Month: March 2019

Thoughts on inspiration…

from under a bridge.

a colorful underside of a bridge with sharp light segments and some snow

“First you must have the images, then come the words.”

Robert James Waller, The Bridges of Madison County

I photograph first and then I write, for it’s the images that speak to me.

I rarely go out with expectations of what I’m going to photograph. It’s far more interesting to look around and see what’s there, which was how I ended up under this bridge. I can’t even begin to estimate the amount of travel this bridge sees as it leads to one of the most picturesque mountain sites in the country.

Great movie, by the way, the Bridges of Madison County. Written in eleven days after the author spent some time photographing bridges proving once again that inspiration can come from the most simple of events.

Falling…

through cracks.

DSC_2661-EditThe cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

Vladimir Nabokov

I look down from the 3rd floor in the early morning hours as the big city begins to stir. It has a life of its own, a rhythm, a pulse, this city that I am but a guest in.

I watch a man, perhaps younger than myself, push a cart laden with bottles and cans. He stops to check the dumpster and makes a selection of a handful of items.

I wonder if anyone misses him. I can’t imagine what his life is like compared to mine.

What happened that made him fall through the cracks…

 

Time…

when seconds matter.

shadows falling on fresh snow


Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Life is made up of seconds and minutes that roll into each other at an alarming pace.

Strewn between these moments are events better understood when viewed in slow motion.

Seconds matter, they change our lives in unimaginable ways.

Make them count…

Rare…

and fleeting.

kelvin helmholtz clouds breaking overtop of snowy peak blue sky

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I remember as a child one of my favorite posters was of a cloud identification chart. It made such an impact that many years later I can still picture it in my mind.

Much like the ocean, the sky is like a huge canvas just waiting for the first brushstrokes to be laid and on this day there was something special planned!

These clouds are created in part by instability when wind is moving at different speeds in the upper and lower layers of a cloud resulting in a wave like appearance. They were named after physicists Lord Kelvin and Hermann von Helmholtz.

A special note that often appears in discussions about the rare and fleeting clouds is that they are believed to have inspired the cloud formations in Van Gogh’s Starry Night oil on canvas.

A reminder to take time every day to enjoy the beauty found in our natural world. These disappeared in a moment but for me, they will live on forever.