You see a car wash.
I see beauty.
All art is a point of view.
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A few days ago, a friend reached out to me for help. She was having a hard time after one of those unexpected things life likes to throw at you.
What did you do, she asked me? I used the ostrich method, I wanted to tell her. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it. It is, I admit, not a suitable method of tackling life.
Instead, I told her about acceptance. Strive for that kind of calm, peaceful mind that acceptance offers, but that’s so hard to achieve. Realize that life is what it is, and no amount of wishful thinking can make it otherwise. Things change, as much as we don’t want them to; people change, too, and catastrophes happen. Change and pain are constant companions in this world; the best one can do is accept them. Not surrender, but accept it. It is what it is. We spend too much time and energy refusing to accept things as they are and trying to change what we cannot.
I told her about the Anonymous Alcoholics’ prayer; it’s a short but powerful reminder of how to handle life with everything it brings. (And before AA, the Stoics preached this, even though they didn’t really preach. Hence, my interest in Stoics).
The Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Yeah. Work in progress.
I realized that I was trying to help her as much as myself.
I try to remember Mark Twain’s words: “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” The Stoics (Seneca) said that we suffer twice, once when we think about something that could happen and then again when it happens.
It’s enough to think about the things I was worried about only a few years ago, to say nothing about my youth. Most of them, if any, never happened, of course. Or they weren’t the catastrophes I thought they’d be. Instead, you have unexpected stuff thrown at you. (Think the last four years!)
So now I’m trying to make the best of what I have, which is not negligible; enjoy life because you never know what’ll happen in the future. I shouldn’t mar the lovely life we have right now with thoughts about what might happen. Then, I would have suffered twice.
What heart could have thought you?—
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapour?—
“God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapour,
To lust of His mind;—
Thou could’st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.
Francis Thompson (1859 –1907) was an English poet; he is best known for his poem “The Hound of Heaven.”
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Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange (1895 – 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist. She is best known for her work for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression.
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The sheep get up and make their many tracks
And bear a load of snow upon their backs,
And gnaw the frozen turnip to the ground
With sharp quick bite, and then go noising round
The boy that pecks the turnips all the day
And knocks his hands to keep the cold away
And laps his legs in straw to keep them warm
And hides behind the hedges from the storm.
The sheep, as tame as dogs, go where he goes
And try to shake their fleeces from the snows,
Then leave their frozen meal and wander round
The stubble stack that stands beside the ground,
And lie all night and face the drizzling storm
And shun the hovel where they might be warm.
John Clare (1793 – 1864) was an English peasant poet of the Romantic school, and one of the English literature’s finest nature poets.
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Another year, another month, other photos. I took this photo of a calla back in July when there was plenty of natural light. I usually take a lot of shots during spring and summer, which I can later edit during the long, dark winter days.
For this particular photo, I decided to give it a cool edit to complement the winter season.
Eurasian tree sparrow (Passer montanus), winter edition. I love how the few remaining leaves poke through the snow and add a splash of color to the wintery scene.
Wood nuthatch (Sitta europaea) striking a pose. Nuthatches have such a graceful way of landing and taking off, pausing for a few seconds while posing like a model on the catwalk!
I photographed this common redpoll female (Acanthis flammea) back in 2022 but only got around to processing it now. When I looked through my photo library for an image to edit, I realized I hadn’t seen many redpoles last year. I’m not sure why. I do hope they’ll return that year; they’re so beautiful and always fun to photograph, especially the males; they have pink breasts!
Blackbird female (T. merula). I shot this in the darkest December last year at ISO 12.800. It was 11am, and the brightest light you could get was some kind of grayish twilight. You wait and wait for the daylight to appear, and then, suddenly, the sun starts to set, and it gets dark again.
As mentioned above, I rarely shoot in November/December because it’s too dark. As you can see, you can still get beautiful photos, but I find it’s too much work; it’s not worth it. I ran the image through Topaz Photo AI to reduce the noise and then Nik Color Effex to retrieve some feather details.
To get away shooting in low light with a high ISO, you do need to shoot to the right (of the histogram), as noise hides in the darker areas. It helps if you have a lens with a large aperture (f/2.8 or F/4) to let in more light, but unfortunately, I don’t. My Canon RF100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM lens’ largest aperture is f/7.1 at 500mm.
On the other hand, problems are good; they force you to get creative and work around them. As I always say, creativity thrives on constraints. Look past the issues and see the opportunities!
As an avid birdwatcher and photographer, I always try to capture the beauty and grace of these magnificent creatures. Birds are fascinating creatures that come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and taking their photos can be a challenging yet rewarding experience.
Overall, these photos are just a tiny glimpse into the incredible beauty of the natural world. By taking pictures like these and sharing them with others, I hope to inspire a love and appreciation for nature that will hopefully last for generations.
I hope you enjoyed these photos; there are more to come next month.
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Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart – to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet popular for her brief and poignant poems exploring the links between nature and the spiritual world.
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There is no Life or Death,
Only activity
And in the absolute
Is no declivity.
There is no Love or Lust
Only propensity
Who would possess
Is a nonentity.
There is no First or Last
Only equality
And who would rule
Joins the majority.
There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity.
Mina Loy (1882 – 1966) was a British-born artist, writer, poet, and painter labeled as a Futurist, Dadaist, Surrealist, feminist, conceptualist, modernist, and post-modernist artist.
To read more poems, click here.
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.
Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams (1902-1984), American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West.
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I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover:
My arms shall welcome you when other arms are tired;
I stand to wait for you, patient in the darkness,
Offering forgetfulness of all that you desired.
I ask no merriment, no pretense of gladness,
I can love heavy lids and lips without their rose;
Though you are sorrowful you will not weary me;
I will not go from you when all the tired world goes.
I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover;
I promise faithfulness no other lips may keep;
Safe in my bridal place, comforted by darkness,
You shall lie happily, smiling in your sleep.
Margaret Widdemer (1884 – 1978) was an American poet, novelist, and children’s writer.
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