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Archive for the ‘photography’ Category

Echoes

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on October 13, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The other day I came across these bird footprints in the sand…

Bird footprints

……then a couple of days later I saw this pattern on an old door….

Where the climber climbed

bird prints….plant prints…..

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The A to Z of becoming. Part 2. O for observe

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on October 12, 2014| 1 Comment »

Fishing net

In the second part of the A to Z of Becoming, O stands for Observe.

My first thought was to write again about using a camera. I carry a camera everywhere and have done for years. I find that if I have the camera in my hand I take a lot more photographs (I mean instead of carrying it in my bag and getting it out each time to use it). I have repeatedly had the experience that a conscious choice to have the camera in my hand increases my power of observation……I notice more when I have a thought about maybe taking photos. These days almost everyone has a camera with them all the time – in their smartphone. But sometimes you have to remind yourself that you do really have that camera with you…..it’s not just a phone!

But my second thought has been stimulated by reading James Pennebaker’s Secret Life of Pronouns. Pennebaker is a psychologist and in that book he describes an interesting experiment he did years ago. He attached a small video camera to a baseball hat then got students to put the hat on, walk a block from the college to the drugstore, buy some chewing gum, then walk back. Afterwards, they watched the videos. What they saw was fascinating. One video was almost exclusively of the pavement, as the student hardly looked up. Another couple showed the students were checking out any members of the opposite sex who passed by. And in one there was a very long shot of the chewing gum display as the student stood for ages trying to work out which gum to buy.

His point was that no two students observed the world in the same way because their personalities affected what they observed.

I’ve thought something similar before when you think about the conversations you hear after a group of friends have been to see the same movie, and you think “did we all actually see the SAME movie?”. There are many things which affect how we experience the world, but not least is what we observe.

So your challenge for this week, should you choose to accept it, is to observe your observations. Take some time to see what you’ve been seeing today. You can do that either by carrying a camera and taking photos through the day, then looking at the set in the evening, or by taking notes through the day…..writing down little observations, things which catch your attention, then reading through the notes at the end of the day.

Observe your observations. Become aware of what is catching your attention.

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What’s your tipple?

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography, science on October 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Rose hips

Last few grapes

Human beings are very adept making medicines from plants.

Have you come across the Sacred Science project? (They have made a thought provoking documentary about plants used in healing in the Amazon – you can find it on vimeo, but google sacred science to learn more).

Many, many years ago in the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh I saw an exhibition of the uses of plants by desert peoples. I’ve never forgotten it. I was so impressed with the market stalls they set up, with one displaying plants used to die clothes beautiful colours, and another one showing plants used to treat a variety of diseases. I remember thinking how on earth did they figure that this particular plant was great for dyeing your clothes purple, but this other is a great cure for diarrhoea?! It was that exhibition which introduced me to the whole field of ethnobotany……the study of Man’s relationship to plants.

A few years later I read that Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, first experimented with Peruvian tree bark (Cinchona). When I read about that medicine, which had been used to treat “swamp fever”, a disease we now know as “malaria”, I remember thinking how did the indigenous peoples of Peru know that this particular plant would treat this particular disease – a truth we confirmed many, many years later when we isolated the chemical, quinine, from this same tree, and found it was a good treatment for malaria.

I don’t know the answers to those old questions, but I am still fascinated by potential benefits we humans can receive from plants.

As I write this I’m watching the last few days of the grape harvest in Charente. Those grapes will be used to make cognac, using processes not that dissimilar to the ones we use in Scotland to make whisky from grain. I’m just learning that the various areas within the cognac-producing region of France produce extremely different flavours – just like the different regions of Scotland produce distinctly different whiskies. In both cases, the specific interactions between people and plants in these countries produce distinct and unique results.

What’s your favourite human-plant interaction?

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New to me

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on October 10, 2014| 1 Comment »

Maybe clover?

Sometimes I describe myself as “insatiably curious”. I suppose I have an instinct for what’s different, unique or unusual. And I find all of those things every day.

I’ve no idea what this is in this photo I took. It was pretty small but the colour made it stand out in the grass. Now that I can see it more clearly in this photo it’s even more beautiful, even more curious, than it was when I was taking the picture.

Amazing! Isn’t life just full of such uniqueness and diversity?

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Bursting with potential

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on October 9, 2014| 1 Comment »

Walnut in hand

There are a couple of walnut trees outside, each one abundant with nuts just now. I picked one of the nuts up from the dozens carpeting the ground.

Look!

