Hitzeman Photography

Seeing and Sharing Beauty

Accept Your Gladness

We must risk delight.

We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.

Jack Gilbert

I have experienced delight in seeing the beautiful natural landscapes of the North American continent. I do have the stubbornness to accept this gladness, and hope for the best in mankind to be able to diminish the ruthless furnace we have been making of this world.

The Beauty of an Ukranian Church

SVOC Colors & Curves
SVOC Colors & Curves

Saints Volodymyr and Olha Church is a beautiful church in Chicago’s Ukranian Village.  Photographing from the choir loft, I was able to create unique compositions such as this one. It captures the dramatic curve of the choir loft railing and still includes the beautiful view of the church windows, arches, and a huge radiant chandelier.

This church is an architectural symbol of the artistry and religious devotion of the Ukranian people. Let us pray for all those suffering in Ukraine.

You can also view these photos in my flickr album.

A Concert of Color

During 2021, I took three short road trips to satisfy my longing to get out and go somewhere “NEW”.  This photo was taken on October 5 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, near the Michigan Iron Industry Museum.

This day was one of the most beautiful days of my life, a quiet day, but looking at this image now, it is a bombastic concert of color. The red and orange are like large, deep instruments, tubas and kettle drums, in the back of the orchestra, while the yellows are like violins, playing their staccato notes across the front.

It was a beautiful, melodic performance, conducted for little old me! What a joyful blessing walking the earth that day!

A Concert of Color

Manifesting the Lighthouse in My Mind

In 2020, amid a pandemic, I intended to get good at Photoshop.  

Because I was not travelling to any destinations that  I love photographing, learning Photoshop seemed like a good way to wile away the weeks that turned into months, hoping to greatly improve some of my old photographs. 

So, we’re here now, still not travelling for over a year, and this is my first “Photoshopped” project for a landscape image.

The Lighthouse in My Mind

Browsing through my inventory, I found this image I captured of Wind Point Lighthouse  in August 2019, on a trip through Racine, Wisconsin with my Grand Nephew Gavin. The day was cloudy white, I almost couldn’t tell the difference between the white lighthouse and the white sky, but I took the image anyway, and now on my monitor it spoke to me saying “Help Me!” 

To the rescue — Photoshop’s new Sky Replacement tool! It made it much easier for me to put in a colorful sunset.  Other basic operations with brushes and masks and color overlays helped me to: 

  • add a shadow to make the lighthouse cylindrical shape appear
  • put a red  light in the tower
  • add a pinkish glow to the foreground.

It was still slow going for me. I knew what look I was trying to get, but I was pretty wobbly in knowing which tools to use and how to use them.  Photoshop enables one to do a lot with certain key combinations for actions that aren’t in the menus.  I try to keep a good set of notes about these, but because of my infrequent use in the past, I struggled to find the right set of keys to do what I wanted. 

Practice, Harry.  Practice!

Do you have any “pandemic” projects you’ve been working on? Let me know in the comments below.

Giving Empathy: A 4-Step Formula

Over my lifetime I’ve had a hard time giving empathy. I’d often excuse myself until one day my wife Marti gently said, “You are so competent in so many things. I bet you can become competent in being empathetic, honey.”

This was a challenge for a guy with an ego that sees itself as competent, wise, and action-oriented. When I see my highly capable Marti troubled or in tears about something and ask her about it, I usually go immediately to giving solutions or advice.

Wrong approach!

I recently listened to Brené Brown’s audio book “Men, Women, and Worthiness: The Experience of Shame and the Power of Being Enough”. Brown suggests the following 4 steps on how to give empathy. They seem to be working, but I’ll admit I’m still a novice (take that, ego!). Here’s what I got from it, framed in a me-she interaction:

1. See the World as She Sees It

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Try to take her perspective. This really takes some work, because my first thought is “Jeez, why can’t she see this my way?” As I am not a woman, and especially not this amazing woman, I have to work hard to try to get into her experience and imagine how she sees things—her perspective.

2. Be Non-Judgmental

“Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”

Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

If I let my ego run things, I’ll think I know everything and that I can judge my wife for not being “x”. This will only lead me into giving advice or solutions. As I said earlier—wrong!

The x thing represents all the ways I think I am superior. But in truth we are all at least partially deficient in those things. As Brown puts it, “We judge in areas where we feel insecure.”

3. Understand What She Is Feeling

Acceptance is Understanding. Understanding is Love

Thich Nhat Hanh

Here again I was awesome at implementing the wrong approach to this. I would say something like “So, you must be feeling ‘y’.” Wrong, Marti was not feeling y, and this made it worse because it showed I was reading her mind wrong.

The better approach is to ask in a curious and friendly way, “How are you feeling?” This is what my daughter Helena often says to me after I’ve had a new medical procedure. Asking Marti this will educate my know-it-all ego to proceed more”wisely”.

4. Communicate That You Understand

Once you’ve completed steps 1 through 3, you now have the basis for communicating that you understand. And, if you have had the same kinds of feelings in your own life under similar situation, you can even say, “Yes, me too, I’ve felt ‘y’ too when ‘xyz’ happened in a similar situation.”

However, given all that, and knowing that I should not give advice or solutions, I sometimes end up just telling her a lot of stuff about how wonderful and amazing she is, followed with, “How about I fix you a nice warm bubble bath.” And BTW, I didn’t get this from Brené


So, as my dad always said, “There you have it!” I hope this helps shed some light for you on what has been, for me, a baffling skill to learn.

Peace, love , soul, and rock ‘n’ roll!

Harry

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

Ogden Nash, “A Word To Husbands”

Photo Credit: Archie Fantom

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