Tag: Abstract

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Through the Briar Patch

SSA Photography (115 of 400)

Nostalgia is a beautiful word.  It is a is learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of the Homeric word νόστος (nóstos), meaning “homecoming” and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning “pain” or “ache”, and was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home.  Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.  For me, nothing evokes nostalgia like the mountains of North Carolina.  The earliest associations are of visiting the Smoky Mountains with my family when I was much younger, and later the mountains close to Winston-Salem, which were only a short drive away from Wake Forest.  For reasons I cannot explain, the feelings are strongest in the winter, when the wind has stripped away the leaves from the branches, and you can see through the skeletons of the trees through the valleys and to the peaks.  This photograph, taken outside of Brevard, North Carolina, evokes so many strong memories – all positive – which was not always the case in North Carolina.  Hindsight and nostalgia are curious like that, though.  No matter the number of disheartening days and nights, I still long to be back in the mountains.  We’re going up for a week after Christmas, and I know the feelings will rush back, satisfying the homesickness for a while.  Until then, in my mind, I’m going to Carolina…

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Wheat & Chaff

SSA Photography (165 of 400)

This photograph of a seedhead of tall ryegrass was taken on a high in Panthertown Creek, outside of Cashiers, North Carolina.  It is a simple photograph, and one which I would normally have skipped right over when I was sifting through the hundreds I took that day.  Nevertheless, something caught my eye in the simple elegance of the seeds and the blur and bokeh of the background.  Although not actual wheat, this native grass reminded me of the old aphorism “to separate the wheat from the chaff,” which is exactly what I do when I cull through the photographs to find the “keepers.”  The irony is not lost on me that the “chaff” nearly included this photograph.

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Silhouette

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The word silhouette is derived from the name of Étienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister who, in the mid eighteenth century, was forced by France’s credit crisis during the Seven Years’ War to impose severe economic demands upon the French people, particularly the wealthy.  Because of de Silhouette’s austere economies, his name became synonymous with anything done or made cheaply.  Prior to the advent of photography, silhouette profiles cut from black card were the cheapest way of recording a person’s appearance.  I think that this silhouette of the female photographer on the rock is one of my best black and white compositions.  The mist and morning layer in the background contrasts sharply with the wet stone in the foreground, with the tiniest break in the line of the outcropping (in perfect thirds, I might add) made by the photographer.  I cannot say that my eye was drawn to her initially, but once it caught her, my eye became curious and could not look away – and if I did, I was always drawn back.

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Invasive Beauty

SSA Photography (179 of 400)

This post was originally titled “Native Beauty,” as I had seen these beautiful purple flowers up and down the coast near Carmel, California.  With a bit of research, however, I found that these stunning flowers are an invasive species known as Pride of Madeira (Echium candicans).  In fact, forestry officials are removing them from native plant communities as part of habitat restoration efforts in coastal parks such as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  The genus name is from an ancient Greek word for the plant. It is derived from “echion,” with the root word “echis” meaning “viper.”  There are conflicting etymological justifications for the name, including that the shape of the seed resembles that of a viper’s head, and  that Echium Vulgare, a related plant, was a historically thought to be a remedy for the adder’s bite.  Candicans or “shining white” refers to one of the more famous varietals in Madeira, Portugal, where the plants originate.  It was originally referred to as Echium Fatuosum, which is where the “pride” in the name originated.  In California, however, the purple E. Candicans varietal shown in the photograph is the most common.

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Morning Dew

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This photograph was taken just after dawn on Little Talbot Island, north of Jacksonville, Florida.  It was one of the first macro photographs I took, and it remains one of my favorites.  I love how it captures the pendant dewdrop and the weight of the driftwood branch and the water.  The little bubbles add an interesting depth of field.

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Oaken Post

SSA Photography (160 of 400)

This photograph was taken in the Pisgah National Forest outside of Asheville, North Carolina.  The hollowed stump was in a grove of chestnut oaks (Quercus Prinus), and the cavity had become a repository for layers upon layers of chestnut oak leaves, where a small seedling was beginning to grow from an acorn, which had fallen in just the right spot.  As I spoke about the ephemerality of nature in the Emergence post, just days ago, I am also astounded by the rhythm and circularity of nature.  In the chaos of the ferns and brambles, an old hollowed stump sheltered and fostered a month-old seedling, which will some day soon overtake the stump and take root itself.

