Posted in from the dark room, photography, Uncategorized on October 21, 2016| 2 Comments »
I expect many of us put away our cameras when the rain comes on, but the rain can bring out the beauty in a city street.
These two photos were taken in Madrid in the summer time when the temperatures were high, but a ten minute rainfall which forced everyone to take cover in doorways really made the streets sparkle.
And I liked how this guy improvised by using the back door of his car for shelter…
Posted in art, from the dark room, life, perception, photography, Uncategorized on October 17, 2016| 1 Comment »
The sunlight reflecting on the leaves of the lilies caught my eye, but once I’d uploaded the photo and looked at it more closely I realised there were three completely separate areas of reflection in this one image.
There is the one which initially caught my eye. It’s so bright that the leaves are hardly green at all. They are like silver plates floating on the river. Right next to them is a reflection of the clouds passing up above. The ripples in the river give these clouds the appearance of a water colour painting. Quite beautiful.
Between them, these two reflections put me in mind of Monet’s paintings of lilies in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris….which is definitely one of those places to put on your bucket list.
To stand in one of those galleries with Monet’s astonishing paintings filling the entirety of your visual field is one of the most amazing experiences you could have in an art gallery.
Finally, right at the top of the photo, there are the reflections of the old watermill, the entrance to the park, and a bridge, all seemingly a much more literal kind of reflection somehow.
I hadn’t really thought much about different types of reflection before, but this one image has inspired me. I hope it does the same for you.
Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, from the viewing room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, Uncategorized, writing on October 13, 2016| 3 Comments »
I recently came across Rebecca Solnit’s contemplation of the colour blue through the Brainpickings site.
The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue. For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains.
and
If you can look across the distance without wanting to close it up, if you can own your longing in the same way that you own the beauty of that blue that can never be possessed? For something of this longing will, like the blue of distance, only be relocated, not assuaged, by acquisition and arrival, just as the mountains cease to be blue when you arrive among them and the blue instead tints the next beyond. Somewhere in this is the mystery of why tragedies are more beautiful than comedies and why we take a huge pleasure in the sadness of certain songs and stories. Something is always far away.
I got to thinking about a couple of photos I took recently in Spain, one in Grenada and one in Segovia.
She talks about how artists used the colour blue, and cites the following classical paintings amongst her examples –
Isn’t the blue of distance in these paintings really beautiful?
Here are another few examples from an old French book which we have at home –
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, Uncategorized on October 11, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I looked out of my window yesterday evening and saw the most beautiful and subtle shades of pink lying between the top of the vineyard and the blue sky high above.
When I went outside to look to the West I saw this –
How a small change in perspective, a shift in the direction of the gaze, can reveal such astonishingly different views…..
I think if I was asked to give one single piece of advice about photography I’d say move. Don’t just stand and point your camera straight ahead at eye level, but move around. Climb up on something, or crouch down, lie on the ground even, look in different directions, move in different directions and turn and shoot your photos from different places, even if those places are just a few steps apart.
Small changes in your position can reveal to you astonishingly different potential photos.
Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, photography, Uncategorized on May 28, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Karol Sikora, a well-known “cancer doctor”, just said this –
It doesn’t make much difference whether you are one of the people who get cured or not
He was talking about cancer care in “the NHS” (as a Scot, it bugs me every time when people refer to “the NHS”, as if there only was one). I suspect he was saying things in a controversial way to promote his new book, but this particular sentence really caught my attention.
He’s referring to how organisations and systems can be managed to work “efficiently”, and I think this probably applies to most health care systems around the world. We’ve developed a way of delivering health care as if individual patients don’t matter. Protocols are created based on the statistics from research into the experiences of groups of patients. I’ve even heard a young doctor say they were told that if a patient takes an evidence based drug and it doesn’t work, then either they haven’t taken the drug or they are lying. These are the kinds of things which happen when doctors take their eye off the ball.
When we base health care on management systems designed for industries which produce physical objects to sell, then, it seems, statistics become king.
It doesn’t make much difference whether you are one of the people who get cured or not
Really?
In what way does it not make much difference? To the individual it makes all the difference in the world. To the doctor? Shouldn’t it matter if this individual gets cured or not? Isn’t that an irreducible fundamental of all medical codes of behaviour? It’s always this patient, this very patient I am dealing with right now who has the right to the best possible care I can provide.
I struggled a bit to find a photo to go with this post then stumbled across this one of a sculpture I saw recently in a garden. It seems to capture that sense of caring for the individual. And it seems the character’s hair is standing on end. Maybe the little bird just told him what Karol Sikora had said!
We can’t accept this way of delivering health care, can we?
This story also made me think of those pretty pointless statistics you can see every day on billboards at railway stations, telling you what percentage of trains arrived on time this week. Should we deliver health care by aiming at percentages of patients properly cared for? Or should we deliver health care by always, I mean always, giving the very best care and attention to every single patient in every single interaction?
Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, Uncategorized on May 26, 2016| 1 Comment »
I happened across this little snail in a tree the other day. It immediately caught my attention and got me thinking.
