Eating Mercifully

The Humane Society of the US has created this short film (26 minutes) about the importance of stewardship of animals as part of God's creation. Apparently they are realizing the value of enlisting the help of people of faith in this important work, and people of faith are waking up to their responsibility to care for their fellow creatures. This is good news!

Thanks to Matt Humphrey, one of the TAs for the Food Course I'll be taking later this month, for the pointer to this video. I'll repeat his caution:

WARNING: There are some disturbing images here of the treatment of animals. I think it is essential that we become people of truth-telling, which means to face the facts rather than hide behind slogans like "that can't be true - farmers wouldn't do that." This is a call to action and faithfulness which demands thoughtful reflection and creative action.

Watch and pray.

I should point out that at about 13:49 in the video, Rev. Dr. Laura Hobgood-Oster relates a story about Jesus stopping a man from beating his mule. This is extra-biblical (it's from the Coptic Gospel found in the Nag Hammadi library). It's a nice story and quite in keeping with what Jesus might well have done, and surely many of the stories written down about him by others besides the Gospel writers really did happen. But it's non-canonical. However there are in the Bible passages that clearly talk about taking good care of animals, e.g. Proverbs 12:10 ("The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel."), Deuteronomy 22:4 ("If you see someone’s donkey or ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it. Help the owner get it to its feet."), Deuteronomy 25:4 ("Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain."), and of course the extending of the Sabbath command to animals in Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15.

The Oblation of Onions

I've got my computer back up and running for the most part. Still some software yet to reinstall and some settings that aren't quite the way I had them before the crash. But at least it looks like I'll be able to go ahead with SoFoBoMo. I've been getting warmed up with some more food photos lately.

Onions are pretty amazing, you know. I've recently finished reading Robert Farrar Capon's The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection, which is a wonderful combination of cookbook and theological essay. In Chapter 2, "The First Session," he guides the reader through a truly spiritual encounter with an onion. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book. I'd been exposed to the onion exercise in a class at Regent once before (The Christian Imagination, taught by -- surprise, surprise -- Loren Wilkinsons). But it was fun to savor the chapter from which the onion experience came.

Some choice excerpts: "Once you are seated, the first order of business is to address yourself to the onion at hand....You will note, to begin with, that the onion is a thing, a being, just as you are. Savor that for a moment." Later: "But look what your onion has done for you: It has given you back the possibility of heaven as a place without encumbering you with the irrelevancy of location."

Still farther on, one of the best sections, worth quoting at length:

"Note once again what you have discovered: an onion is not a sphere in repose. It is a linear thing, a bloom of vectors thrusting upward from base to tip. Stand your onion, therefore, root end down upon the board and see it as the paradigm of life that it is--as one member of the vast living, gravity-defying troop that, across the face of the earth, moves light- and airward as long as the world lasts.

"Only now have you the perspective needed to enter the onion itself. Begin with the outermost layer of paper, or onion-skin. Be careful. In the ordinary processes of cooking, the outer skin of a sound onion is removed by peeling away the immediately underlying layers of flesh with it. It is a legitimate short cut; the working cook cannot afford the time it takes to loosen only the paper. Here, however, it is not time that matters, but the onion. Work gently then, lifting the skin with the point of your knife so as not to cut or puncture the flesh beneath."

Later on: "Perhaps now you have seen at least dimly that the uniquenesses of creation are the result of continuous creative support, of effective regard by no mean lover. He likes onions, therefore they are. The fit, the colors, the smell, the tensions, the tastes, the textures, the lines, the shapes are a response, not to some forgotten decree that there may as well be onions as turnips, but to His present delight--His intimate and immediate joy in all you have seen....With Peter, the onion says, Lord, it is good for us to be here. Yes, says God. Tov. Very good."

Later he touches on his idea which he elsewhere calls oblation: "Man's real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God's image for nothing. The fruits of his attention can be seen in all the arts, crafts, and sciences....But if man's attention is repaid so handsomely, his inattention costs him dearly. Every time he diagrams something instead of looking at it, every time he regards not what a thing is but what it can be made to mean to him...[r]eality slips away from him; and he is left with nothing but the oldest monstrosity in the world: an idol. Things must be met for themselves. To take them only for their meaning is to convert them into gods--to make them too important, and therefore to make them unimportant altogether. Idolatry has two faults. It is not only a slur on the true God; it is also an insult to true things."

