Something Difficult

Another picture from the same night I wrote about in the last blog post.

You know those beautiful unexpected pictures I put in the post last time? I didn’t tell you something else that happened because it was so difficult.  I’ve been thinking about it all week.  On one hand I thought, “People’s lives are hard enough."   And then I thought, “That’s precisely why I should say it, because it is the truth, and the truth is what people deal with.”  It was unfair I thought, to go around in sunshine all the time, like beauty, beauty, blah, blah, blah and not say something that was important to the story of that evening.

So here it is.  While I was taking my pictures the dogs kept working the same spot at the edge of Sachem Pond.  They were breaking the ice around something and then they started tugging at it.  They finally started pulling it out of the water.  I saw what it was, a dead baby deer that was under the ice.  I saw its delicate ribs and the darkening of the water and the mixture of flesh and bone and teeth exposed because its little body had been there for some time.  I said, “Oh….no.”  And I called Wilson and Molly and I loved them because this was very special to them but they left it for my sake. 

I’ve asked myself about it because I said in another post that difficult things are also beautiful.  I can’t say this was beautiful.   I can say it was held in a beautiful night, but the actual sight was a shock and then sadness with a certain tender aspect.  

All the time I keep holding the image in my mind... I keep returning to it.  And it is not just for the deer, but for all of our difficult things…I keep thinking of my friends, many of whom have had recent losses, but it is also of all of our losses…the fact that they can even happen, the fact that life is made this way. 

These two pictures are of Japanese Iris, taken on black velvet.

These two pictures are of Japanese Iris, taken on black velvet.

Now I’m thinking maybe I can show you something better than I can tell you.  This is out of a series on some flowers I’ve been working on… just some ordinary flowers, just like any other flowers, but as beautiful as anything.  If you look closely and especially at the second picture, you’ll see just one or two spots where the edges are curling.  This iris is already dying.  In fact, by the time I was done with the shoot, it was in pieces.  I thought about getting new flowers and starting over, but I felt that the dying edge was also important, or that the flower was more because of it.

My friend Lisa, who has had her share of grief, says, “Everyone loses the same thing, which is everything.”  And, “Sadness is never far from me.” and, “Death, when it comes… It teaches you what it is.”  And then she goes out to live her heartfelt and honest and generous and courageous and exuberant life.  (Her comments were part of long conversations we've had over the years.  We've been through a lot together.  I'm sure I don't have to tell you how important this good friend is in my life.  She is, I believe, going to post a comment when I publish this blog.  It will be worth reading as she is loving, articulate and wise.)   

I can only say that I know it is difficult to find a person who isn’t grieving and that grief comes in many forms.  There is grief like I have for my father, and as big as that is, I would say it is an easier type of grief.  There is grief out of order or grief that leaves no place or no future or grief that includes the destruction of love or trust or hope or identity or history or dignity or faith in anything. I know that grief can be like waves or like fire or like a frozen lake or like falling.  I know that answers and no answers come to each person in his or her own way and time.

I like to notice my breathing.  I like to watch a breath going out and the next one coming after. I have lived my whole life like a watch dog and I like to notice that something is happening, that I don’t have to do it, that something is breathing my life for me.  I find it restful, and encouraging, and the opposite of being separate from anyone or anything.

I also do my photography.  If you haven’t noticed, I like it a lot.  It’s become my way of living... to be out in nature… seeing… to cooperate by seeing and working with the things that are offered… to join life in this way.   This is what I’ve come to stand on.  It’s not just the beauty… it’s the implication of beauty.  I feel if I want to understand the things I don’t know… I can look at the things I do know.  Because I have seen that the universe is congruent… it operates in similar ways at every level that I can perceive.  So I’m going to say if the life I know is beautiful then the “bigger life”, the life that includes both birth and death…that must be beautiful also.  

I’ve been thinking about life getting bigger and bigger the way I talked about it last week, and I also watched a show on TV in the middle of the night:  “How the Universe Works”.  It told me how the iron and water in my blood were formed over millions of years during a supernova of a double star that happened billions of years ago, and that the gold in my wedding ring was made in an age before that, in another supernova, this time from a single star.  Everything we live in, everything we are...was constructed over eons and with incomprehensible violence.  They said this on TV…on regular, secular, non-political TV.  Scientists said it…that we are that energy… that we are those stars, down to every single molecule in our bodies. 

This is the Sombrero Galaxy  (M 104).  Credit: HST/NASA/ESA.

