La Macchina Fotografica

I looked out my window late yesterday morning. High clouds. Normally I like to make photos early in the morning when the air is fresh and the sun is golden—when the world is my own. But high, wispy clouds mean magic in photography so I broke my own rules. I went out with my camera in the latest part of the morning.

Cirrus clouds diffuse the sun just enough to soften and fill shadows. They add drama to sky. Painters know that cirrus clouds are the most difficult of clouds to paint. Their delicacy is elusive. In photography we must take care with when pointing the camera to sky. Blown-out highlights are the death of wispiness.

While I’ve noticed the cottony light of cirrus skies for years, I have come to realize that there is more to the magic. Reflections take on new drama and depth on days like these. Gone are the harsh specular highlights that can ruin an image. Surfaces glow instead of sparkle. There is always something new to learn about light. It is a magician who never reveals all the secrets. The sorcerer unveils the truth with time and contemplation.

Yesterday I found the Larkspur Palms again. The sky turned them to towering monuments of grace and drama. I found angles and perspectives that I’d not known before. It was the light that whet my appetite but it was also the emerging truth the comes with familiarity with a subject. Too often we seek the unfamiliar with photography, forgetting our own backyard. The truth can be found in the familiar. Revisiting a subject over and over is like peeling an onion. I’ve only begun with the Larkspur Palms.

In a scratchy dream I learn to fly. In effortless propulsion I glide through air and space. “Why haven’t I tried this before?” I ask myself. Somehow I reach an oasis of palms. Lanky and swaying, they acknowledge my arrival. They are rooted, yet free—something I make note of as I land on my feet and look up.

In my altered state I realize that these palms are familiar. They are the palms of Larkspur. I stay for awhile, something akin to a picnic. Then I propel myself off again into the pearly fog of my dream. I soon awaken in my bed, now firmly tethered by the gravity, space, and time. For a split second I wonder why I can no longer fly. Then my cat whacks me.

When one embraces a place in a dream, its reality changes. It becomes hyperreal, of a different dimension. Having forgotten the rules of dream-flying I place my feet on the floor and put on a fresh pair of socks. New socks in the morning are one of life’s great pleasures. The cat nudges me and prances off. In that moment I decide to visit the Larkspur palms, which are within walking distance, in the town next door.

I have admired the palms for years, mostly passing by in my truck. “I must photograph them someday,” I say. During my walk on this day I approach them from a different perspective, one of a freshly-minted dream. I look up and they sway at me just like they did the night before. I wonder, for a moment, if the dream is still on. My feet, feeling the somber weight of gravity, tell me otherwise.

No, the dream has surely left. But, it has given me a gift of insight and I see in a less-rigid way. My day to photograph the palms has arrived. I seize the moment and find a tiny smidgen of bliss…

Suddenly my day gets jumbled with facts. I stare at my computer screen and the screen talks back. Wanting the last word, I start a conversation. This is a bad idea. The computer code that is my fledgling web site starts swimming around the room. It’s time for fresh air. I go to the park and see my tree.

I haven’t photographed the tree for a month or so. It’s been even longer since I’ve written about it. As I walk down the street, on my way to the park, I see the guy who never smiles as he parks his car. He gets out and rushes up his driveway—disappears into the fog. I look at my reflection as I turn the corner. I realize that I’m starting to look like him. Could there now be two guys who never smile, both living on the same block? The thought depresses me.

The fog is brisk. It wipes the computer code out of my brain. And clouds the lens of my camera. I realize this when I reach the park and then the eucalyptus tree. I wipe the lens with an expensive microfiber cloth. It has a logo of the camera store where I bought it, something that annoys me. I figure if the camera store wants it logo on the damn thing I should get it for free. And again I’m not smiling.

The smooth glass of the lens takes away my angst. I’ve always adored lenses, could look into them for hours. I like cameras a lot, but truly love lenses. They are a purer manifestation of the photographic experience. Round and round, I clean the lens until it sparkles and look up at the tree and breathe. I realize that the tree is beautiful in the fog. I click the shutter a dozen times before the lens starts to fog up again.

Every time I see this tree it is different. I am different. The air is different. As I think this I realize that I’m grinning. First I grin at the tree. Then I grin as I suddenly realize that there is still, thankfully, only one guy on our block who never smiles.

There is a tree in the town park about which I often write. Tall and singular, it is an easy object of affection. Meanwhile, another tree, a tiny one in a clay pot, has been growing lemons outside our back door. This week it has given forth a basket of perfect Meyer lemons. Have I neglected this selfless little citrus?

I fear that I have. The other day its basket simply appeared on the kitchen table, the second significant winter still life in as many days. It turns out that my wife has been nurturing the tree all year, waiting for this moment. At this rate I’ll have a show’s worth of photographs in a month. Sometimes these things just happen.