I think a photographer's calling is very connected with this idea of attentiveness to things, of oblation (offering them up to God and to others by really seeing them and loving them).

Ron Reed, in his blog Oblations, quotes the core exposition of this idea of oblation from Capon's chapter "The Oblation of Things" in his book An Offering of Uncles. My church, Point Grey Inter-Mennonite Fellowship, is going to have Ron as a guest speaker on Sunday, Sept 6, to give a version of his talk "Oblation: The Artist's Holy Calling." Lucky us!

SoFoBoMo

I have signed up to participate in the first annual Solo Photography Book Month (affectionately known as SoFoBoMo). It's being organized by my friend and fellow photo blogger, Paul Butzi. The idea is to produce a solo photo book with at least 35 photos, from start to finish (print ready), within one month. We can start any time between March 1 and April 1, but then we have 31 days to finish. I'm planning to do it from April 1 to May 1. I'm a bit daunted by the task, mostly the part about getting 35 photos that are worth publishing in a book within a month. I could probably find 35 photos from my entire oeuvre over the past few years that I'd be willing to publish, but all in one month? That's more than one great photo a day. But as Paul points out, it's not about getting something that's going to win awards, it's about getting something completed, which is the problem most of us face. So I'm looking at this project as a good impetus to get out there and do some more shooting. In order not to waste time with the nitty gritty during the limited month, I'm spending some time now to learn Adobe InDesign, the software I'll use for the book layout.

I'm not yet sure what theme I'll choose for my book. It'll necessarily need to be stuff I can take locally, unless I manage to complete the 35 photos in one week in Texas, where I'm going for Transforming Culture, a symposium on arts and the church. If it's going to be local photography, I could get back to my series on interesting colored houses in Vancouver which I've been wanting to do. Since there are no silly restrictive codes and covenants limiting what color people can paint their houses (like in the neighborhood where I lived in the Eastside of Seattle), there are all kinds of houses painted fun colors -- shocking purple, green with orange trim, ones with fake thatched roofs, etc.

And speaking of amusing local sights, I often see this bus parked along the side of the road not far from my house. You probably have to click to see the larger version to read the smaller text "Please stop when dogs are barking." Vancouver is a very dog friendly city, which is great for me and Cricket. There are off-leash areas in almost all parks, and dogs are allowed to go in swimming at certain parts of the public beach. A lot of business owners put water bowls for dogs out on the sidewalk in front of their shops, and most stores allow people to bring their dogs inside (unless they sell food).

Singing off the same hymn sheet

That's what they say in the UK when people are what we in North America would call "on the same page" (or "wavelength"). These lovely sisters in my church gave me permission to post the photo I took of them in one of our services. We are one of the few churches around which still sings in four-part harmony. It's wonderful -- like being part of a heavenly choir! Congregational singing has been a big part of my faith over the years, and like a friend of mine once told me, hymns are part of my prayer language. I've been invited to document our church's worship through photography on a couple of occasions. All the photos in the mini slide show that flips by on the home page were done by me. If you're in the Vancouver area and looking for a church that seeks to integrate faith and the arts; peace, justice, and biblical truth; heart and mind; spiritual formation and mission; people of all generations; lay men and women in ministry...come check us out: Point Grey Inter-Mennonite Fellowship.

[Italy trip] Prayer

Old monk praying during the Vesper service at San Miniato al Monte, in Florence.

The golden lampstand

[News flash: This photo of mine has been published online in Comment Magazine. Click here.]

"Aaron is responsible for keeping the lamps burning continually on the Lampstand of pure gold before GOD." (Lev 24:4; The Message)

Here is another in my votive candles series (see also this one). It is a portrait of a serious man of God, at work in the house of the Lord. This is one of the monks at San Miniato al Monte in Florence, lighting additional candles before the Vespers service. I was drawn to the glow on his face, and only later noticed the subtle outline highlight on his hair from a bit of sun coming in the window above his head. Without that, his head would have blended into the dark background. I considered whether to crop more of the black space at the bottom, but I decided to keep it, to emphasize the height of his body. You can see his robe disappearing into darkness and can imagine where it extends to.

Another possible composition crops it in way close and reveals the time on his watch (even though I was standing about 30 feet away from him; see, there is a use for 12.8 megapixels!) -- the Vespers service did indeed start at 5:30pm. You'll need to click to view the image at full size to be able to read it. For you techies who are interested, this was shot with a 70mm lens, ISO 1600, f/4 at 1/125. Hand held, no flash. ISO 1600 on my Canon 5D rocks! It was very dark in there. I'm beginning to think I like this second one better. What do you think?