They said that solar systems, galaxies even, can be destroyed… that it’s happening all the time … in black holes and quasars and places where stars are flung at millions of miles an hour and in explosions that equal the energy expended in the entire rest of the universe.  They said that our solar system is looking directly “down the gun barrel” of a potential quasar, which is set to go off any time (any time in astronomical terms is now or in several million years).  The program said in fact, it could have already happened, and we just don’t know it yet, on account of the distance and time it would take to get here.  It also said not to worry, because if that were the case, it would be over so fast that we wouldn’t know what hit us.  I said, “Well, that would take care of my insomnia.”  And I said, “Oh, thank you very much.  This is just what I need to know at 2 o’clock in the morning.” 

There are all these thing…all these big, big things…and still, this little deer is under the ice… and this one death matters to someone… to me… I saw it…

These are things I don’t understand, and I will admit that I spend a good bit of time thinking about them.  I live with my questions… wondering what I could possibly tell you about such large and tender things… how I could avoid being trite or intrusive… how I could respect your losses and the way you have to live with them right now.  I admit that my body or my sense of being keeps rooting down…wanting… feeling its way a little further into these questions… and meantime I keep breathing.

It will be the seventh anniversary of my father’s death in April… and now is the anniversary of the time when we were all going through it.  It was difficult… new parts of my dad’s body not working… new lowering of hopes and expectations… and new exhaustions and new sufferings… past anything we ever thought we could handle and then past that.   And we had to say yes to everything because he was going through it and we had to say yes to him. 

So he was dying and we were dying with him and then he kept going and we came back.   I learned I could function on two hours of sleep and go into the ocean (in Florida) and the ocean would take some of my exhaustion away.  I learned that little things matter as much as big things.  I learned how people made a difference… when everything was so raw and every moment so precious… how brief words and kindnesses still shine on me as greatness and wisdom... and how utter stupidity, and the damage it did, was always in the form of personal smallness disguised as adherence to procedures. 

This picture is called, "Remembering Dad".  I took it on Block Island, in February before he died in April.  It was very cold and the wind was blowing, blasting me with sand.  It was on this walk that I gave up fighting for my father's life.  He was in a coma in March and I flew down to Florida and got to the hospital at midnight.  I was told that he wouldn't live out the night.  I walked into his room and said, "Dad, I've got pictures."   He woke up.  He said, "Watcha got?"  He saw this picture and many others, including many waves and deer.  He also, and this is more to the point, lived a few more weeks and he saw or spoke to all my brothers and sisters and also to his grandchildren.  We took him out on a dock to see the ocean just days before he died.

I was of course zooming around, trying to "fix it."  He was in his chair and looking out the window.  He said, “Gracie.  Stop trying to entertain me.  Look at the sky.  It’s so blue.”  That has helped me a lot… to know at the end of his life, as he was edging over, the blue sky was good for my father.   The thing itself… the simplest thing… a most fundamental and obvious thing about living on this particular planet… the only thing left for him when everything else was taken away.  That was enough for him.  That and his courage… my whole families’ courage during that time helped me afterward and it still helps me now.

This picture is called "Now". 

Refuge

Bald Eagle in flight at the fish hatchery.

On the way into the fish hatchery. 

The eagles love to perch on the high electrical poles.

I came off the island to celebrate my mother and my sister’s birthdays, but the first thing I did was go to the Fish Hatchery in Central Village, CT.  I was hoping to see a snowy owl.  Instead, I saw an eagle. 

Then my sister, her family, and some friends visited Horizon Wings in Ashford, CT. (This is non-profit organization that is a refuge for raptors.  It was formed in 2001 by Mary-Beth Kaeser and her husband, Alan Nordell.)  Many birds at the center are rehabilitated and released into the wild.  Those are protected from human contact.   Sometimes this is not possible because of imprinting or injury.  Those are kept at the refuge for the rest of their lives.  Some are patiently trained to participate in educational programs.  Care for the birds is expensive.  They need daily attention.  They are given mice or other small animals - killed ahead of time because injured birds in a small enclosure cannot quickly dispatch their prey.  Birds need species-specific housing.  Some need a source of heat.

Most of the birds were behind plastic netting inside their enclosures. We were instructed for their sake, not to get too close.  (In one case we were walking by an enclosure and the bird started to hyperventilate.)  So I didn’t get many pictures but I learned some things I didn’t know, including the following:

  • An eagle can see a mouse from a mile away.  It can also see fish underwater.
  • It has a six-foot wingspan but only weighs twelve pounds.
  • A three-pound hawk can carry off a squirrel that weighs six pounds.
  • An owl has twice as many vertebrae in its neck as we do, which allow it to turn its head 270 degrees.
  • Birds use their wings as a “cape”.  A bird with a missing wing is like a person with half a coat.  It cannot stay warm.  For this and perhaps for other reasons, it is now illegal to operate on a wild bird with a missing wing, even if the operation would save its life.
  • I knew owls were silent, but I didn’t know why.  They have special feathery edges at the end of their wings… special silent edges.  And their wings have a narrow range of motion.  They are made to provide lift without beating fast.
  • The fastest bird and in fact, the fastest animal of any kind, is the Peregrine Falcon.  It flies high, spots prey and dives backward, plummeting with an average diving speed of 112 miles (and a maximum of 242 miles) an hour.  The falcon has special baffles in its beak to keep air from driving in and damaging its lungs.