Citrus trees buck the trend and bear fruit in winter, a minor miracle. My New Jersey upbringing conditioned me to thinking of fruit and color in summer and bare twigs in winter. I would read about citrus trees in grammar-school geography books during our long winters. In our land of apple, peach and cherry trees, citrus groves were as exotic as camels in the desert.

On our small radio in our small kitchen we’d hear the news reports after a run of Sinatra songs. Those reports, during winter cold snaps, included stories of worried, Florida citrus growers. We’d hear of smudge pots in the groves, burning all night to ward off frost. I think New Yorkers secretly liked knowing that it got cold in the Sunshine State, regardless of the price of orange juice.

“Children growing up in Florida have never seen snow!” my second-grade teacher proclaimed one day. This seemed impossible. So too was it impossible to think of trees growing fruit in winter, but that’s what geography books were for, dreaming of the faraway places where such things happened.

Staring into my bowl of lemons I come back from the winters of my youth—a rambling stream-of-consciousness evoked from an overflowing basket on the kitchen table. I look around and realize that I, myself, now live in an exotic land of winter fruit.

I stare at the bowl, give thanks to the little tree in the clay pot, set up my tripod and make a photograph.

The doggie paddle was the first thing I learned how to do in Cook’s Pond, a muddy swim hole in my New Jersey hometown. I dearly wanted to swim with the big boys out to the raft. But keeping my head above water had to be my first priority. The raft would wait. The doggy paddle came before the kick board which came before the breast stroke. I seemed to swallow a lot of water back then. I guess the murky pond was safe. I never did get sick.

Lately, those gulps of fishy, pond water have been on my mind. The massive complexity of today’s world has me paddling, sinking, gulping. Thanks to several acts of fate I’ve been dealing with banks, lawyers, accountants, and government agencies most of the day, every day. Rules. Automated answering systems. Fine print. Press 5 now! The spirit that is my creativity is about five feet underwater.

The other day I realized that I hadn’t gone to see my tree in the park since July, right around when all this red tape started. In the mystery of a foggy morning I looked out the window of my studio. I was dealing with a customer service rep for some credit card company. I’d been put on hold. The hold music was bad, I needed to escape. I hung up—credit card issue unresolved—got my camera and went to see the tree.

I play a game with the tree every time I see it. I try to find something new, something compelling, a different perspective. On this day, the light did all the work for me. It was a Venetian mist in my little California town. I made a photo and suddenly my soul emerged from the water like a bobber on a fishing line. Pond water be damned, everything in the world seemed right again.

A walk around the block—we tend to think of it as a numbing experience. It’s just a walk around the block. It’s the same block with the same cars and the same people and the very same smells and sights and sounds. Like some swinging pocket watch of a stage hypnotist, the sameness lulls us to sleep. We walk and mutter to ourselves that we need a change, we need a vacation.

Yet, beneath the drowsy familiarity of where we live are layers of complexity and subtlety. There are things right there that we might find if we had the right tools. If we were to map the neighborhood, how would we define it’s lines of demarcation? Streets? Landmarks? Trees? What implements would we use? Maps? Surveying tools? A sketchpad? A camera? An inquisitive mind?

As I walk down the street I come to a major thoroughfare. Everything changes at that point. The sleepy familiarity of my street, my block, my neighborhood; it all shifts. The boulevard cuts through the town and divides it. People use it to get someplace else. I feel my pulse quicken as I dodge the traffic and cross the street.

The landmark that I use to spot this point of demarcation is an overgrown palm tree, in the yard at the corner between here and there. I ignored the palm for about twenty years. Then I realized it was there. The best view of the palm is where I am, across the bustling boulevard. It has the most lovely folds of tone and texture. It dances and laughs in the breeze. It yields to wakes of the fast-moving cars. It lays heavy with winter rain and seems dry and still in a summer heat wave.

I’ve tried to photograph the palm for awhile. Each time I’ve failed. It is elusive, harder to photograph than it might seem. Perhaps it dislikes being captured in two dimensions or in shades of gray. No matter. I tried again today, waiting for stillness. Waiting for no traffic. And I finally got an image I felt worthy of sharing. So, here is the tree that divides the neighborhood. Behind it is home. In front of it is the beyond.

Living in suburbia is a sweet experience with the metallic aftertaste of Aspartame. I stand in my own shadow as steel SUVs shuttle the neighborhood children to and fro. The agendas of modern mothers leave me in their dust. Lessons. Little League. School. After School. 3:00 PM in this town is the Wild West.

I walk through it, mostly looking down. At my feet. Very little makes me want to look up, except to see the three trees.

