Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography, Uncategorized on February 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »
How do you deal with obstacles?
What do you do when you come up against the immovable? Push harder? Jump up and down? Scream and shout? Cry “unfair”?
What does a river do?
It flows around it.
But more than that, look, it creates beauty as it does it!
This photo is of the River Charente flowing through Jarnac. There’s a road bridge over the river and I was struck by the beauty of the patterns as the water flowed around one of the concrete pillars. I thought….there’s a lesson here…..
Posted in education, from the dark room, from the living room, life, neuroscience, perception, personal growth, photography, Uncategorized on February 1, 2016| 1 Comment »
Iain McGilchrist, in The Master and His Emissary, says we use our two cerebral hemispheres differently. The hemispheres, remember, control the opposite sides of the body, so the right control the left hand, and the left hemisphere control the right. It’s the same with vision where the right field of vision is the responsibility of the left hemisphere and the left field of the right hemisphere. I’m simplifying here, but you get the idea. In birds which have their eyes on the sides of their heads instead of in the front of their faces, each hemisphere controls the opposite eye but the idea is the same.
The right hemisphere supports a broad, vigilant attention. In a bird the left eye, therefore, is taking everything in to be aware of predators.
See how this duck is looking at me?
They use the left hemisphere to focus the right eye on details….for example, when picking out food.
There’s something else interesting about the field of view of interest to each hemisphere.
In we humans, the right hemisphere is more interested in what is far from us….
while the left is more interested in what is close up….
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography, Uncategorized on January 28, 2016| 1 Comment »
Have you ever noticed that we seem to be so well equipped with the ability to see faces that we can see faces where they don’t actually exist?
I know this is a knot in a tree but I can’t escape the feeling that the tree is looking at me…..the Spirit of the forest?
And we don’t only see faces in living organisms, we see them in rocks too…..
There’s a Stone Age dolmen near where I live. It’s like a huge three-legged table with vertical stones each about 3 metres tall and a 5 ton enormous rock laid on top of them like a table top. I took a lot of photos when I went to explore it but this one particular shot looks for all the world like the profile of a face….perhaps in the same way that owners come to look like their dogs this rock reflects the face of one of the people who created the dolmen?
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography, Uncategorized on January 26, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Not only was this an unusual cloud effect, but the way it echoed the vineyard below really caught my eye.
Of course, the vineyard is man-made, or at least man-cultivated, and the clouds, as far as we know, are not!
This kind of symmetry is my favourite kind….the kind where one part of reality echoes another.
There’s something else though about this image, or at least the taking of this image, and that’s the “exposure” readings for the vineyard and the sky. They were very, very different. With my camera I took a number of shots, exposing primarily for the sky, which darkened the vineyard considerably, exposing for the vineyard, which obliterated the cloud pattern in the sky, and a “weighted” exposure, which is the one you see here.
What strikes me about this is how when I just look at the same scene, without a camera, I don’t have any of those exposure problems. As I look at the vineyard and the clouds above I see them all perfectly clearly. I don’t have to choose.
How do our brains do that?
Isn’t something as everyday as vision just astonishing?
Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, Uncategorized on January 24, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I saw some weather passing by the other evening.
When I zoomed in it looked even more spectacular –
….like looking through a small window – or even a letterbox!
There’s something very appealing about wind and rain and clouds and light all at once – particularly when you can see the whole weather system from a distance!
Why does it feel so great and cosy to be warm and comfortable inside your house while the rain hammers on the window, or the wind blows a gale outside? Is it the contrast? Whatever the reason, it seems to heighten the pleasure of being inside doesn’t it?
The other thing I like about seeing the weather passing by like this, is how transient it is. How brief it is. A few minutes later and this photograph would have been impossible. That’s one of the many things I enjoy about photography – the call to action! When you see whatever it is that catches you eye, there’s no point thinking “I’ll come back and take a photo of that some time” – it’ll be gone! You have to be present. You have to act. Now.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, Uncategorized on January 20, 2016| 4 Comments »
What catches your eye?
What do you notice when you look out of your window, or walk in the area where you live?
Attention is a complex phenomenon. It’s an interactive, dynamic process. What we pay attention to is partly influenced by our values, beliefs, preferences and prior experiences. Then once we pay attention to something, that attending to acts like a magnifier, increasing our awareness of whatever it is, filling more of our consciousness with it. And that, in turn, sets us up to notice more like that around us.
Water droplets sparkling on blades of grass, leaves and the petals of flowers, all catch my attention. I notice patches of shining water beads on the grass in the morning and as the sun moves across the sky the light “activates” the sparkles on different plants.
One thing I find really draws me into the present is to get up close and personal.
The particular is what absorbs me.
And having the intention to make some photographs somehow makes it even easier to slip into the details of what is right before me and helps me to fill my consciousness with the world around me, right here, right now.
Here are just a few photographs which I took of the water droplets on a single plant in the garden yesterday. Aren’t they glorious? Aren’t they absorbing? Don’t they draw your eye, and your attention right into them?
Posted in art, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography, Uncategorized on January 18, 2016| Leave a Comment »
I do really love some of the larger Parisian galleries like the Musée d’Orsay, and the Louvre, but some of my most favourite ones are much smaller. The Rodin museum is a long time favourite of mine. I like it best when it’s warm enough to be able to stroll in the gardens there. It has that wonderful combination of Nature and Art which really encourages you to take your time and savour it.