This is a two-year old Bald Eagle.  In a year or so, he’ll have his characteristic white head.  His brown eyes will turn  the color of cream and eventually to gold.

Mary-Beth and Alan were able to bring this eagle from Washington State after much wrangling and paperwork. He will never be returned to the wild because of an injured wing.  Mary-Beth is training him.  I try to imagine how counter-instinctive this must be for the eagle…I think he’d just as soon be abducted by aliens.  Some handlers withhold food to force a wild animal to come to them but Mary-Beth won’t do that.  She makes slower and more sustaining progress through daily contact… and also by singing …letting him hear her constantly… giving him an ongoing thread to associate with care and food and safety.

Mary-Beth is holding him in this picture and singing the song she always sings… “You Are My Sunshine.”  After two years, and just a week or so ago, he looked directly into her eyes for the first time, then inclined his head toward her and returned a low call.

This American Crow was attacked by a hawk when he was a chick.  The hawk actually had him in his talons.  Other crows came and harassed the hawk until he dropped the chick, whose shoulder was broken.  This fellow will take things he is given, shiny objects like dimes, and save them in his treasure box.  He is given extra food each day because wild crows come and he feeds them through the spaces in the netting around his cage.

This Barn Owl was born in captivity.  She was raised as an educational bird and brought to Horizon Wings when the non-profit portion of her facility was closed.

This is a Screech Owl, injured by flying into a window.  He is being held by my sister, Cathy.  (If you go to the "About" tab and look at our family picture… she’s the little person blowing her trumpet.  As you can see… she’s grown.   And PS - She is a great and I mean great, basketball player.  Cathy Bochain.  I taught her everything I know about basketball and in spite of that, she's in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.)

This is a little Northern Saw-whet Owl.   She was stunned after being slightly grazed by one car, and the driver went back to pick her up.  But in the meantime another car came, and that’s when she was severely injured.  She was so light she was blown around underneath the car as it passed.  Her eyes were abraded on the road and she suffered neurological injuries.

This is the same tree as you saw earlier in the blog... except it's in the evening.  I wanted you to see the night coming.  We can't see in the dark, but owls can, and even Wilson and Molly can.  At least in Central Village... night is still wild  and it belongs to them.

I went back to the Hatchery the next evening.  Someone started doing target practice somewhere across the river.  The sounds of gunshots came every two seconds, and then there was a break and then many more shots in rapid succession.  This continued for some time.  I saw the eagles but they were up and circling, very high, probably where they felt as safe as possible.   Wilson (my older golden retriever), starting shaking. We made our way back to the car through snow, stepping in deep footprints I had made on my visit a few days before.  Wilson stopped every five seconds to sit on my feet, to feel the comfort of my legs against his back, but he also blocked my progress.  On instinct, I began saying…”Good Wilson… good Wilson… it’s OK, Wilson… good boy…” in a soft sing-song voice.  Then I remembered Mary-Beth singing to her eagle.  

I have learned by taking pictures of animals that I live beside them in a different universe.  Me and birds or… dragonflies, or bees or seals or deer or others… all of us …in the same landscape… usually unaware of each others' presence, and basically oblivious to each others' experience.  It fascinates me, with all our differences, that is it is possible to bridge the gulf at all.  I have been told that I project human interpretations on animal behaviors.  OK, well, that’s absolutely true.  (Once when I was by myself on the island I passed an enjoyable evening with a fly.  I gave him a little red wine, which did not improve his flying.)   But still, I think we are the same in certain ways.  We all know what fear is, and food, and trust, and safety (and light for that matter as you know, but that’s another topic).  This common knowledge can help us make a connection if we want to.  Or need to.   

I asked myself why people whose children are grown would tie themselves up with such a constant expense and responsibility.  I can only say what is obvious when you meet them.  They do it because they love the birds.

These birds are a remnant, luckily saved among thousands… They uniquely live between their world and ours.  Perhaps they show us something.   I feel like I made the smallest start in such a short visit.    I love their golden or amber or their night black eyes.  I love their beauty and power.  I love their variety and adaptation… the incredible way that they are so suited, so especially and perfectly suited to the requirements of their lives.  It’s all of that, but that’s not all.  There’s something I feel so strongly but have no words to describe.