Look at it…..
Doesn’t it look a perfect fit for that space? Doesn’t it look like it fills the space it’s living in quite completely? Doesn’t it look like it’s adapted well to where it’s found to live?
So what about you?
Hans Georg Gadamer, in his “Enigma of Health”, discusses ideas of health and refers to the concept of “fitness” – but not just the fitness of an athlete – the overall concept of “fitness” – when something is just right, when it just fits well. There is something in that idea which speaks to us of health. When we are in the groove, in the flow, in harmony….when everything falls into place……
What would you say about the fitness of your life? How well do you fit your life? How well does your life fit you?
Then I thought about how this snail seems somehow to be living fully or completely within its niche. And I wonder what you’d say about that?
We all live with certain boundaries, limits, “the hand we have been dealt”, influences from Nature and nurture, from the past and from the future, which set the parameters of our potential lives. Aren’t those parameters immense? Aren’t they almost infinite? But do we stretch ourselves out to fill our available life-space as well as we can? There’s something there about flourishing I think. Not just growing and developing, or being “the best you can be”, but of constantly expanding, flexibly adapting, to manifest ourselves, to express our uniqueness in our own vast life-space.
Adaptation. That’s such a good word. I find some people use it in a negative way as if adapting is about compromise and being less than you could be, but I don’t see it that way. Adaptation is how we grow, how we develop, how we live. Adaptation is how all of Life emerges and flourishes. I think we can get caught up in military and/or capitalist metaphors too much, thinking about the world in terms of competition, territory, power, and aggression. But actually, although all those things do exist, seeing the world that way often goes hand in hand with ignoring the co-operation, collaboration, compassion and kindness which also exists.
And when it comes to adaptation, there’s a lot to be said for negotiating your life-space, rather than killing for it!
If integration can be defined as the creation of mutually beneficial bonds between well differentiated parts, then adaptation becomes a process of a living in a way which maximises the abilities of you and I to explore and inhabit our personal, unique, life-spaces.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, Uncategorized on May 20, 2016| 1 Comment »
Of course, an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than all of you together, since she’s the one I’ve watered. Since she’s the one I put under glass, since she’s the one I sheltered behind the screen. Since she’s the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except the two or three butterflies). Since she’s the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she’s my rose.
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
A rose….but not just any rose.
Saint-Exupéry writes about a rose which the Little Prince cares for, and also writes about a fox with whom he forms a personal relationship. When talking about the fox, he uses the word “taming”, but in both cases he is describing the creation of personal relationships.
For each and every one of us, we experience life personally. We experience everything from our own, unique, subjective viewpoint. As we do that, we form particular, personal connections. You and others will feel differently about particular places, particular creatures, even particular trees and flowers.
It’s the same for us with people. The more we connect to someone, the more special we feel they are to us.
It seems to me that this is one of the best ways to improve the quality of our lives – make connections, form caring bonds…..make life personal.
Posted in art, from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography, Uncategorized on May 14, 2016| 2 Comments »
OK, I know I’m just using my imagination here, but don’t you think you can see a water angel in this iris?
She’s wearing a long robe, reaching up with both her arms and facing left as if she’s climbing up the yellow part of the flower…..
So you see her?
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography, Uncategorized on May 7, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I noticed this tulip the other day. Like most flowers, as the petals begin to fall off at some point. In this case, with the sun shining through the remaining petals, the tulip opened up to reveal its “inside” and I’m not saying that this made it even more beautiful then when it had all its glorious petals in place, but wow, there’s an enticing beauty here all the same.
Doesn’t it draw you in even more deeply?
It certainly caused me to pause, take a photo, and wonder for a few moments about the incredible complexity and delicacy of the inside of a flower…..
Truly, a revelation.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, Uncategorized on May 4, 2016| Leave a Comment »
In “The Book of Tea” the present is described as “the moving infinite”. When I heard that phrase this morning an image appeared in my mind. It was an image of an “eye-beam”, like the beam of light from a lighthouse, but a symbolic beam running from my eye to the point of focus of my vision. This eye-beam was ranging over the surface the sea, skimming over the waves.
We often hear about “living in the present”, or “in the now”, but of course there is no such “thing” as the present. What I mean by that is there is no such object. The present isn’t a series of frames in a video or a movie running past us so fast it gives the appearance of movement. It isn’t made up of discrete fixed states. It flows. It contains the past from which it emerges and the future it becomes.
I often think of that when I take a photograph.
Look at these beautiful waves breaking on the sand in the photo above. It feels like capturing the present…..at least for a moment. But, of course, it doesn’t capture anything. When my finger presses on the shutter release button, I and my camera create something new. This image.
“Live in the present” is actually another way of say “live with awareness”.
What I really like to do is be aware of where I am casting my eye-beams, and asking myself, what am I going to create with what my vision reveals?
It’s this interplay of awareness and creation which allows me to share a moment with you.
Thank you for sharing your presents.
Heroes Not Zombies 