Seeing and Sharing Beauty

Category: Musings (Page 1 of 4)

Creativity and Changing Perspective

Two months after I retired, I took a trip with a couple of friends to photograph Colorado. One of the iconic photo-ops in that state is the Maroon Bells Mountain peaks at sunrise that you see above. The sunrise lighting up the top of the mountain is the prize at this location. Many photographers compete for space along the lake shore to get the “best” perspective of this event.

The next photo below gives you some idea of the crowd size, even though I took this pic 30 minutes after the one above, when the crowd was even thicker.

Crowd Thirty Minutes After Best Shot

I do like the so-called sunrise shot, but that scene also makes me feel separate from what I’m looking at. The mountains and lake looked huge, vast, and by comparison I felt so small and distant from it. I walked around the lakes edge until I found a different perspective. I like to capture more of the ground in front of me. It makes me feel more like I was there, and that I could walk into the photograph, the Aspen Stepping Stones.

Maroon Bells, near Snowmass, Colorado

I want to acknowledge my friend, Steve Ornberg—a master at photography trip planning, and an excellent landscape photographer. Steve has since gone on to concentrate on astro-photography and bird photography.

Steve Ornberg

A Bridge Not Too Far

“Through the captured imagery of light, photography allows us to hold fast to one fleeting, ever so precious, moment in time.

~ Howard Simmons. Photographer

Photographing beautiful places in nature in beautiful light has been a passion of mine all my life. These photographs capture a precious moment in time, and my brain, my emotions, also somehow capture moments in time that I did not intend to keep. They may have been hurtful. I may have misjudged people. I may have broken a meaningful relationship. And those memories are still in my mind. They are not precious.

Today, as I think back on the people I may have hurt unjustly, I also wonder whether I can repair that now. What does it mean to be a lifelong friend if I am kicking people to the curb, as if they were nothing to me then. How can I today, years later, harness the power of love—Oneness—in my heart and head?

Perhaps I can look back at those moments with different lenses or filters on my eyes? Perhaps I can change the Lighting of memories that are captured in my head and heart? Perhaps I can edit or post-process or transform the image I have of them, and forgive them, forgive myself?

Perhaps I can recreate the love between us that we used to have.

A river can stop flowing or be rerouted if we allow the stones to accumulate in it instead of working to move them out of the way.  The following quote helps me to remember this, to speak about a conflict from a perspective of authenticity and compassion, even though I want to avoid conflict. 

I felt angry toward my friend.

I told my wrath. My wrath did end.

I felt angry toward my foe. 

I told him not. My wrath did grow.

~ William Blake

Is my former friend really a foe, or did my silence make him so?

Today’s set of photos are about bridges. Bridges as a metaphor of how I can travel on them or construct them in my heart and head, to call that former friend I have left behind. 

I believe making a phone call is not a bridge too far.

Mountains in Chicago?

I love seeing mountains!

Growing up in Illinois, I felt the skyscrapers of downtown Chicago were mountains for me. I would stare up at them when I rode the EL downtown on Saturdays to pick up mail from my father’s office. Those experiences planted in me the seeds of wanting to be an architect as I pondered where my college degree would bring me.

But that never happened. I became a structural engineer instead. I chose that as a course of study Northwestern University as a way to stay local (Evanston), rather than going to University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign, living at a distance too far away from a woman who wanted me to stay by her side.

As I moved to the suburbs of Chicago after college, I found that landfills were my new mountains. I could drive to the top of a landfill in Naperville—called Mount Trashmore—and see on the eastern horizon the tiny skyscrapers of Chicago!!

But really! Let’s face it, I needed to travel somewhere else to see mountains. The first ones I saw were in California. So today I’m going to share with you some of my mountain pictures from California and the Canadian Rockies.

Enjoy!

Click on any image for full-screen lightbox.

For more mountains, visit these portfolios! Canadian Rockies Eastern Sierra

Cold & Golden Valentine’s Day

As a child, it was FUN when it snowed! It meant, hopefully, a day off from school and getting together with my buds to make snow angels, snow men, snow forts and have snow fights.

Now, as an adult, snow can mean something different to me, and much less fun. Shoveling the driveway and sidewalk. Dangerous driving conditions. Road salt getting all over my car. And sometimes, for days after the snow arrives, temperatures can drop to dangerous levels for frostbite.

But young or old, I’ve always delighted in how the snow softens and quiets the world, how it forms in different ways on trees and stones and mountains, and how—with a bit of luck being in the right place at the right time—I can capture a photograph that displays the snow with a glorious backdrop of GOLD!

I share this gold photograph from today’s very cold Naperville IL, as a Valentine’s Day greeting. In these chaotic times, I chose to love my neighbors, love my sweetie pie, and love Love LOVE!

Thank you for reading/viewing my posts. And …

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I invite you to share your experience of snow in the comments.

Experiencing the Rapture of Being Alive

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

What life experiences make you feel the rapture of being alive?

The Oxford Dictionary defines rapture as a feeling of intense pleasure or joy.

When the Chicago White Sox won the World Series in 2005, and my son and grandson were together watching it on television, I have to say we felt tremendous joy, even rapture!

When I’m listening to rock’n’roll music coming into my head from my earphones and I’m moving my body to the beat of AC/DC during my morning workouts at the gym, my life experience on the purely physical plane resonates with my own innermost being and reality…and I feel the rapture of being alive!

When I hear a good stand-up comedian on a roll, when I can create and speak a situational comedy joke during a tense life situation that brings the laughter and joy to my current group … I feel the rapture of being alive!

And let’s not forget the pleasure of FOOD! Sausage and mushroom pizza! I can fill the page with my favorite foods, and you probably can too! These are all life experiences on the purely physical plane. When I am tasting delicious food … I feel the rapture of being alive!

When I am in intimate connection with someone I love, especially my beloved wife Marti Beddoe, I feel the rapture of being alive.

My post on Accepting Your Gladness references this quote by Jack Gilbert

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

— Jack Gilbert

I aspire to amplify my attention and accept my gladness. I will seek those experiences of being alive that physically resonate with my own innermost being and reality.

Doing all this with gratitude for being human and alive.

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