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Kintsugi

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In an series of three poignant essays, F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that he was fractured like a dinner plate that you would hide from the neighbors if they came over.  One of the greatest writers of the early 20th Century had indeed “cracked” under the pressure of his own success.  I identified with Fitzgerald’s essays—and Fitzgerald himself—on many levels, except that once cracked up, Fitzgerald never ventured to put himself back together again.

The Japanese have a beautiful word, kintsugi, which is the art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer, generally mixed with powdered precious metals like gold.  Kintsugi, however, stretches far beyond the art form.  It has become a philosophy, which accentuates the breakage and repair of the object as evidence of its history—rather than something to disguise or sweep into the dustbin.  The fractures are part of the object’s story, part of its beautiful memory.

We are all broken, some of us more than others, but these faults, these breaks shape who we are when we come out the other side—but only if we venture to put ourselves back together again like a shattered vase in the hands of an artist.

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Chip off the Old Block

SSA Photography (13 of 400)

This photograph was taken from the shore of the bay, in Bar Harbor, Maine.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, my father is from southeastern Maine, and the place has always held great memories for me.  The weathered geometry of the rocks on the beaches struck me more during this trip than as a kid, when I was wont to be found between and betwixt the ocean-side boulders with knees perpetually skinned by the barnacles.  Though not taken at Goose Rocks or Old Orchard Beach, where my dad would have been found in the summers, Maine is synonymous with him, and I am nothing, if not a chip off the old block.

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Herrick’s Bud

SSA Photography (171 of 400)

It’s rare that I can combine both my Latin and English major in a photography post, so I apologize for the length up front.

This photograph was taken in my in-laws’ garden in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.  The title refers to the first line of the 1648 poem by Robert Herrick’s, “To the Virgins, Make Much of Time,” which even non-English majors will remember from the scene in Dead Poet’s Society.  As Robin Williams’ character notes, the theme of the poem is carpe diem – seize the day.  Carpe diem is one of those phrases that has stood the test of time and meandered its way into the modern lexicon both in its original Latin and in its widely accepted translation.  Unlike phrases such as et cetera or even cave canem (a common phrase, even written on a floor mosaic in Pompeii), carpe diem has a wonderfully beautiful, poetic history.

The ephemerality of life has long been a preoccupation of poets, and it should, therefore, be no surprise that the greatest poets of the greatest ages wrote about the transient nature of beautiful things.  One of the earliest (extant) examples is Quintus Horatius Flaccus’ Ode 1.11, which features the line from which the phrase originates: “Sapias, vina liques, et spatio brevi spem longam reseces.  Dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.”  Translated, this means “Be wise, strain your wines, and because time is brief, cut short your long-term hopes.  Even while we are speaking, jealous time will have fled: so, seize the day, trusting as little as possible in what comes next.”

“Carpe” is an agrarian word, and though it can be (and usually is) translated as “seize,” it would have been understood by the readers of the Ode to mean “pluck” (like a grape from the vine).  It is this meaning that Herrick ascribes to when he says, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may / old Time is still a-flying / and this same flower that smiles today / to-morrow will be dying.”  And it is this meaning I ascribed to the photograph, which I took after my son Kemper (who was four at the time) plucked this bud for his mother, who ultimately set it afloat in the birdbath outside our window.

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Rhododendron

SSA Photography (157 of 400)

This photograph of a rhododendron bulb was one of the first macro photographs that I ever took.  It was taken in Deep Gap, North Carolina (near Brevard and Cashiers) on the property of a very close friend where my family spends two weeks in July and again at Christmas each year.   The word rhododendron is Greek for “rose tree” and counts azaleas among its many varietals.  The beautiful white-petaled flowers on this Rhododendron Maximum (“Rosebay” or “American” Rhododendron) had not yet emerged on the trees on the property, but the compact tulip-like bulbs were ripe to bloom very soon thereafter.

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