Isn’t it amazing? This incredible dark brown walnut emerging from its shell. Look at the patterns on its surface. See how those patterns are echoed in the lines of my skin?

And, slightly disturbingly, doesn’t it look a little like a small brain?

 

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Change upon change

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on October 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Autumn rain

This is a beautiful season here in the Charente. After a heavy shower of rain (it’s impressive when rain falls with a certain determination or significance) I saw the raindrops on these gorgeous autumnal leaves.

I love the Japanese cultural reverence of transience which they celebrate  every Spring with the cherry blossom, but this combination of raindrops on autumn leaves seems to me to capture the essence of the dynamic changes we experience continuously in our lives……changes upon changes.

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The A to Z of Becoming. Part 2. N for Nest

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography on October 5, 2014| Leave a Comment »

In the A to Z of Becoming, second part, N stands for NEST.

photo

photo

photo

 

Although we normally associate nesting with birds, like this little one building his unusual upside down nest with its entrance from below, we also use the concept of nesting in our own lives.

In one way, our nest is our home. We all need a sense of home, and each of us will personalise our living space to create our own familiar nest. Have you thought about your home that way? What’s your nest like? How’s it doing? Have you made it the kind of nest you want to live in? Is there anything you’d like to change or modify to make it a more comfortable nest, make it more YOUR nest?

It’s interesting to look at the three photos above. They remind us that it takes time to build a nest. We don’t often walk straight in to a house and it’s instantly our home. It takes time, effort and choices to make it home. They also remind us that all nests are unique. There’s no single “right way” to build a nest. What’s important, is not only that it does the job of providing us with shelter, but that it feels like our home.

We use the concept of nesting in another way too, I think. Nesting involves some snuggling down, or, in old Scots’, to “coorie doon”. I’ve a friend who talks about the need for the occasional “Club Duvet Day”…..you get the idea. Sometimes we need to create a pause which involves making a small, comfortable space and settling into it for a bit.

So, what do you think?

Is there anything you could be doing to make your nest more the way you’d like it to be?

Or do you have the need this week to “coorie doon” for a wee while, to create a wee nest and settle into it – for rest, for restoration, for recovery?

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Lenses

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, photography on October 2, 2014| 1 Comment »

rain drops

Little drops of water shining so brilliantly on a leaf are not just like gemstones, they are like little lenses.

It’s  good couple of decades since I read “Lens of Perception“, but I remember being very taken with the author’s metaphor of the lens. We can only experience the world from our unique, subjective viewpoint, and our perception is continuously influenced by not only our personal make up and characteristics, but by our stories – created from our past experiences, memories, beliefs and values and by our imagination (so full of fears, anxieties, hopes, dreams and expectations).

It’s good to become aware of those lenses we wear all the time – we see the whole of Life through them.

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October…..coming to fruition

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on October 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

White Berry path

October is the month of fruition in my twelve monthly themes.

I think that sometimes we think of fruition as an end point…..after months of planning and work, now the results can be seen…..now the project comes to fruition.

But there’s another way to think of fruition when we don’t take a rigid linear view. The seasons are cyclical and autumn isn’t an end any more than spring is a beginning. There is something about fruition which is, at one and the same time, an emergence of all that has gone before, and the jumping off point into a fantastic increase in connections…..as the beech nuts fall from the tree, the beginnings of new beech trees are picked up and carried off by creatures or by wind.

 

Beech at the edge

So what is coming together for you this month….and where might it take you next?

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Art, myth and quality of life

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, photography on September 30, 2014| Leave a Comment »

One kelpie

The kelpies

A fairly recent development just off the Stirling/Edinburgh motorway is the installation of these “kelpies”. I visited them at the weekend for the first time. They’ve been installed in a newly created park area which has lots of common space for roller-blading, cycling, walking, feeding ducks at the duck pond, a children’s adventure playground and so on, but everyone comes to walk around, and be amazed by, the kelpies themselves. I visited on a Sunday which is probably a more busy day but there were hundreds and hundreds of people there.

Kelpies are part of the myths of Scotland – I suspect most people aren’t that particularly familiar with them, but I wonder how many go home and read a bit about them. Wikipedia is a good starting point (but it does strangely include paintings which depict kelpies as naked females, when, in folklore in Scotland, the kelpie was invariably male)

I loved that so many people were walking, sharing time with family or friends, and gaining such sheer pleasure from this open air art. What a fabulous combination of art, community and healthy activity. Made me wonder if we don’t pay enough attention to the way art in particular can be a central focus of influence on our quality of life.

 

 

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