Back from Italy

I have over 1600 photos to sort through to select the best ones to show, and that's going to take some time, but here's a start. This one I've titled "The Art Critics." As would be expected from a trip to Italy which focused on visiting family and taking a seminar in Florence called "Art and Cultural Transformation in the Renaissance," a lot of my photos are portraits or group candids of family members, reproductions of art, and documentary travel photos, not many of which would be worth sharing on this blog (however I will be putting together an online photo album of a selection of my trip photos to show friends and family who are interested in seeing them and will announce its availability here). But there are a few when I was consciously trying to make art myself instead of just looking at it, and those (when successful) I'll be showcasing here over the coming days or weeks.

Sometimes more interesting photographs come from photographing not the "main attraction" (e.g., the art in a museum or cathedral) but rather something you see when you turn around and look at what's going on behind you or next to the central event. My favorite example of this is Ed Clark's famous photo in Life Magazine of Navy CPO Graham Jackson playing the accordion at FDR's funeral. That's much more powerful than a photo of what everyone else in the audience was looking at: a casket rolling by. I try to remember that principle whenever I'm somewhere with a viewing audience. (Hmm, "viewing audience" sounds oxymoronic. Do we have a word in English that means "a group of people viewing a spectacle or work of art together" which isn't derived from a root meaning "to hear"?)

So in this case, I wasn't even interested in reproducing the entire work of art. It happens to be "Deposizione dalla croce" (Deposition from the Cross) by Francesco Salviati, a lovely work by a painter I'd never heard of, but for the purposes of my photograph, who cares? That isn't the point. The point is how intently people look at art when they think they know something about it or want to discuss their reactions to it with each other. It's also about how, when you look away from the main subject, you often see something interesting. In this case, in addition to focusing on the viewers rather than the full painting, I've captured a part of the painting in which the painter represented one of the onlookers to the "main attraction" (a significant one, mind you, so it partly defeats my purpose; she's Mary, the mother of Jesus, whose body being taken down from the cross is the "main attraction" in the painting). With my weird sense of humor and taste for comical juxtapositions, I also like the amusing fact that the guy on the right is sort of making an unintentional obscene gesture at us (the photographer and viewers) who are looking over his shoulder at a sacred painting. (You might have to click on the photo to see a bigger version of it to be able to tell.)

Candles and the Idea of the Holy

There's a sense of the sacred in this photo, even though I personally don't find connection with the Almighty through lighting candles in a stone church. Or at least I didn't used to. I'm beginning to be able to relate to that. I used to find the practice "too Catholic" (paying for candles to light in the church smacked too much of indulgences; is God supposed to be more likely to answer my prayer if I send it up with a candle?) But now there are many things I appreciate about the Catholic way of worship that I didn't understand before. Lighting candles in prayer isn't necessarily a biblical practice, but lampstands were definitely used in worship (e.g., Exodus 25, 37; Zechariah 4; Revelation 1-2). And there's the "smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints" which "went up before God" in Rev 8:4. Candlelight vigils are held by many of various faiths, including Christians, in the event of a great tragedy. There is something about a lit candle that helps people focus their attention on God. A friend of mine who is a spiritual director always lights a candle before she starts her sessions, and leaves it burning throughout the hour, to remind both herself and the directee that God is present with them and it is really God who is the Director. I have now experienced lighting candles for prayer in several different settings. I've done it in a Taizé worship service, in a Greek Orthodox Good Friday service, online, and I've even done it in my own home in front of...gasp!...an icon! I am less quick to judge the spiritual practices of others now than when I was younger.

(*) The title of this post, by the way, comes from the book The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto, in which he coined the term "numinous" - that which is holy, awesome, "wholly other" about God; that which transcends rational comprehension.

Dinner for One with Three

This one is worth clicking on to view at full size, so you can see what the title is referring to.

The icon in the background is Andrei Rublev's Trinity. If you don't know the work, here's a good discussion of it. One of the key elements of it is that the three persons of the Trinity are seated around a four-sided table with the fourth side open to the viewer, inviting us to join in the holy repast with them, as it were.