I’ve gone back to the pictures again and again, which is the big advantage of pictures.  I think of how the birds are caged but also protected.  I think of all the other birds out there, their ranges expanding and contracting, the life and death in every encounter, how any one of them is a few days at most, from starvation.  I remember that many of the birds in the refuge are endangered or on a watch list.  I think of the wild crows coming and wonder why the caged one gives them food.  I think of the eagle slowly acclimating to Mary-Beth and finally returning her song. 

I don’t want to make this into a romantic story.  I know that any one of these birds would eat me for lunch if it could.  I’ll say again that I have no words for what I feel when I see them.   I can only say they affect me and I can see something deep and significant in their magnificent lives.   I see our habitat merging with theirs…Falcons in New York City, Eagles at the Fish Hatchery, Snowy Owls on Block Island… and I hope it continues.  I will joyfully go out and take their pictures.

I’m glad that two people have decided to take care of them and tell other people about them.   Horizon Wings has a clean up day once a year and the public is invited to help.  They also need and accept tax-deductible donations.  More information is available here (http://www.horizonwings.org/).

This is the Bald Eagle flying on the first day.



Valentine's Day Waves

Impact wave, blooming at Vaill Beach.

 

There was a big storm with wind from the northwest at 30 knots, gusting to 50.  My friend Linda had already called to tell me the waves near her house were awesome.  So of course I had to go out and take pictures.

I went to Vaill Beach.  The trail had turned to a stream on account of the snow melt.  I climbed down in slippery stages, carefully placing my equipment below me in order to use my hands.

There were new waves churning, made by near wind.  These are different than waves that have come from a distance.  Waves combine as they travel.  They smooth and they organize.  They are farther apart.  But these were like suds in a washing machine.   I wanted to show you their energy and chaos, but I also wanted some form.  I didn't want to show you mountains of mashed potatoes.

I climbed up on a boulder,  just outside of the impact zone.  I saw the white water coming at speed.  There is a reason they speak of war in the language of water... an army surging or pouring forward...waves of attack.  One wave would come directly at me and before I could recover, another one would come. 

The entire island is glacial till, made of sand and clay and boulders.  The bluffs are always unstable - particularly after a thaw.

Then I made my way around the southwest corner of the island and I felt the full force of the wind.  I walked in the margin between the water and the bluffs, which are always in the process of falling.   I called my dogs when they got too close.  I called “danger!” and they came running.  (This is not an example of obedience but of our history together.  We spend a lot of time on this beach and they know what that word means.)

I wanted to find patterns.  I needed some height.  I got myself up to a grassy, stable perch.  It was a gentle slope with nothing to calve off, no stones or sand above me to fall.  My dogs sat up there with me, smelling the wind, as always.  I saw the trains of waves and the wind blowing wave tops sideways.   I braced myself in the strong wind.  I saw how the light was changing, and I knew I would get some good pictures.

Every wave is true, and everything about it is true, but you can tell a different story through what you choose to show.  In close, you'll show detail and people will feel how it is to be in the water, and farther away they'll see the shape of the ocean.  There is always a series of questions... Where does a wave begin and end?  Where is the best light shining?  Where is the clearest pattern?  What is the most beautiful or powerful thing?  

I was weighing my situation.  The waves would be getting bigger.   It was a full moon, and a very high tide was coming.   I didn’t want to have to hug the bluffs and I didn’t want to walk through water that was 39 degrees, Fahrenheit.  I told myself it was time to leave. 

But the colors were getting glorious...

... and the cormorants began circling round and round.  They were working between the sky and the ocean.  I wanted them low.  I wanted their dark shapes in front of white water.  I found myself saying, “Come on… come on…” and then they flew right where I wanted.

And the colors kept deepening...

I began to say, "39 degrees is not that cold." and "I'll only get wet on my feet."  And I stayed for several more minutes. I finally talked myself into leaving by making a number of excellent observations.   I said I didn’t have to cling to a dangerous situation…that I would find new things on my way.  I reminded myself that I have always found surprising new beauty, the moment I moved along.

So I was walking back and I actually practiced how I would tell you about my maturity and respect for the forces of nature, you know, being one with the elements and everything.   And I did get some wonderful pictures.

Facing northeast, the sky was already darkening, and waves were breaking on the same boulders as they had been at the beginning of my expedition.  Now, the waves were catching the evening light.  It helps my heart to see this... light and wind and water and stone...what could be better?

There was only one spot where I had to rush, timing myself between waves, and everywhere else I had lots of room.  I'm not saying I was reckless.  Living on Block Island has been a progressive realization, not just of beauty but of danger.  As Edie's father told her, "You never turn your back on the ocean".  If I had doubts I would have listened.  But my body turned around and I just let it happen.  I followed my pictures.   I went back and I stayed until sunset.

 

 

 

 

A Little Exposure

I love to work on my blog posts in secret but when I publish them I usually feel exposed.  It has taken me a while to put my inner experience out where people can see it, and I admit that it can be a little frightening.

