotted an aircraft and wanted to know whether it was a plane. “It is a 747!” piped a voice – older and wiser than the toddler, and he looked with awe at the plane overhead.

With my neck craned at the sky above, I felt a rush of gratitude for being able to relish these everyday joys with young minds. How often we don’t notice the planes, helicopters, and dragonflies overhead? How often we miss the perspective from above when solving the problems of our lives? If only, we could take our minds for a whirl of perspective, how marvelous that would be?

⚡️💨⛈Cloud Kitchens ⚡️💨⛈

We were walking at a time when everything around us was glowing in a golden hue. The sun was setting, highlighting  the clouds in the horizon from within or behind, giving them a glorious gloriole. The recent storm had news channels talking of our favorite term in recent times – atmospheric rivers. 

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The actual river was flowing with muddy waters from the recent rains, the trail was still strewn with branches and twigs after the recent battering of the storms, the deer that usually had more space to graze were standing glumly off to the side for their favorite haunts were water-logged. Or at least I thought they stood glumly: they looked contented and happy with the fresh grass, and each other for company.

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“Look at those clouds and the lighting from behind them!” I squealed.

“Oh please amma! You talk of nothing but countertops and cabinets these days!” said the son.

“I do not!” I said, mock-offended and a trifle sheepish. Well – the fellow was not entirely wrong.  It was true, I was becoming one of those bores who go on and on about cabinets.  I am trying to switch out the cabinets in our kitchen, and it has proved to be a task that had hidden depths to its complexity. Regardless – just then, I was talking about clouds and the sunset, and said so with a haughty sniff.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t think of how the hidden lighting would look under the cabinets.!” he said, and I laughed. I had not actually thought of it, but if the poor fellow thought his usually cloud-and-sunset-loving mother saw cabinets in clouds, I had scarred him indeed. Feeling suitably chastened, I promised to shelve all talk of cabinets for the walk. “Get it? Get it? Shelve talk of cabinets! Huh?”

He rolled his eyes, and though the clouds reminded me of the subtle grays and whites in certain countertops I had seen, I kept the opinion to myself, and we walked on chatting amiably of this-and-that.

Kitchens could wait, sunsets could not.

A disruption of ducks

There is a curious rhythm to the days after our India trip. The usual things still occupy our time – school, work, projects, commutes, the changing landscapes of nature, and all the rest of it. Maybe it is the throes of a winter season, or the fact that after the intense ceremonies of the beginning of the month, the quiet is disconcerting, but we felt on edge.

Like the hedgehog, we found ourselves peeking out of our hidey holes to see if life is normal, and finding that it is, were somewhat taken aback. Do you mean to say that we must plan to prune the roses? 

Oh well, all right. If you insist, I suppose.

One morning, the son and I finding ourselves at a loose end decided to take a bike ride to dissipate some of this energy. img_9439

“Amma! Look – I just saw a hedgehog peep out.”

“Oh nice! It is close to February, so it must be checking.”

“I didn’t see if it saw its shadow though – we were going too fast!” said the son.

It was a lovely day – the feel of wind against our cheeks, the gentle cumulus clouds overhead, and the bay hosting a large variety of birds. We stood there taking in the beautiful sights when hundreds of birds took flight all at once, and then, as though nothing had happened, flocked back to their original place a few moments later. The son and I had a number of ideas as to what caused the disturbance, each more juvenile and silly than the next, but left us cackling all the same. 

No one could deny the beautiful shared experience of the disruption – the birds heaving in one smooth cacophony and the humans ashore fumbling quickly to capture the sudden movements and failing miserably. 

It reminded me of the book I was reading the previous day, On Duck Pond – By Jane Yolen Pictures by Bob Marstall.

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As I walked by the old Duck Pond

Its stillness as the morning dawned

Was shattered by a raucous call:

A quack of ducks both large and small …
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An understanding quickly dawned:

We’d shared a shock, and now a bond

And I was feeling very fond,

Of everyone on old Duck Pond.

As always the day out in nature surrounded by the fabulous clouds, the sun’s rays, the beautiful lights of the ocean, the stories the son and I swapped on our ride, the birds, first signs of spring in the wildflowers by the bay, had weaved its magic, and we returned home refreshed in mind and spirits.

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P.S: A group of ducks, as Jane Yolen mentions in her book, are known by a number of names:

A raft of ducks

A paddling of ducks

A badelynge of ducks

Also, bunch, grace, gang or team.

Sun Rise Sun Rise!

We stood there waiting for the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. 

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We had driven up there the previous evening in what felt like 20 degree weather. The moon lit scapes around us were beautiful from inside the car, but outside, it looked unforgiving. It was cold, and the desert around us was different enough. Even so, the same landscapes at night take on a different feel and dimension altogether. The shelves of stone around us in the early morning light of dawn was breathtaking. As if a different hue was revealed with every tilt in angle of the sun’s rays. 

How drawn to light we are as a species? Somewhere, the sharp smells of pine wafted through, and I wondered briefly whether we stopped to let our other senses weigh in as much when we have sight and light. 

