Giving Thanks

The bio I include with prints for people who buy my photography poses this question: How many ways are there to give thanks, to give honor? Giving Thanks gets a formal nod this coming week, with gatherings of family and friends. Some will recall earlier holidays when more chairs rounded the table. It can be difficult to muster gratitude when grief seems to have the louder, more insistent voice.

One way I overcame my own soul's season of sorrow years ago was to stretch the practice of gratitude far beyond the fourth Thursday in November. A daily journaling practice of writing ten small somethings I was grateful for, every day, reawakened my senses to all the good and joyous and beautiful in the world that was only waiting for me to notice, and give a nod of recognition.

Photography, mindful photography, has become for me a kind of walking meditation, a practice that attempts to answer the question of my bio: one way, the photographer's way, is to be deliberately present. I tell my photography students, notice what you notice. What catches not only your eye, but your breath?

Increasingly I am drawn to expansive scenes that evoke the emotions of serenity, peacefulness, calm and receptivity.  For many, me included, giving thanks is an act of reverence, of worship. 

How do you give thanks? What seemingly small somethings would make a daily gratitude list for you?

Here are a few of mine, gleaned from the past couple of weeks:

I am grateful that the torn disc in my lower back is healing slowly and that I can once again drive and walk and photograph at a gentle pace.

I am grateful for the play of waning light on still water.

I am grateful that our little cove in Duck is beginning to fill with late autumn arrivals. 

I am grateful to once again have the chance to teach Mindful Nature Photography at After Dark, a community outreach program of winter evening classes offered at All Saints Episcopal Church. (Fees collected for the classes, which are given by volunteers, are donated in entirety to local charities such as our food bank, an outreach for which I am also grateful.)

Here are those same thoughts, expressed visually:

The last couple of days have dawned overcast. When I start to spend many days in a row inside, one of the ways I invite beauty into my world is to look through past portfolios. Sometimes I find a treasure I had overlooked previously. Pete and I are hoping to take a winter interlude and travel to Florida for some R&R which for me includes bird photography. This afternoon I browsed through some folders from our last trip two years ago. Here are a few favorites from late afternoon, at Sanibel's Ding Darling NWR that I rediscovered this afternoon.

This Snowy Egret was much more intent on lunch than on me. Florida's birds are much tamer around humans than their North Carolina counterparts are. I was using a long lens here.

I find such humor sometimes in the natural world. I named this Grand Exit. 

Roseate Spoonbills are a darling of the Ding Darling refuge.

This was the first time we had actually stayed on Sanibel Island, so we could be in the Refuge for sunset. The color intensified after the sun slipped behind the trees.

Eventually there were hundreds of wading birds that flew in at dusk. I enjoyed the challenge of finding small groups for pleasing compositions.

Preparing to leave the refuge near closing time, I could make a last series of images 

showing the scale and grandeur of the scene as a whole.

Recordation or Revelation?

I began my career back in 1980 as a journalist. Living on the coast, that role meant documenting storm damage when it occurred as well as covering key events in our growing community. I believe the role of journalist is a crucial one, but I have exchanged that identity for someone who needs beauty. If I cannot easily see it, I need to sculpt it out of light and shadow, feathers and fur.

The poet Keats used "truth" and "beauty" synonymously. In my emotional and photographic lexicon, beauty is etymologic cousin to hope, to serenity, and to joy. Beyond picture postcards, images of beauty evoke in me an emotional response of purpose, of possibility, of abundance, and of connection. These are the photographs I seek, the visual love letters worth a thousand words.

I recently climbed Jockey's Ridge, the highest sand dune east of the Mississippi, what passes for elevation in these coastal flatlands. I thought I was headed out to photograph "Jockey's Lake" -- a rain-filled depression that currently holds more water than I have ever seen there, thanks to record rainfall between storms Hermine and Matthew. I was on the lookout for itsy-bitsy frogs, no bigger than my fingernail, that emerge in wet spells. I made passable images, overlapping panoramic documentary photos of the lake. I saw no frogs. Instead, what intrigued me was the play of fire on sand in the waning light of the afternoon -- the same visual metaphor that caught my heart and eye on a recent visit to a fishing pier here.  

What is beauty to you? What do you seek? Good questions, and not merely for photographers.

                                       I see the dance of flame, here, the kiss of sun on earth.

How often have I asked for my path, my way, to be illuminated?

Recordation or revelation? What do I see? What do I feel?

Q: What in the world is a Loon doing, trying to walk beside the bike path along Duck Road in Southern Shores?!?

A: Nothing that will result in its survival!

Loons, like gannets, are marvelously engineered for a life on the water, but their legs and feet are set too far back to allow them to successfully take off in flight from dry land. They need water not only to feed but also to get airborne.

I passed by the bird which was sort of dragging itself forward at about 6:25 pm and realized as I drove by what I had seen. Or to be more accurate, I questioned what I had just seen, so I quickly found a place to turn around and double check. Sure enough, the bird was a loon and in obvious distress. Hold on, I said out loud, as I drove past the second time. I’m coming to get you.