I have some ways to help myself.  I tell myself my fears are irrelevant.  I also have a personal “dementor”, a wraith-like creature from the Harry Potter movies.  He's a little Lego figure less than an inch high.  I let him hurl his opinions in his tiny, squeaky voice.  I also ask my husband to tell me again that he still likes the blog, and he does.  He reads it every time and he clicks the little heart icon, which makes a “like”, which is good for our relationship.  I sit myself down with encouraging words as if I’m speaking to a 7th grader, which is about the grade I’m in when I’m having these feelings.  But none of that worked this last time.  There was nothing I could do but live through my feelings, stand next to them, give myself, to the best of my ability, some sympathetic friendship.  So then I felt some things I try hard not to feel, with more painful memories emerging as the day went on.

Friends stopped by.  Gabby brought six of the most beautiful blue eggs, laid by her father’s chickens.  Chris came to show me his new pictures of a snowy owl.  He’d also gone clamming and he brought me a dozen. 

I remembered what my cousin Liz said the last time we talked: “There are both constructive and destructive forces."  And I started to think about my songbirds - how they like to stay in the thicket where the hawks and owls can’t reach them and how they also come out to the feeder.  How they go back and forth between safety and danger, how they choose their degree of exposure.

I thought, “We all have to be who we are.”  And I remembered what some of us have gone through to do so.  And then I thought, “We live on more than safety.”  Then I felt we are all plants growing through stones and earth - unstoppably growing through all the risks and dangers, whether they’re real or re-lived or imagined.  And then I thought, “We can help each other better because of it.”  And then I thought that none of this would happen if the purpose of life was to have an easy time.

Then Edie called and Chris called to tell me their snowy owl was back and perching near their houses. So I went and Chris was working in his driveway.  Now Chris grew up on Block Island.  His long years of living here and his family legacy of farmers, hunters and fishermen, and his personality in general, have given him an intelligent…and heart-felt… and careful…and perceptive…and responsible…and uncanny…and effective relationship with nature.  He can find Indian arrowheads on a stony beach.  Do you know what arrowheads look like on a stony beach?  They look like stones.  I’ve tried to find them.  It’s impossible. 

He stopped me.  He pointed out the owl.  He said, “Be careful or he’ll fly.  Park here, not there.  You can get out of the car; you can step over the stone wall, there.  Walk slowly and quietly.”  He answered my question, “Yes, you can keep your yellow raincoat on.  He’s colorblind.”  He said, “Do you see he’s young?  He still has his juvenile feathers.  Do you see the feathers that cover his beak to keep it warm?  Do you see him preening and fluffing to trap the air?  He’s flown from the Arctic Circle.  He’s perfectly made for the cold.”  He motioned with his hand…”If you step over that line, he’ll fly.”  So I knew an expert when I saw one and I did as he advised and everything happened exactly as he said.

So I got my first pictures of a snowy owl.  I went over to Chris.   I said, “That was wonderful.”  He said, “I’m glad you got your pictures.”  Then I drove to the dump beach on the west side of the island, and on the way I realized that things had changed…that I was feeling deeply happy.  I walked with the dogs to North Light, stopping to visit my secret dune valleys.  I picked up some beautiful seagull bones and also some sea glass including the first red piece I have ever found in my entire life.   What a good day.

PS:  Marybeth sent me an article about snowy owls.  Here is the link: (http://aeon.co/magazine/nature-and-cosmos/the-snowy-owl-is-a-messenger-from-the-arctic/?utm_source=Aeon+newsletter&utm_campaign=81f5e0df5b-Daily_Newsletter_February_4_20142_4_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-81f5e0df5b-68638837).

PPS:  My sister Cathy (today is her birthday) has a friend who saves and rehabilitates raptors (owls, hawks, eagles) in Ashford, CT.  Here’s that link as well:  (https://www.facebook.com/horizonwingsraptorrehabilitationandeducation).

Looking Beyond My Agenda

This is one of my favorite birds... a Mourning Dove, also called a Rain Dove. 

I want to tell you about the equipment I borrowed through Canon Professional Services.  If I were to buy this equipment, the Canon EF 600 mm / 4.0L I.S. II USM lens would cost almost $13,000 and the Canon Digital EOS 1DX camera, would cost almost $7,000.  They were due back in Virginia this past Monday.  Canon is not kidding about this deadline because they often have other people waiting. 

The problem was we were having a blizzard.  The boats were cancelled for most of Thursday and Friday and there was no FedEx service on the weekend.  I called and was graciously given a two-day extension. On Monday, I woke in the wee hours, listening to the unexpected wind.  I was sure the boat would cancel again.  At that point, I would have done an over-night shipment, to the tune of $500, or I would have gotten in the car as soon as the boats were running, and driven to Virginia myself.  