I suppose we do let sounds and smells in, and do allow our sense of touch  to help us along. But do we really develop our other senses? A preliminary search says we gather about 80% of our sensory perceptions using sight. 

Dogs, on the other hand, seem to distribute their perceptions between sight, smell and sound. 

The early morning calm of the sun-rise and my meandering thoughts were interrupted by the loud calls of a mother looking for her children. I turned around irritated, and was somewhat surprised that I was surrounded by this many people on a cold Christmas Day morning, standing on a cliff overlooking the Grand Canyon and waiting for the sun to rise. 

But I suppose, it was my fault for not expecting this. It promised to be a beautiful day, after all, and like me, many had decided to brave the cold, and take in the marvelous sunrise over the horizon at a point helpfully named Sunrise Point. 

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I let out an amused grin, and exchanged a look with the children – they seem to have caught on to my look of surprise at finding other people there. It was a beautiful moment: the mother pulled her child towards her, and the sun burst forth in glory over the horizon. 

All was well with the world at this moment. 

Let’s go for some breakfast and then take a long, quiet walk along time, I said shuffling away from Sunrise Point, and the children chuckled at the thought. We are not an early rising family, and we scurried inside towards warmth, food and coffee before attempting to take on people and canyons. 

Is Photography Art?

Sometimes I think a monkey would do a better job with a camera. But on the other hand I think, people should open their minds a little more to appreciate true art. What is art? Is it something that kindles some kind of emotion in others? What if it brings joy to others?

The other day we found this gorgeous field stretching out for a few miles carpeted with yellow flowers. My heart whooped with joy and I insisted on getting there on the week-end for a picture shoot.
“I will put this up on Facebook!” I cried. Thrilled at my unique idea, we went there for our picture shoot. Saturday morning, I found the place jam-packed with Facebook-profile-picture-takers. People I tell you! Tut! Tut!

When the daughter was much younger, I used to swing her around me really fast. We have a beautiful picture on the Hawaiian coasts doing this.I wanted a similar one of me throwing my son up in the air and catching him. I had to throw and catch a few times before we got this picture. But I totally loved it, and promptly made it my profile pic on Faceb.

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The daughter is tall for her age and has outgrown the swinging-by-mother stage, but believes that her father, the hero, can still catch her as she jumps in the air. I tried telling her that she is too old for that, to which she says, “But appa is really strong, and I can jump! He doesn’t have to throw me.” Put something like that out to the husband and he can’t resist. He summons up his imaginary biceps and steps forth gallantly to make her jump and catch her. I gingerly took the camera, aware that I can’t take the same number of chances he took to get a good picture.

I suppose this happens to wildlife photographers all the time. They lie waiting for the lion to jump, and the lion roars and skips instead. My feelings were similar. What is my lioness skipped?

I focussed and refocused yelling “1-2-3” loud enough for horses in neighboring fields to jump. They did a marvelous job and she jumped- much higher than I expected and got this picture.

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I totally blame it on her. I mean I had my camera focussed for where I thought she was going to jump and she shot past it. Whose fault is that really?

My school did a good job on me with its motto: “Never Give In”. So what if I got one bad picture? I plowed on. This time the strong man wanted a portrait. I attempted to truly give him the picture of a lifetime. I’ve always wondered why photographers show off about blurring certain objects and making others sharper. How hard can it be? See?

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Like the daughter kindly pointed out, even the houses in the far background are sharp. I challenged the husband to take a picture of me like that and he couldn’t. I believe I took the harder picture. He was a bit upset initially, but the bad pictures had all of us laughing (quite heartily I might add) at my expense – so that is true art in my opinion. Go on…’Like’ my pictures please.

LinkedIn & Slur Motion Photography

“Please stand back – we will answer all your queries.”
I wave to my adoring fans who would like to just have one word with me. I stand next to my second level contact in LinkedIn, while he is looking dazed with all the attention. I assure him that all will be well, and I am there to take care of the number of people who jostle around him for photographs and such. Not that I wouldn’t like a photograph with him myself. I can entrust the camera to the one person I can rely on. The husband. He would never lose the camera; but what he does with it is an entirely different matter.

I am not sure whether he would attempt that new technique in photography he was so enamoured with the last time I was around a mini celebrity, I hope not. The technical term is ‘Slur Motion Photography’ or the ‘Earthquake Effect’. The results were fine if I were viewing them sitting on a vibrating machine or one of those massaging chairs you see in malls with old men burping loudly on them. But if I were to see them standing still, it took a practiced eye to find me, and that is not the state of affairs one wants when being photographed with your Second Level Contact in LinkedIn whenever that maybe.

So, who is my second level contact on LinkedIn? None but the President of the United States, Barack Obama! To all you skeptics who don’t believe me, I snapped an image of my screen.

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Here is a sample of Slur Motion Photography, that I personally find admirable as long as you are not looking to retain memories of yourself in it and such.

For more pictures of the same calibre, please go to http://suroba.wordpress.com/2010/09/19/one-more-take-saar/