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Archive for the ‘perception’ Category

After the high seas

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on February 25, 2015| Leave a Comment »

after the high tide

Last weekend the Atlantic coast of France experienced “les grandes marées” – high sea levels with spectacular waves and the risk of flooding in coastal towns.

After the high tides recede there is a bumper crop for fishermen and others seeking seafood.

I took this photo on the Île-de-Ré and now that I look at it, it reminds me of a musical score…..almost as if the people are the notes! Two ways to think of “composition” I guess.

It wasn’t only people out taking advantage of the receding sea…..

after the high tide

…..the birds were too (and isn’t there a nice symmetry or reflection between these two images?)

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Magritte gets an idea?

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on February 20, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Magritte gets an idea
I often have the experience that I take a photo, then when I get home and upload it onto my iPad or my Mac, I see it with new eyes, and those eyes see something I swear the old ones didn’t see when I took the shot!

Here is an example. I saw these trees and did my usual……moved about a bit changing my angle of view until I was happy with what I saw. Then I clicked.

Now I’m home, I see something else entirely, and it makes me wonder if this kind of view inspired Magritte….

magritte

 

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sometimes its the wee things….

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography on February 18, 2015| Leave a Comment »

In the cracks in reality

Ooh, what’s that up there?

No, not the window, or the plant, but, there in the crack in that great beam?

That wee thing……

Zzzz

Lovely.

Isn’t it often the wee things which make all the difference?

Isn’t it the art, the myth and the imagination which slips into the everyday structures, the wood, and the brick and the stone, which daily re-enchants the apparently ordinary?

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Can you see the moon?

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on February 16, 2015| 2 Comments »

Moon over mulberry

Can you see the moon?
I know, this is like one of those old “spot the ball” games, but see if you can spot where the moon is in this photo.

Moon in the clouds

Can you see it now? Here’s what phase it is at, and where it is in relation to the clouds in that photo.

Crescent moon

Ah, there it is….lovely, isn’t it?

So now you know exactly what you are looking for, try again –

Moon over mulberry

Two things to think about – one is, isn’t it easier to see something when you know what you are looking for? And the other is, how many of us are aware what phase the moon is in TODAY?

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Subtle rainbow

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on February 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »

subtle rainbow

Sometimes it’s not the most spectacular, vivid, bright or noisy phenomena which catch our attention.

As I looked out the window the other evening, just before the sun went down west of my field of vision, I saw this flickering colour in the clouds straight ahead.

It’s a sort of rainbow. A little scattering of the last light of the day through some prism in the clouds.

I’ve never seen this phenomenon before. The sun was a good 30 degrees to the west of where this occurred and there was no visible direct link between the position of the sun and this little shining strip of colours.

Quite subtle. It would have been easy to miss. And yet both striking and totally enthralling.

It lasted for about five minutes, then faded before the sun dropped below the horizon.

Oh, and who doesn’t like a sunset – so here’s what the setting sun looked like a few minutes later –

 

setting sun

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Life everywhere

Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the reading room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on February 7, 2015| 1 Comment »

Tiles and moss

Wherever you look on Earth, you’ll find Life.

Whether it’s the moss on the tiles here, or flowers by the roadside, trees, grass, insects, birds, fish……and, if you use microscopes, you can find bacteria in every environment on, and in, our planet.

There is Life in the most astonishing places. In the mouths of volcanoes, deep, deep under the sea where no light has ever reached, high up on the tallest mountains…..it’s everywhere.

Life is such a creative force, gathering what it finds here – chemicals, sunlight, energy – and creating more Life from what it finds.

Life is such a social force, working not just in competition with other organisms, but, crucially, in collaboration with them.

Life is such a force for change, constantly developing, growing, reproducing, evolving.

And here we are…..human beings. Life with consciousness. A form of Life which knows that it is alive and can think, and feel, and reflect.

Isn’t this all so amazing? That the Universe should have this drive towards ever greater complexity? That the Universe should seem to celebrate such astonishing diversity and uniqueness? That the Universe should produce consciousness?

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The edge of the light

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography on February 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Sunlight on vines

Probably the key principle underpinning my world view is “becoming not being”.

It seems to me that change is continuous and ubiquitous. I’m fascinated with transition, with transience and with those moments where you see the world change before your very eyes.

The photo above is of the light from the setting sun catching the wires strung across the vineyard to give the vines structure to climb in the spring. The vineyards are busy places in February. All day and every day there are viticulturists out tending to the vines. It seems to me they are active agents of change, preparing and tending, directing and nurturing….

I turned and looked to the West and at that moment the sunlight illuminated the plastic sheaths installed to protect the vines….

 

Vine glow

Quite a different image….almost abstract in its appearance, and a nice example of the interplay between the observer, the observed, the viewpoints, and the source of light.

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Small worlds

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, perception, photography on January 31, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Moss

Just after the sun set I got up close to the moss growing on the wall of the well in my garden.

Once I looked at the photo on my iPad and cropped the photo to show just the moss, I thought, in this light, these little plants with drops of water hanging from the ends of them, look like street lights!

Small world…..

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Red sky in the morning

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on January 30, 2015| 4 Comments »

Red sky in the morning, shepherds’ warning.

Know that old saying? The rest of it is “red sky at night, shepherds’ delight”.

What the shepherds were saying was that when the sky was red in the morning there would be bad weather on the way.

That might turn out to be true, but I must say, when I opened my shutters this morning and saw this, it delighted me. I didn’t look out, see this, and think “Oh no!” (But, then I don’t have sheep to look after!)

So, turns out red sky both in the morning and at night is “Bob’s delight”. I hope it’s yours too.

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The edge of dawn

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on January 29, 2015| 5 Comments »

From the plane window I saw the brightening sky before the dawn. Those deep contours in the clouds create such a strong impression of solidity, even though they are simply water particles hanging in the air.

Now, as dawn breaks, it looks so familiar, and yet so different from the usual dawn, because it’s the sun breaking through between the levels of the clouds, not between the clouds and the surface of the Earth.

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