Tag: landscapes

This holiday season…

enjoy every moment.

DSC_3355-EditThe past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.

Stephen Hawking

This image brings to a close over 12,000 hits, four years of weekly blog posts, and a whole lot of changes.

I remember writing my first post and agonizing over the image choice and the words to accompany it. Today I realize that choices are just like pathways that we encounter on a daily basis and the more we get in touch with ourselves the easier it becomes to decide which one to take.

Today’s image was taken Christmas morning, just at the point when the sun was able to burn through the layer of fog shrouding the hoar frost covered landscape. It was reminiscent of one of my best selling images, Chair 6, captured from a chairlift on an equally foggy Christmas morning several years ago.

It’s those unique moments when a landscape becomes more than its physical self and is unlikely to ever look exactly that same way again.

For me that might have been the best gift of the day shared with a man who also shares my love for our natural world.

Photographing atmospherics is a passion of mine. It transforms a landscape and creates an image that speaks to infinite possibilities; a perfect image to accompany the approach of the New Year.

Stephen Hawking also encouraged us to be curious and to make sense of what we see, and to wonder about what makes the universe exist.

I am continually reminded to take each day as it comes, to make it count, and most of all, to never take it for granted.

Thank you to all who have been with me from the beginning and to those who have joined me along the journey.

May your New Year be filled with joy and a spectrum full of possibilities!

Explore…

other artists and at the same time, challenge yourself!

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Chaos in nature is immediately challenging and forces a good artist to impose some type of order on his or her perception of a site.

Wolf Kahn

I was taking a pastel class and our teacher, for the week’s homework, sent us out to paint…of all things…landscapes!

I was horrified and almost got queasy at the thought of attempting a landscape. “You don’t like landscapes,” that inner voice whispered in my ear. “You will most definitely fail at this assignment.”

Dreading the onslaught of things that would soon be bombarding my senses I decided to do a little research and see if I could find anything that resonated with me before heading outside with paper and pastels.

I discovered Wolf Kahn and immediately fell in love with his view of the landscape. This was something that I could relate to. The colors were bold and the subject matter was just abstract enough to make me believe that I too could choose to see things differently.

It was a turning point in the way that I began to use my camera; more as a paint brush that could move and meld images into the way that I would love to see them. Not always as they were but as they could be!

I am eternally grateful to that teacher and mentor, that talented artist who was able to see that pastels were not where I needed to be and that it was okay for me to spend my time in class repeating my work with my camera.

Those pastel classes freed me to accept my love for the camera and to commit to following that medium wherever it would take me.

This is a landscape. These are birch trees. They calm me and at the same time send my imagination soaring.

Don’t be held back by preconceived limitations and be willing to step out of your comfort zone and explore other mediums. You might be surprised at where it leads you and the friendships that you might build with other artists.

I envision some day doing a show with a group of artists all looking at the same “scene” and then interpreting it in their own medium and own style. I think it would be fascinating.

And for those who take the time to teach and encourage what they see in others artistically, I am incredibly grateful.

Thank you, Nan…