There are these three palm trees that I always look at on my daily walks. They stand tall among the tract houses that were once the wetlands of our bay. They are the silent sentinels of this bucolic town, a trinity of some strange mystery. Palms are not native plants around here but neither am I. An aging Jersey Boy, I walk the flatlands of the village always with sunglasses and hat (to cover my now hairless head). People pass with dogs and smart phones. Or dogs and iPods. Or just dogs.

I’m a cat person. No dog. I can see the palm trees from most anywhere along the walk. Their orientation to me changes, first in front of me, then to the side. Now behind and to the left. On stormy days they sway like the old newsreels of a Florida hurricane. They seem forever in slow motion. I ponder if they feel like aliens, wondering to themselves why they aren’t on a Canary Island. The SUVs with tinted glass zoom by them, emitting cell-phone radio waves. Are there SUVs on the Canary Islands?

The trees give me pleasure. From season to season, year to year, there are there, just for me. They are the Eiffel Tower of the town. I like things that are consistent and silent. The palms are arranged in a cinematic way, a peaceful, little drama in the suburban town I call home.

It’s been awhile since I wrote about the eucalyptus tree in the Corte Madera Town Park. I try to visit the tree often but sometimes I simply neglect it. Other times I go, say hello, and can’t find artistic inspiration.

Not long ago I went again and the seasonal light had transformed the tree into a sculptural miracle. Could this be the same tree that I photographed in the mist and rain a short month or two ago? The light, in May, turns crystalline in Northern California. The air is yet clean from the rain season, the sun’s light is high and white. Highlights glisten off the leaves as the onshore breeze tickles them. The eucalyptus tree benefits from this kind of light. Its twisting, thrusting, tortured trunk finds new form in May’s illumination.

I walked up to the tree and stared up, up, up. Children always stare up at things, adults rarely do. As we get older we seem to look down more than up. This is a mistake. If you want to feel young again, just stare up at something.

The tree looked gigantic. Could a living thing be so big? I stared at it and found several new photographs where several weeks before there were none. Light, seasons, and perspectives change everything. The tree became new again.

It’s been a busy month. Often, life creates a big stack of chores and tasks. It’s hard to see over the mound to the other side. April is often the month when it hits the hardest. Taxes and accounting and bills and serious people dominate the energy. There are forms and rules and procedures. Even my car registration is due in April. This year I need a smog certificate.

Soon it will be May. Yesterday, when I was walking to the bank to pay an April 15th tax bill, I realized that I hadn’t smelled sweet, fresh air for awhile. I had the urge to find a tree in the woods. May is a good month for trees. They are in glorious, green foliage here in California—full awakening. You can talk to a tree in May and it most likely will reward you with shade and a rustling of its leaves. It makes one sad that so many trees have given their lives for the IRS. In a humane world, how can a tree be turned into a tax form?

Since I haven’t touched my camera in a couple of weeks (a sad condition that is about to change) I had to dig through the archives to find a tree that made me feel like May. This redwood tree is along a path on Mt. Tamalpais. I remember stopping in my tracks when I came upon it on a particularly weary day. Redwood trees are evergreens so the foliage is rather consistent year round. However, on a warm day their gift is an indescribable scent of spicy bark. It is bewitching, mesmerizing, the elixer of the woods.

It is now that I need that tree, or one just like it. It’s not that things have been bad—life feels quite wonderful at the moment. I just need a the smell of a redwood tree, a trail and a camera. I will report back soon with some new discoveries.

Every winter I sit and look out my window at the birch trees and marvel at their seasonal transformation. In the winter rain they glisten like jeweled necklaces, the wetness revealing red undertones to the normal drabness of the branches. Nude and dormant, the branches sway like a metronome, ticking off the days until they awaken once again. When the buds start to swell, the redness intensifies, and then, exploding in a day, they burst into lime-green radiance. It is the same every year. Yet, with each vigil, I wonder if this is year that spring might not come.

It’s not that I am a pessimist. I simply don’t want to take things for granted. It’s doubtful that the planet might, one day, refuse to tilt on its axis. But, assuming that spring will come is, to me, a way of taking it for granted. It is a wonder each time it arrives, a renewal of everything that is good. How could we assume that something so wondrous would be guaranteed to be here, right on schedule, every year? I prefer to be delighted in surprise.

It is easy to get caught up in the headiness of spring. It is the most euphoric of seasons. If one focuses on a single branch of a single tree, it’s a bit easier to fathom and behold. The opening of the buds into tender leaves is the ultimate act of optimism and renewal. The leaves are so intricate in form, so perfect in their design. To see them reveal themselves all at once is like watching the stage of a thousand dancers. It is easier to comprehend the season if one focuses and meditates on a singular miracle.

The birches are awake again! And so I breathe a sigh of relief. This old planet never lets me down. Vicky’s trees are green again.