Mercifully, the wind was from the south, which gave some shelter in the lee of the island, and the boat was able to run.   I tell you this so that you will know that having this equipment was both wondrous and terrifying. 

The camera and lens were due today.  I have been tracking them all morning.  They were delivered five minutes ago.  Phew.

Just a little fellow, pecking for seeds.  Note the narrow depth of field.  That's because this is such a huge telephoto lens and I'm taking the pictures at close range.

Having gone all around the Island with Josh and Emily and having gotten many seal pictures, I was ready for phase two.  I set up a bird blind in my kitchen, opened the window, shielded it with pillows and black plastic and set myself to the task of taking pictures of songbirds.

 

I especially wanted to catch birds in flight but they move very fast and very unexpectedly.  A bigger bird like an egret or a heron will think about it.  You’ll see a subtle motion.  They’ll stretch or fidget, make a start, and then fly.   Not these little creatures.  They are here and if you blink, they’re gone.   

 

I took scores of pictures, waiting for this cardinal to fly.

I took scores of pictures, waiting for this cardinal to fly.

So I picked a bird and starting shooting continuously, hoping to already be in process of taking a picture when he made his move.  I sat there for two days like an addict at a slot machine, feeding in quarters, or in this case hitting the shutter button, hoping for a lucky strike.

I took two thousand pictures. That is a testament to the endless opportunity afforded in a digital environment, to the obstinate side of my personality, and also to the fact that I knew I would not have the chance to use this equipment again, any time soon. 

 

 

 

 

And he did!

Here is a series on a female cardinal, leaping before she opens her wings.

My friend Marybeth Jarrosak came over yesterday.  I showed her my pictures.  She said, “What would happen if you zoomed in on your pictures… looked a little closer?”  We did, and this is what we saw.

Just when you think you know what to expect with photography, something new can come.  It's fine to have an agenda but it's also good to look beyond it.  In this case, I was so committed to birds in flight that I didn’t see the thing right under my nose - the capacity the big lens afforded to get in close and record the details on these birds. 


2014Jan05_2930 2 blog wm.jpg

It was a good thing I had Marybeth to keep me from locking in too soon.  If she had not come over yesterday, I might have gone to my grave with the pictures already in front of me, but never looking as closely, never knowing how cool it is to see the detail and color on a female cardinal's chest, or the small grey ferns under her beak, or her very nice hairdo, or her tiny tongue. 

(I want you to see Marybeth’s websites. She has an affinity and care for every living thing.   I have seen bees and dogs and gardens relax and flourish the minute she comes into their neighborhood.  She is a wonderful photographer.  You can see her images here (at http://marybethjarrosak.wordpress.com) and can see and read more about her gardens and many other things here (at http://hammerandhoe.wordpress.com)).

Photography has enabled me to look in a lot of places and see in a lot of ways.  It has enabled me to look in a sense, at how the world is constructed. 

There has never been a single thing where I've said, "God, that's surprisingly ugly."  It has always been the other way around.  Most things have been more beautiful than I could have imagined.  There have also been things that were difficult to see, but they have had their beauty also.  I mean, because they mattered.  That's how I feel. 

In Close

My stepdaughter and her friend came to the island for the holidays.  We went out as often as we could to take pictures.  I made arrangements to borrow a special lens for a few days… a 600 mm lens that could be used with an extender, making our effective reach 1200 mm.  That’s powerful enough to make out the houses on the mainland, 13 miles away.  It allowed us to take pictures of wildlife in a resolution that I have rarely had a chance to experience.

Emily took this picture from very far away.  (By the way, when photographers hang out together, they refer to camera lenses as "glass".  As in, "What kind of glass were you using?"  If you are a member of Canon Professional Services, you can, amazingly, borrow this lens.  Then you can casually say, "Oh, it was just the Canon EF 600 mm f/4L IS II lens."  You can be humble about it.  It's like if you said, "I was just putting my groceries into my Jaguar.  You know, the back seat is so small."

Josh and Emily and I were taking turns using the camera.  I don't know which of us took the picture.

Josh and Emily and I were taking turns using the camera.  I don't know which of us took the picture.

I have said that every lens is like a language.  It is also like seeing with new eyes.  This is one of the things I love the most about photography.  It's great enough to have vision, but I am used to that.  Seeing through different lenses allows me to see things as if for the first time.  Maybe, in that sense, it brings me closer to seeing with the eyes of a child.  With this lens, we could get in closer, especially with wildlife, see their natural behavior without affecting them with our presence.  A high powered lens like this takes practice.  It was quite a trick to see something so far away and locate it in the viewfinder, as Emily did for the deer.  

