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Archive for the ‘from the dark room’ Category

The loch’s edge

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography on March 6, 2017| 7 Comments »

Yesterday whilst out in the Trossachs just north of Stirling in Scotland, the clouds opened up to reveal some patches of blue sky and allow the sun to reveal itself. Loch Venachar was as still as I’ve ever seen it. The reflections were simply stunning. I took a number of photos. Here’s one I’m particularly pleased with.

What you’re looking at here is the edge of the loch at the bottom of the image. The rocks are at the water’s edge. The branches stretch out from a few leafless trees which grow amongst the rocks and the rest of the image is the still water reflecting the sky.

I love how this image catches my attention straight away. My first thought is just how beautiful it looks. Then as I start to look more closely I feel a bit disorientated. What’s that rock doing up in the sky? Is it just hanging there, or is it impossibly supported by the tree’s spindly branches? Then the image resolves itself as I become more aware of the reflection.

I think it’s like this in life sometimes. We engage at an intuitive, emotional, even aesthetic level, taking in the whole as it is, then we start to focus on elements, or parts, and become a bit thrown off course, until we put what we are focusing on back into the contexts where they exist. Then the whole experience of standing at the edge of the water comes together again, but now intensified by our way of engaging with it.

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Living together

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography on March 4, 2017| 2 Comments »

The range and intensity of colours in these recent photos takes my breath away. Here are rocks, shells and petals, representing the kingdoms of the minerals, the animals and the plants. These three kingdoms are part of a whole. In my mind’s eye I see an image of the blue planet, the Earth seen from the surface of the Moon

and I recall the story of Edgar Mitchell’s journey back to Earth after walking on the Moon. He saw the alignment of the Moon, the Earth and the Sun appearing each time his spacecraft turned on its axis and had a profound experience of seeing the particular and the whole in the same moment. He looked at the beautiful planet he called home and wondered about human beings waging wars and killing each other over invisible lines they called borders and over beliefs in invisible gods and this new perspective gave him a deep desire to see humans live together peaceably.

When I look again at the beauty in these photos I’m motivated ever more strongly to contribute to such a change. We share this little planet, not just we humans, but we, the members of all the kingdoms of Nature.

We desperately need to find more creative, more just, more sustainable ways of living together.

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Nodes and connectors

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on March 2, 2017| 1 Comment »

Look at the skeleton of this beautiful fish. The intricate and delicate structure of the bones is a stunning demonstration of the nature of networks. We can see the whole skeleton is made up from two simple elements, nodes and connectors. Whether we zoom in to study just one group, or out to look at the larger regions we see a variety of different patterns based on these two simple elements.

If you start at any point on this skeleton you’ll be able to trace a path to any other point without ending up down some disconnected cul de sac. In other words every single point is connected to every other one….either in simple one or two step connections, or through an almost infinite variety of pathways across the whole structure.

This is one of the most fundamental patterns at the heart of reality – networks of nodes and connectors.

You can see the same design in all forms of life, especially in multicellular organisms, all kinds of plants, animals and human beings.

Networks of nodes and connectors are the essential fabric of the universe.

Two of the best books I know about this phenomenon are Linked by Barabasi, and Connected by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler. I recommend them both. They show how this apparently simple structure builds up into the most complex of phenomena, from individual organisms, to social groups and whole ecosystems.

Once you see things this way you can’t help but see connections everywhere. It’s the science which demonstrates the limitations of reductionism and abolishes the notion of atomisation.

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Entangled

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography on February 27, 2017| Leave a Comment »

starfish vines

Nature loves to be entangled.

Life seeks entanglement.

Nothing living can survive in complete isolation. We thrive when we are in active relationships with others, with other members of our own species, but especially with other forms of Life.

We need to connect, to make bonds, to entwine our energies and our destinies.

What kinds of connections can we make? What types of bonds will we form? How will we share our energies with each other?

Isn’t the most important question today – “how are we going to live together?”

 

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The blue yonder

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on February 23, 2017| 1 Comment »

The blue yonder – I wrote about Rebecca Solnit’s observation that distance is blue a while back.

The sea caught my attention for this shot….I was entranced by the rich palette of greens and blues….but when I looked later I noticed that the far mountains were just the kind of blue which she wrote about.

I love an image like this. I can lose myself in it for ages. I find it soothing and mesmerising. I hope you do too.

