The seduction of Grand Canyon is overwhelming. It sucks you in, draws you down. It's a bigness with gravity. You can feel it in its depths. It pushes down on you like a giant spiritual magnet.
There is this recurrent dream to travel the world. Lots of people have it. In America, it's in our DNA to move, to wander, to migrate, and to travel. Often, in our wanderlust, we forget about our need to connect with specific places and to know them with intimacy. Seeing a million places is not always better than knowing several really well.
I was in San Francisco last month making photos while walking around the city. Suddenly a door opened to my right. A person scurried out, obviously having gained momentum before opening her door. She was in a hurry and ran off. That happens often in the city. Doors are so ubiquitous that we take them for granted. Yet, each one is a portal to an unknown universe; a gateway to the life of a sentient soul.
Every day I scan my library of images to find one that resonates with me. It's my way of stirring the creative energies necessary to write this blog. Mostly, I've been trying to stay with recent photos, ones that seem in close proximity to my consciousness. Today I'm digging deeper back into the archives. Maybe it's because I heard from an old, dear college friend this week.
The birds around here are a constant source of both entertainment and inspiration. I'm quite religious about tagging my images with keywords and I must have 4000 bird photos by now. I could photograph birds and nothing else, they are forever photogenic. I wish I could distill my fascination with birds down to a couple of paragraphs, but that would be futile.
Photography is at its best when it reveals to us the marvel of the fleeting moment. Time is constructed of events multiplied by infinity, inextricably interwoven, a fabric so complex we can barely focus upon it. Great enlightened masters are said to see the essence of space and time and, consequently, the key to eternity. Alas, most of us only see what is most obviously in front of us. Photography allows us to savor, to find a moment and ponder its great wonder.
"The tide is at its lowest today!" A woman with a wide-brimmed hat caught my eye and whispered to me in excitement. I'd barely gotten to Muir Beach and had already realized there was something very special on that foggy morning. The surf was way out. Way out. A bunch of women with wide-brimmed hats seemed to have sensed that the tide would be low that day. They were everywhere, combing the beach, looking, being, acting like the curlews that were searching for food. The birds were oblivious to the women with silly hats. They were doing there own thing, seemingly very happy to be curlews on that fine morning.
Sometimes one stares at a blank sheet of paper or a glowing white computer screen, ready to write or draw, or paint or do anything creative, and there is...nothing. Usually, that nothing means that something is brewing but isn't quite ready to show its face yet. This is of small comfort to those of us who must create for a living. Today, I woke up with good intentions to post my blog. I stared and stared at my computer screen. The "nothing" was overwhelming. I sat down to find an image that resonated with me. Finally, I found this image of a tiny tree reflecting in the flood-control canal near our home. The tree reminded me of Edward Steichen's shadblow tree that he photographed again and again in the last years of his life.
Today on my photo walk I encountered a tall stand of wild fennel. The fennel was taller than I was so that made it magical. Upon discovering it, it immediately triggered that <em>feeling</em>. We all know it. It's that certain something felt in the gut that takes us to another state of being. It brings us back to the wide-eyed wonder of the world that was our universe when we were tiny. Tall grass will do this to you, tall fennel too. Corn fields in summer are just about perfect. When in the realm of the tall plants, the world is transformed into an enchanted forest.
Birds are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. I never tire of them. Some birds, I am certain, know that I am taking their picture. They stand and stare at me, meeting my gaze with their own. Sometimes they are quite patient, waiting until I exhaust my energy and creativity on them. A few let me get quite close. I met this fellow at Fort Cronkite in the Marin Headlands (just north of San Francisco). I crept up to him slowly. He was in no hurry to leave, watching me as intently as I was studying him.