On my last trip to Paris I found another smaller gallery, the Musée Jacquemart André. Look at the main foyer –
And the ceilings…..
I went there to see an exhibition of portraits of the Medici from Florence, but the building itself entranced me.
Here’s one of the many things which caught my eye and surprised me, a wall covered with a tapestry which has had a door cut into it –
Maybe for the owners of this gallery, back when it was a private house, bought and used tapestries the way people use wallpaper nowadays, but they seem like such works of art to me that I was shocked to see a door cut into it. Then when I looked a little closer I noticed the door-handle!
I’m not sure what I think about that!
What do you think? Does this make art more utilitarian? Does it make the everyday practical more beautiful?
Whatever you think about it I think it’s a great example of the extraordinary in the ordinary….”l’émerveillement du quotidien”.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, Uncategorized on January 7, 2016| 2 Comments »
I stopped to take this photo partly because the drama of the dark rain cloud half filling the sky caught my eye, but also because I instantly thought about the yin yang symbol – half dark, half light, capturing the essence of constant change.
But when I look at it now what springs to mind is the old question about a glass of water – is it half full, or half empty? And what does that say about the way you see the world?
So, what do you see here? A brightening sky of spreading blue? Or a darkening sky of spreading grey?
Whichever it is, of course, this too shall pass – the blue will be covered with rain clouds again, and the rain clouds will pass on by to reveal the blue.
But I do wonder, how our world view influences our view of the world…..and how that affects not just what we notice, but how we interpret what we notice?
Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography, Uncategorized on January 5, 2016| 1 Comment »
I wonder how many people are thinking about food at this time of year? Lots, I expect!
As a doctor, I was often asked for a “diet sheet” but I never had such a thing. I thought that just as every patient was a unique individual so there was no standard diet which everyone should follow. We’d have a chat about food and I’d suggest a good start would be to become aware of what the person was eating and noting any specific effects they experienced. For example, I found that if I ate a sandwich at lunch time, my energy would drop within the next hour or so. It was better to have soup, or salad, or sushi. In fact, I found that after sushi I’d experience a rapid boost in energy and alertness. I don’t expect everyone would have the same experience.
So the first part of my advice about food would be to keep an eating journal for a couple of weeks, noting what you eat and drink, and also noting anything you experience in terms of energy, mood, alertness, any physical symptoms etc. In other words see if you can learn for yourself what the effects are of different food and drink.
The second part, though, was something I read about a number of years ago in a French magazine. It was that food has a place in our lives which is far greater than nutrients or food groups. It’s not all about carbohydrates, omega 3, or dairy products, for example. What’s also important is where we eat, and who we eat with. In other words, the contexts (physical and social) of eating are important. It’s really quite a different experience to eat a sandwich at your desk, than to enjoy a “croque monsieur” on a Parisian street corner! (see the photo above).
Seriously, give some thought not only to the foods you are eating, but to how eating fits into your life. I have a hunch that the more you enjoy the experience of your meal, the more you’ll find what you’ve eaten is good for you!
Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, Uncategorized on January 3, 2016| 1 Comment »
Returning from Scotland to France the other day, I flew over Paris and captured this view.
The first thing which catches your attention is probably the sunlit River Seine, around which the city has grown. It sparkles and shines and reminds me that Paris is known as the “city of light”.
But what comes to mind when people mention Paris now, in the light of 2015? At the start of 2015, we heard about the terrorist attacks on the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, and on the Jewish supermarket. Then we saw the huge expression of solidarity spreading far beyond Paris into the rest of France and the rest of the world with thousands upon thousands of people coming out into the streets and declaring “Je suis Charlie”.
At the other end of 2015 came the massacres of mainly young people enjoying music, drink, food and each others company as the terrorists struck again in this same city. And, again, there was a reaction across the world, as people flew the tricolour, changed their profile pictures, sang La Marseillaise, and declared their solidarity with the people of Paris.
These attacks have been interpreted as an attack on what Paris “stands for” in the world, as an attack on “French values”……and so as an attack on both pleasure and delight in Life, and on “freedom, equality and brotherhood”.
Of course, these events are complex and can’t be reduced to such apparently simple interpretations.
How do we choose a life of joy instead of a life of fear? How do we say “yes” to the world, instead of “no”? I don’t think we know all the answers, but when seen from above, this sparkling city still seems to shine as some kind of beacon.
Paris is still a “city of light”.
Then I looked again at this photo, and I zoomed in so I could see the Eiffel Tower. The truth is it’s not to easy to see the Eiffel Tower in a clear blue sky any more. Most days it seems to be dulled or obscured by pollution in the atmosphere, so isn’t it interesting that the global climate change conference took place in Paris just before 2015 ended?
Wow! We have a lot of work to do, to make this world a better place for us all to live in together. A lot needs to change as we switch from consumption and waste to resilience and sustainability, as we choose to shift our attention from fear to love.
But let me return again to this image, because, instead of reducing it to its parts, I find it simply beautiful. Isn’t Paris also known as a place where artists gathered? Isn’t it one of the great symbolic cities of creativity and imagination?
Here’s my hope then for 2016. That we can each enrich our lives this year with love, imagination and the joy of living. That this can be a year when we nurture and sustain the beauty of the light in our world – that burdens are lightened, days are brightened and that we become more enlightened.