As I live alone, I eat alone most of the time. That particular evening I had prepared a fancy meal for myself in honor of a friend whose memorial service I had just celebrated that day (who had given me the recipe for that warm squash salad). In the original photo, I had the program from her memorial service standing up on the table to the left side of the plate, but I ended up deciding to crop that out, because it was irrelevant and distracting to what I felt was more important about the photo. You see, I had noticed something which I had not seen when I took it: the placement of the glass of wine precisely over the table where the Trinity are seated. So it's as if I've accepted their invitation to join them for a meal. And in return, I've invited them to join me at my table, because I fortuitously had set three empty placemats set around my table. None of this was pre-planned. At least not by me... ;-)

Worshiping God through art

[First paragraph is an excerpt cross-posted from Iambic Admonit]

One of the reasons we do art is to glorify God and worship him through the very process of doing our art, not just through the final result. Our doing art would bring joy to him even if nobody else ever saw it. A few weeks ago, I was driving south on I-5 through Washington State, and the quality of light hitting the trees on the mountains with their multiple shades of green -- darker in the coniferous parts of the forest and lighter in the deciduous trees -- was nothing short of heavenly. I felt upwelling inside of me an uncontrollable urge to make a picture on the spot. Not a photograph, but a painting. I don't paint, but I wished then and there that I did, and that I had my paints with me. I didn't even have my camera with me. I told a friend about the experience later, and she said "oh yes, it would have been great to capture that scene, but it'll have to remain in your memory." But she didn't get it. It wasn't so I could "capture" the scenery and remember it or show it to others. It was so I could worship God for the glory of his creation, then and there, that I wanted to do the art. I think I'm finally growing into the kind of artist that God wants me to be, when that is my response to the beauty of his creation. I suggest you think about these things when doing your photography, and see if it helps you grow in your relationship with God.

This photo is nothing like what I saw that day, but it's an exploration in light and color among trees, so it's at least a relevant theme. This is from a photo I took in Lynn Canyon Park on the same day I did these, but highly stylized with Photoshop editing (mostly Hue/Saturation adjustment layers).

Photo of the day

Doug Plummer has an interesting post (thanks to Paul Butzi for pointing it out) about the process he uses in making his photo of the day. Reminds me that was originally my intent in starting this blog, though I have had a hard time keeping up the every day frequency. My process is similar though not as elaborate. It really is more of an unfolding or discovery than going out specifically with something in mind that I want to create.

I have been noticing more often lately people writing about the process of making art as being more important than the final product. Doing photography is a way of learning about the world, about myself, and about God. I think a recovery of that aspect of art is key to making the arts relevant to the church again in this day and age. Jeremy Begbie, with his Theology Through the Arts idea, is the first person who introduced me to using the arts as an active way of engaging with and discovering Truth. He seems to have had a ripple effect on many others. Or maybe the time was just ripe for this concept.

My photo for today is one that I took when I was explaining to my friend in Bellingham about how colors opposite each other on the color wheel go well together in a photo. Blue and orange, red and green, purple and yellow. I enhanced the saturation of the sky a tiny bit in Photoshop, but the leaves really were this brilliant red-orange.

Self-portraits

I've always enjoyed the genre of photographers' self-portraits. They almost always, of necessity, depict the photographer at work doing his or her art (like painters' self-portraits at their easels). And they are almost always at least slightly humorous. You have to do something clever and somewhat amusing to get yourself into a photograph that is taken by a camera whose lens is normally pointing away from you. Some of the newer consumer cameras have remote control gadgets that enable you to place the camera on a tripod and take a picture of yourself that way, but that ruins the fun. There are all kinds of other more interesting ways to take a self-portrait photo. Mirrors, shadows, extreme wide angle lenses, self-timers, holding the camera at arm's length and aiming as best you can (usually cock-eyed), etc. See if you can figure out how I did this one of myself. Spoiler below.

Artists of all genres (including literary) have been fascinated by the self-portrait for centuries. Some of my favorites in the visual arts are the many of Van Gogh and Rembrandt, and the marvellous Triple Self-Portrait of Norman Rockwell. Here are many more examples at ArtLex (a wonderful resource). I'm not sure when the first self-portrait was ever conceived, but God certainly set the stage for self-portraiture by creating humans in his own image.

I remember a Vancouver photographer (whose name escapes me) who did a series of photos where the task he set for himself was to only take one photograph a day, every day, for a whole year, and the only rule was that he had to be in each shot. It was very creative, and ended up documenting some interesting times in his life (like when he broke his leg and was in a cast for a few weeks). He showed the entire exhibit at an open house at his home during the annual "Artists in Our Midst" event in Vancouver a few years ago.