The seals are still arriving.  We counted eight or nine near Old Harbor Point on the 31st of December and twenty-five on New Year’s Day.  They’ve come from Maine and Nova Scotia to the relative warmth, here in balmy southern Rhode Island.  I debated about using this picture of the seal with the injured face.  It's not pretty but it's true to the reality of their lives.  I remember when this first happened, years ago.  I'm glad to see this seal's resilience... it keeps coming back.  I wait for it.  They say adult seals are solitary creatures.  When I look at them fanning out like a basketball team, evenly spaced to control their territory, or resting together like this, I'm not so sure.

It's good to see them back again, to see them lounging after their travels.  I hope their smiles mean the same thing on their faces as they do on ours.  I think we'd have to have a biologist weigh in here, but I'll just say I've seen them angry and I've seen them alarmed, and their faces seem to match those emotions in a way that I can understand.  I've also seen them blissed out and napping on these cozy rocks.  They look pretty happy to me. 

 Here is a little one, able and independent after just a short time.

We went to North Light and the Coast Guard Station and Cormorant Cove and Rodman's Hollow, and to Southwest Point and Old Harbor Point.  We took pictures of deer and seals, and chickens and peacocks and turkeys.  We saw them in close because of our super cool equipment.  We did this together. 

How did I ever get so lucky?

Merry Christmas

I put a bird feeder by our kitchen and I sit with the window open, trying to catch them in flight.  It's tricky because those little buggers fly by at 50 miles an hour.  Sometimes I can get them as they are flying toward me...that gives me an extra second.  And sometimes, as in this case, I get lucky when a bird decides to fly after I've already started to take the shot.

They make the softest, fluttering sound.  I love this.  It's right up there with an infant's breath when I hold him against my shoulder, and of course it's up with the sound of snow falling, or the sound of the ocean at flat calm.  That sounds like nothing or sometimes it sounds like shhhhh or zzzzz as the water moves with the current, folding down, zipping itself along the shore.  Here on the island, especially in winter, you can hear the smallest things.

There are eleven birds in this picture, I think.  I was hoping for a twelfth bird of Christmas, but as far as I can tell, it's eleven.  And here is a closer shot of just one bird.  He looks small enough, and I can tell you from experience, if you held him, he would seem smaller still.  Him with his hollow bones, so strong and light and graceful for flight, and his pat-of-butter sized body, and the downy fluff that triples his size and weighs about as much as the air.  He is outlandishly red (and he's more skittish than chicadees on account of it) and when the wind blows you can see he's grey underneath.  He has a wildly beating molecule for a heart.  He's such a small, so easily freezable person but he flies out there, sleeps out there, stays out there.  That gets me.   Week after week, through the whole winter, he matches his tiny body to our vast, unstoppable, cold ocean wind, and lives.

May you have a Merry Christmas in the company of loved ones, and I hope you stay out of the wind.  And I hope you have a moment to hear the smallest sounds of the great wild winter and may you easily return to the warmth of your sheltering home.

A sturdy fellow.

A sturdy fellow.

What the Wind Has Made

A Flurry of Geese, Quinebaug Valley Trout Hatchery, Central Village, CT.  November, 2013.
 

I’m at my family home in Moosup for the holiday and Wilson and Molly and I went to the Trout Hatchery on the Quinebaug River in Central Village.  This hatchery grows a half a million pounds of trout each year for restocking the ponds and rivers in Connecticut.  It attracts ducks and geese and blue heron and sea gulls and hawks and in the last year or so, bald eagles.   I went early and stayed long, hoping to get some good bird pictures.

The picture above happened unexpectedly when I was trying to creep up on some heron.  A flock of geese burst upward and I heard the flurry of wings behind me.  I turned, reflexively taking a wild and lucky shot. The only other opportunity came later when four heron flew straight over my head, proud, well-illuminated, calling to each other, close and beautiful.  And what was I doing at that moment?  Changing lenses.  Welcome to bird photography.

Hunters came to the woods and the birds went into hiding.  I took to the fields to see the milkweed seedpods I’ve particularly loved since childhood.  It was easy to imagine a world… fairies in orderly choirs, riding their seed parachutes, living in pod houses. 

Now they evoke in me a tender sadness… about the last moments where the life that used to be summer is offered to the wind.  The seedpods wait, one sliver open, so fragile I could change everything by brushing by, but they hold their place and time happens and they open a little more, and more threads and more waiting and more wind and more opening and more endurance in these delicate things.  And finally, what’s left is a grey and golden shell and the seeds have gone everywhere. 

I was thinking about it… about the wings and seeds, and it occurred to me that they were created by the wind.  I mean, without the wind to hold them up and carry them they never would have been the way they are.  They are perfect together.. the wings and the wind; the seeds and the wind.  I like this.  It makes me think there is a way to live easily with the earth.

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Hanukkah, everyone.

