Eyeful

Eyeful
Eye to eye with a Great Horned Owl.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Blowin' in the Wind

My HomePage image for the last week in May. 

Talk about reducing things to a few elements. This image, at first glance, only includes two -- sand and a single stalk of beach grass. 


But pay closer attention and things become a good deal more interesting. The sand is not simply "sand" it is grains of sand, grains that give rich texture to the sand. The depressions and ridges in the sand add dimension to a seemingly small, flat landscape. Those ridges and depressions catch the light of the early morning sun with different intensities and in the dips shadows form. The same little patch of sand photographed at noon would indeed look flat and featureless, but dawn's strong side light accents the features and adds considerable depth.

Across this landscape a solitary, heavily seeded, stalk of grass intrudes to create a slash of contrast with the lighter tones and granular texture of the sun-washed sand. All of this is well and good. But what really caught my attention was the story revealed on this little square of beach.

It was calm and still with few walkers and shellers braving the morning chill when I was out. The only sound was the rhythmic whisper of small swells gently breaking on the beach. The marks in the sand spoke of more activity than was evident in the early morning and the delicate, etched lines emanating from the heavy cluster of seeds on the grass stalk's tip belied the present calm. It was apparent there had been enough wind during the night to blow the stalk of grass back and forth across the sand tracing those soft lines. The muddled sand and the wind-drawn lines give a wonderful sense of implied movement and energy which add a dynamic element to the simplicity and stillness of the other two.

A simple yet elegant bit of information I would never have noticed if I had not been looking with my "photo-eyes". It made me aware again of how discovering images is a process that has to be cultivated and practiced. I'm aware of it every time I go out to shoot. It always takes a bit of time and a number of "warm-up" shots before the "eye" wakes up. And the longer you wait to get the camera up to your eye, the longer it can take. It also reminds me of why I value having a camera with a view-finder. Looking through that finder gives me a much better feeling for framing and an easier way to visualize an image than I can get looking at an LCD screen. But maybe that's just because of how I learned to take pictures -- back in the "olden days".


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