I've just been watching and studying an Alfred Hitchcock film, "I Confess." The great director was famous for putting himself in cameo appearances in all of his films -- often just his rotund silhouette walking across the frame. His reason for doing so (apart from merely giving us a humorous signature), as my film class teacher Bruce Marchfelder explained, was to indicate his complicity in the dark side of humanity that he was portraying in his film.

Artists do self-portraiture for many reasons. There is an excellent web article explaining some of them, "The Exploration of Self: What Artists Find When They Search in the Mirror" (by Jeanne Ivy). Her conclusion is worth quoting in its entirety:

Self-portraits have been a method of self-exploration since humans first gazed at their own reflection in a pool of water. With the invention of the mirror came an even stronger fascination to capture one's likeness. And even within the past ten years, the public's fascination with the way an artist sees him/herself has led to exhibitions like the National Self-Portrait Collection in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

Self-portraits, we have found, can be carefully staged to show the audience only what the artist wishes to project, or deeply revealing, inadvertently displaying feelings of anguish and pain. Self-portraits have been used to test new techniques, make a signature mark, launch into self-study, remember the past, and as a way to release emotion. Whichever way artists choose to construct their images, they are each forced to study their own personas both physically and emotionally.

What do artist's find when they search the mirror? For some the self-portrait is cathartic experience, a letting go of pent-up emotions. For others, the process reveals new insights about themselves and their work. For all artists, the self-portrait is an exploration, an opportunity to see beyond the image in the mirror and begin to search into the soul.

I am not entirely sure why I do self-portraits, but surely there must be some element of self-exploration in it (that's a common theme in my life). The process of writing this blog post has made me more aware of how frequently I do it and the possible significance. I'll be posting some of my self-portraits in the coming days (though not necessarily revealing to you what they tell me about myself!). The one above is a reflection of myself in a mud puddle, on Galiano Island. Enhanced in Photoshop to accentuate the contrast and add a blue cast to the sky.

If you're so inclined, try taking an interesting self-portrait photo of yourself this week.

New beginnings

I'm a little behind on editing my recent work, so today I'm going to post what is one of my all-time favorite photos, of a tree fern, taken in New Zealand in 2005. I've posted and commented on it before on the other blog I sometimes write for, Iambic Admonit, but here I'll say some different things.

This is the first photograph I ever sold a print of. People didn't start buying my photos until I started charging enough to be taken seriously. Interesting...

I've had people tell me this photo looks like an impressionistic painting, because the foreground leaves and background are out of focus (intentionally). This was taken with a 200mm lens at f/3.5, so a very narrow depth of field, to get that effect.

The unfurling fern frond is called a koru in the Māori (New Zealand native) language, and it is a major element in their art, symbolizing new life and rebirth. Different people see different things in it. Some see a fiddle head. Some see a fetus. Some see little creepy crawly critters all curled up. I love that it has so many connections for people. I have my own personal connection with the photo, since it encapsulates my whole trip to New Zealand, which was a profound time of renewal in my relationship with God.

The flora and fauna in New Zealand were amazing, so I'll probably be posting more photos from there in the coming weeks as I catch up on some more recent projects.

Balloon flower (platycodon grandiflorum)

Just another pretty flower picture today. (From my archives, obviously. Spring does come early in Vancouver, but not this early.)

There are some photographers who consider themselves to have "moved beyond the pretty picture" (see, for example, The Landscapist blog). While I am learning to use my photography to communicate (an idea or emotion), to reveal a subject in a new way, or to accomplish something (raising awareness and money for nature conservation, for example), I don't see how I could ever abandon photos that "merely" showcase the beauty of God's creation. It is still a challenge to make them good. And people never tire of looking at them.

This gem was growing at Van Dusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver. I shot it back in 2002 on my old Yashica 230-AF, using color slide film: Fujichrome Velvia 50, known for its saturated colors and ultra-fine grain. I used both a macro filter and a warming filter, and a mini-tripod if I recall. I remember having to lie down on the ground and mess around with the tripod and camera and a reflector for quite a while to get the composition and lighting right. Scanned at 300dpi and touched up dust spots in Photoshop afterwards.

A bird in the bush is worth...