 

 

Take Pictures of the Things You Love

This is an egret on Great Salt Pond this past September.  I used "paint daubs" and "spherize" in Photoshop to alter this image.

My step-daughter keeps telling me that a blog can evolve and that's good to know, because I want to write for a while about taking and working with photographs. 

The main thing is - go out and take some pictures.  Don't think too much about it.  Just notice what you are drawn to.  Photography is interesting in this way.  You think you are taking pictures of the world, and you are.  But there is so much to choose and you're the one who is choosing.  So it's also about you.  You catch yourself in the act of seeing the world.  It's your perception that meets the world as only you can see it.   I think I could take the best picture that was ever taken, the most famous picture, and still, one day it won't matter.  But I think the fact that I was outside taking pictures - that I met the world and it met me - or that anyone is out there also -  I think that will always matter. 

So what is important to you?  What do you find beautiful or interesting?  What do you love? 

Assuming you're using a digital camera, take as many pictures as possible.  That's how you find out about the generosity of this process.   Do you want to take 100 pictures over here and then go over and take another 100 over there?  You can.  Do you think you've made a mistake with a photo?  Take another.  How many chances do you want?  100? 1,000?  More?  Go ahead.  How much beauty and light do you want in your life?  You can have it.

Then go home and look at your pictures right away.  This is what my father and I used to do.  We'd go out and take pictures, or I would take pictures, and he would come with me and stay in the car.  I'd park where he had a view of the water, and I'd set him up with his radio, his snack, his paper, his water, his walker, and his binoculars.  At night, we'd look at the pictures.  In that way, I could bring him to all the places I had been.  I'd have hundreds of pictures and we'd scroll through them quickly.  He'd say, "nothing" "nothing"  "nothing",  giving his verdict with a regal flick of his hand.  Then finally, he'd say "Oooooh!".  In every case, it would be a picture of a wave, a bird or a deer.  It could have been the worst picture -  blurry,  bad light,  the ass end of something - but those were the things he loved.  We'd crop them this way and that way... look at them again and again.

It was important to look at the pictures right away.  It caused me, very naturally and intuitively, to connect my results with the act of taking pictures.  It taught me more about what I wanted, made me pay closer attention.  It also showed me when I needed to learn a specific technical skill, but in a way that was always directly useful, relevant to what I wanted to do.  This is the way I learned how to do photography.

There were a few human instincts at play.  One was the instinct for sight, and another for hunting, and another for seeking light, and another for knowing beauty.  There was also the instinct for learning.  I love this about photography:  It works with what humans do best, with what we've been doing for 200,000 years.  Photography affirms all of us in what is to be human, and it affirms each of us, specifically, as individuals.  We each have our own way of finding beauty.  It is about what is inside of us as much as what is outside.  We do have something to show to others. 

So I practice my skills (and those become mostly automatic after a while), but I always lead with what I love in taking pictures.  I tell myself the moment is more important than the picture.  I try to relax.  I follow what I'm drawn to and what I love.

 

 

 

About Beauty

Beautiful Dancers, Great Salt Pond, Block Island. 

 

People take 83% of their information in through their eyes.  And if you and I became blind, our brains would rewire to reorganize our other perceptions through our visual processing centers.  No other creature sees the way we do... in our range of light, with our focus on day time rather than night time seeing.   Do you know we've been seeing this way for at least 200,000 years?   Did you know that beauty is so important that a defining characteristic of people who have survived catastrophic events is they were able to notice beauty? 

Why is beauty so important?  We can explain the evolutionary advantage:  "We have beauty so we can find colorful things and eat them."  Or, break it into little parts:  “It is line and form and proportion, and pattern, and perspective, and color, and light."  But that says nothing about what it really means in our lives.  

What is it in beauty that satisfies and nourishes, what calms and centers and answers my questions before I can even name them, that directs my actions before even realize what I'm doing?   I cannot say, but when I am looking for faith I find it here, in a world of superfluous beauty.  The world does not have to be this beautiful.  It could look like the inside of a machine.  I know physicists are looking for a unified theory of everything.  Whatever the theory turns out to be, I know it will be beautiful.

I don't see beauty the way I want to.  I make myself too busy.    Another sunset splashes colors through the sky...another moon throws diamonds on the ocean... and I forget to notice.  Then the beauty in the world calls out to me, reminds me like I need it to:  "It's all here and everywhere.  You are more than your activity.  Stop and look."    

Then I tell myself I’ve got nothing to do but notice, and I know I belong in the world as one of its creatures.  My old habits assert themselves:  "I should take the pictures here and run and take some more over there.  What if I’m missing something?"  So I tell myself it is enough right now.  The beauty here is as awesome as the beauty over there.  This is how I am learning, by degrees, to know the fullness and depth of seeing (as only a human being can see) the beauty in the world."