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The Rock Face

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on February 21, 2017| 3 Comments »

I know our brains are brilliant at spotting patterns, but have you ever noticed just how good they are at seeing faces?

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Becoming not being

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on February 20, 2017| 1 Comment »

Becoming not being……you know that tag line I’ve used on this blog since Day 1…

Well this is a great example.

What is a wave?

How do you define it, measure it, set its beginning and its end points?

All of those questions are hard enough to answer but when I look at the spray which the wind is whipping up from the advancing wave, and flinging it backwards like soft hair then I see our attempts to define and delimit disappear like the fine white spray itself.

I’ve never seen this phenomenon before. It was a particularly windy day but I’d never seen the wind do both these things at once…..drive the water towards the beach in big white crashing waves AND whip the foamy top of the wave to create this transient curtain of white water…….astonishing!

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Reaching for the moon

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on February 19, 2017| 2 Comments »

I’d noticed it earlier on my walk. The moon was hanging in the blue sky of the morning. But a little further on and around the corner I looked up and saw this. Wow! I can’t remember ever seeing the moon looking as big as this. Usually when I see the moon it’s pretty small, and if I take a photograph of it, somehow it appears even smaller, so when I pointed my camera towards it this time I was surprised to see it didn’t shrink. It sat there, almost kissing the Earth, holding its own, not diminished in the slightest by the size of the mountain beside it.

Sure, the moon wasn’t shining nearly as brightly as it does when it’s full and high in the night sky, but it was still impressive enough to stop me in my tracks.

There’s something magical about the moon for we humans, or maybe it’s better to say, there’s something magical about the relationship we humans have with the moon. It’s more than just a delight in beauty. It’s more than fascination and wonder.

She inspires us, stimulates our imagination, encourages us to dream, nurtures our feelings of love and romance.

The pull of the moon draws us up and out of our limits, or our habits, as we “reach for the moon”, aspiring to grow, develop, achieve, to become the best we can become.

I delight in my relationship with the moon.

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Moments of bliss

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on February 18, 2017| 1 Comment »

There are places in the world where I feel more whole, places where I am suddenly deeply aware of the strong flow of life, of energy, of spirit around and through me. Pausing for a moment under the canopy of ancient camphor trees in Kirstenboch gardens to gaze up and far to the surrounding mountains which draw my imagination to their summits and beyond, I feel at peace and enlivened at exactly the same moment.

A day later, browsing through my photographs, I stop again at this view and am surprised to discover my memory presents me with an image I captured in the colossal cathedral of Toledo last summer.

The window to heaven in the highest point of the cathedral’s roof.

What’s the connection?

Why are these two images linked in my mind?

There’s the resonance of the imagery, each with its dark, ragged frame around a bright, distant light. But there’s something else too….something of a feeling, that feeling of smallness, enfolded in a greater something, whilst drawn up beyond my self to the universal.

In the cathedral, I didn’t feel at peace. I encountered image after image of suffering, torture and death represented in the lives of the saints. The immensity of the stone structure of the building with its enormous, ornate golden sculptures weighed heavily on me. So, when I stumbled on the window to heaven it seemed to provide some release, some lightening of the spirit and the heart. A few moments later I caught sight of sunlight and trees through an open door and delighted in the cloistered garden it led to.

Under the camphor trees I had none of that heaviness. I felt more cocooned, welcomed by Nature. But then suddenly, here again was an opening which lifted me up and out of my self.

Moments of bliss.

Precious.

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Patterns of three

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on February 17, 2017| 2 Comments »

We humans are very good at spotting patterns. Finding patterns is such an interesting two way process. They are there in the world around us but we also develop a sort of sensitivity to particular ones. It’s like having a heightened awareness to certain patterns so we focus on them over other potential ones. Maybe one of the main things the right hemisphere of the cerebral cortex does is create patterns. After all, its predilection is for the betweenness of things, the connections. But our left hemisphere plays an important role here too. We use it to separate things out. I’m not sure we could see any patterns if our left hemisphere didn’t do its work of separating, abstracting, recognising and categorising.

I find patterns of three very appealing.

I particularly like triskeles, those simple Celtic knots created by intertwining three circles, or by spiralling out three arms from a central point.

But here’s something I’ve never seen before – three acorns growing in a beautiful pattern of three. Isn’t it wonderful?

A moment of “émerveillement” for me.

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