Back to some nature & wildlife photo­graphy. This is a photo I took in New Zealand last year. It's a whitehead (Maori: popokatea), one of the protected species of birds on Tiritiri Matangi Island, a 220-hectare nature reserve with some of the best birdwatching in all of New Zealand, and of anywhere I've been in the world (I'm relatively new at birdwatching, though).

This shot demonstrates how lots of megapixels can compensate for not having as long a lens as one might have wished for with wildlife photography. A 400mm or even 600mm lens would be better for birds, but I'm still saving up for one of these babies. I was shooting with my 70-200mm lens, but I evidently didn't even have time to zoom it all the way out to 200. I shot this at 160mm, wanting to make sure I at least got something before the bird flew away, which indeed he did as soon as I shot it. Miraculously, I was able to focus quickly and get a good image. But I was at least 10-15 feet away from the bird, and he fills up less than 1% of the frame of my original photo. So I had to crop severely to make him fill more of the frame. However, thanks to the 12.8 megapixels of my Canon 5D, I could enlarge that tiny a portion of the photo, and he's still as sharp as can be. I cropped out everything that was not essential, leaving the bit of flax bush that he was perched on. It's quite characteristic of their habitat. At that distance, with that lens, and an aperture of f/5.6, my depth of field was less than a foot. This made for a good separation between subject and out-of-focus background.

I plan to make cards out of this photo and offer them to the gift shop on Tiritiri Matangi to sell, and will donate the proceeds to help with the protection of all these wonderful species of birds. That's one more way where my faith and photography can be integrated. I believe in stewardship of God's creation, and if I can use my art to help with that, what a privilege!

Mystery photos

When I was growing up, the local weekly newspaper, The Berkshire Sampler, ran a mystery photo column. You'd try to guess what it was, and they'd announce the winner in the following issue. I always loved those, and am still drawn to that sort of close up photography where it's hard to identify the subject, but the photo is still interesting even if you don't know what it's of. From my memories of that fun challenge, I later developed the game of "mystery photo" which I recently introduced to the children (ages 9 and 11) of some friends of mine, as a way of teaching them about photography. We would take turns going around the house (while the others hid their eyes to the count of 100) and finding something to make a mystery photo of. Then the others would have to try to identify the subject of the photo.

I took this photo last night at the Regent College Christmas party. I'm not going to make you spend too long guessing what it is. It's a punch bowl, before it was filled with punch. It was taken with flash, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO 400. The relatively narrow depth of field allowed me to focus on just the inside of the bowl and the ladle, giving a sort of mysterious haze to the near and far edges of the bowl. The flash gives all kinds of interesting highlights and sparkles on the glass and the silver ladle.

I love the shape of the bowl, how it takes hold of your eye and rolls it around centrifugally bringing it back again and again to the center at the bottom of the bowl, as a marble rolling around inside the bowl might do. I also like the way the wine colored tablecloth shows through the crystal. This is the kind of photograph that I could gaze at for a long time, almost mesmerized. It has deeper implications as well. It is somewhat reminiscent of a goblet, and the wine color together with that cannot but remind me of the cup of communion. The fact that it's a punch bowl at a party in a community I love also calls up warm thoughts of friendship, hospitality, good food/drink, celebration, and Christmas. Finally, it is an appropriate symbol of the mystery of Christ's advent: a womb-shaped bowl waiting expectantly to be filled with its liquid. Talk about Space For God!

Integration of photography and life

A quote from Bruce Barnbaum, The Art of Photography (emphasis mine):

I have long felt that most people segregate their lives, putting their work in one place, photography in another, music in a third, other outside interests in a fourth, etc....Art, music, religion, food gathering, birth, marriage and death, are all intertwined. Each represents an essential part of life, and none can exist without support from the others. Why we have evolved into a civilization that segregates these aspects of life into essential and nonessential aspects could be a lifelong study for teams of anthropologists. But I feel that each of us who are seriously interested in making photographs could benefit greatly by trying to integrate the many facets of our own lives.

I have mostly been reflecting thus far on how photo­graphy integrates with my faith. But there are all sorts of other areas of my life that it touches on. I knew this blog couldn't go very long without including my black lab, Cricket, who is a big part of my life. She's also a great subject for photos. We'd just arrived in the parking lot for Cricket's canine water therapy appointment (basically underwater massage and swimming in a heated dogs-only pool; ah, what luxury!). I had brought my camera along to do a photo shoot for Cindy Horsfall for her La Paw Spa website. I happened to have it ready in hand when I turned around and saw Cricket begin to yawn, and I managed to catch her right at the curled tongue stage. I've titled this one "Are We There Yet?"

In animal photography, the key is to focus on the eyes. It's not such a big deal if the snout is out of focus, as it adds depth to the photo, especially with a solid colored pet. In this case, Cricket's eyes weren't open anyway, and her tongue was the point of interest, so I focused on that. Incidentally, dogs aren't the only animals who curl their tongues when they yawn. See this award-winning photo by Don Johnson.

The faith of a child

I witnessed this scene in the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe (more famous for its miraculous staircase than its statuary). I was struck by the boy's rapt gaze at Jesus, oblivious to the major tourist attraction. "Unless ye become as a little child...." My photos of the staircase were interesting, but nothing like this. Sometimes if you take your eye off what everyone else is looking at, you'll end up capturing the better photograph. It's related to a well known strategy of some photojournalists: rather than pointing the camera at the spectacle, focus on the people watching the spectacle, and you'll get some wonderful shots like this one by famous photojournalist Harry Benson, of Coretta Scott King and her children watching her husband's funeral procession.

I should point out that I asked the boy's mother for permission to photograph her son. And, in fact, I asked his permission, too. I hadn't been quick enough with my camera when I first saw the scene, and he moved away. But I asked him if he'd go back and stand there gazing at Jesus as he had been before, and he obliged. So it's a staged photo, but it's exactly what it would have looked like if it hadn't been staged. This relates to my post from a couple of days ago on Iambic Admonit about photographing vs. taking photos. While it might have been more natural to take the photo before the boy knew he was being photographed, I'm at least glad that I got to speak to him and his mother about it, and they were pleased to cooperate. I would have felt equally fine about the photo from an ethical standpoint if I'd gotten the permission after I tripped the shutter, and sometimes that's what you've got to do. I'm also not opposed to intentionally (and even mischievously) setting up situations that will result in a great candid photo, such as this one by Harry Benson.

Bleeding heart detail

As promised, here's my choice for the best couple of blossoms from yesterday's bleeding heart photo, close cropped (notice the "rule of thirds" at work here), with a bit of Photoshop action on the far right to remove the edge of another blossom that was showing. (I didn't want to simply crop it out because it would have made that edge too close to the subject.) The clone stamp tool and spot healing brush are amazing! With all my talk of Photoshop, I need to emphasize that you've got to begin with a good image and have some skill and a good artistic eye in order to use the software successfully. Photoshop is not the idiot's way to make a bad photograph good.

This is an image I'd consider using for a card, maybe for Valentine's Day, though I'm not sure whether that might give the wrong impression (bleeding heart = broken heart?).

Roadside Jesus Art in New Mexico

We're departing from the theme of autumn leaves for the time being. Today's photo is one I took on my trip to New Mexico in early August. We just don't get that kind of public piety up here in the Pacific Northwest, apart from a few white cross shrines near the side of the road where people were killed in car accidents. This "Jesus of the Hoops," as I call it, is somewhat tacky at one level, but there's also something beautiful about it. The basketball hoop is like a second halo, echoing the yellow painted halo and the shape of the crown of thorns, which is in turn repeated in the stack of old tires. This is an everyday Jesus. He's there in the midst of the sweltering heat, while you shoot hoops behind the garage, carry a load in your wheelbarrow, work on your beater van with the missing bench seat. And yet he's somehow otherworldly, painted with saintly aspect, eyes averted, blood trickling down his face, shoulders and chest. You probably can't see it in the low-res version of this picture, but the painter signed his work with his initials and the date: "** - 77" (the initials had been blacked out; perhaps he was embarrassed by his work or wanted it to remain anonymous). This isn't art photography per se as much as it is a photograph of art. But I've taken it in an artistic way, framing it to emphasize the jarring juxtaposition of Jesus and junk, and the repeating halo shapes.

It was a very bright day, so parts of this photo are washed out (overexposed). Nothing Photoshop could do about that. One of these days I'll get on the ball and do some HDR (high dynamic range) photography, where you take two different exposures of the same photo (using a tripod of course, to keep the composition exactly the same), one properly exposed for the shadows and one for the highlights, and then, using some fancy selection and masking and layers work in Photoshop, you merge the shadows of the former with the highlight areas of the latter for a perfectly exposed photo from bright to dark. No camera has the breadth of dynamic range that the human eye has, but with the magic of technology, you can make it look like it does. This process can be quite time consuming, but the results are stunning.