Cars were whizzing by but the bird at that moment was very near the fork in Southern Shores where the road splits and where there is a small parking area. I turned there and parked, my mind already trying to visualize what was in the back of the car that I could use. Normally I carry at least one towel for critter rescue, but my vehicle has been full of boxes transporting inventory and supplies between SeaDragon Gallery, our new gallery in Duck, and Yellowhouse Gallery in Nags Head. I’d removed a lot of the paraphernalia I keep in the car “just in case.” Well, here was a case. Now what?

I did have a thin waterproof pullover. It would have to do. Years ago, artist friend E.M. Corsa and I rescued a Northern Gannet, so I know the general drill: try to get close enough without spooking the bird in order to place a towel (read, pullover) over its head and gently scoop it up in a way that doesn’t hurt either the bird’s wings or you. I had never tried this alone.  As I was getting out of my car, a jogger passed by but the bird had frozen its motion and tucked its head down. I don’t think the jogger even noticed. I approached slowly and talked softly as I knelt down nearby. I hoped my calm outer demeanor would keep the bird calm. It eyed me but didn’t try to move. I called my friend for reassurance and covered the bird, carrying it gently in my arms back toward my car.  A couple of drivers figured out I was carrying something that needed help and stopped to let me cross. I put the loon on the floor of the passenger seat (my friend’s advice) – and it looked up at me and gave its haunting, trilling call.  I’ve never heard that call in person before, and I took it as a sign I was doing the right thing.

I drove back north to the Duck Boardwalk.  Near our shop is a set of stairs that leads right to the water. Alas, the gate at the top of the stairs was locked!! By this time, the loon was trying to move inside the pullover and straining its head back and forth. Did it sense the water? Was it alert to the smells and sounds of the Canada Geese nearby? I tucked it even closer to my body with my left hand and stroked its head with my right, crooning to it all the while. There was a dock facing west just a little way down the boardwalk. Off we went.

When I reached the dock, the closest pier to the water’s surface was still about a foot or foot and a half above it.  I took a deep breath, unwrapped the loon, and gently let it go as close to the water as I could. It dropped with a big splash but came right back up to the surface and immediately began swimming around past the dock and out into more open water, ducking its head under the water, rising and stretching its wings, and diving under the surface only to bob up again a few feet away. 

I left it as the evening sun began its last descent before the sky turned pink and wished it well.

Its wings appeared to be functioning just fine. It must not have been out of water so long as to be totally exhausted. How in the world it wound up on the bike path I will never know. What I do know is that we were both in the right place at the right time for our own life paths to intersect.

This is my joy: to interact with nature in ways that are respectful, peaceful, loving and honoring, and to share the stories of those interactions, those connections.  What began as another happy, busy working day ended with almost mystical overtones: I held a loon, it crooned to me, I set it free. Life is good.

On Elephants...

I’ve been thinking about elephants—in part because my mother loved and collected them, and I spent Valentine’s weekend (one of her favorite holidays) two streets over from where she, my Auntie Bea and grandmother Gabby (whom I never knew) lived during Mom’s childhood. I was in Philadelphia—Mom’s city—for the annual American Craft Retailers Show, walking her streets and connecting with a jeweler who uses vintage molds from the late 1800’s as foundations for her contemporary creations. One of those creations featured an elephant—not just any elephant, but the exact elephant in a ring I wear often, a ring that was my grandmother’s, passed down to my mother in her childhood, and in turn passed down to me when I was about ten years old. Coincidence? I think not.

I’ve also been thinking about elephants and grandmother/mother/daughter bonds in part because a dear friend’s two daughters—one of whom I am godmother for—will have their first babies this year, making her a new grandma twice over.

One of the reasons I have my own love for elephants is the way that mother elephants elicit the help of unmated females, who function as maiden aunts in the raising of the baby elephants.  Elephants are matriarchal, and symbolize the strength to overcome obstacles, something my grandmother did in raising two daughters by herself after WWI and through the Great Depression.  The bond between generations, coupled with the idea of strength and resiliency, lends itself to subtle visual metaphor.  I’ve photographed this idea over time, and found two more images recently that tell this same story. The dandelion image dates from past springs and summers; the scallop shells lay on the beach together exactly as you see them pictured—I did not touch them before I photographed them—and the two trees stood in the snow on my way back home after the Philadelphia trade show. Beauty and visual stories are everywhere, if our eyes and hearts are open.

This image speaks to me of the bond between generations.

I was amazed to find these shells, so similarly colored and nestled just as you see them here, 

on the beach after recent high winds and heavy seas.

I loved how these two trees stood together in the snow.

Finding Your Story

Monday evening I taught a class on Mindful Nature Photography.  I told those gathered that I often hear questions or comments about equipment (what camera do you have, how many mega pixels is it, that sure is a big lens), more rarely do I hear questions about technique (what settings do you use--as if one size fits all experience--or more precisely, what were your settings when you made a particular image) and almost never do folks ask me about inspiration.

To me, inspiration, finding your story, is the most important foundational quest behind every image. I've made this my life quest: to be inspired, to find the story that is mine to share. With that mindset, images become like chapters, or subplots, in a larger body of work, movements in a longer symphonic composition. My idea isn't to create images that look alike but rather to present a cohesive whole that shares who I am as a person as well as a photographer.

Continuing with the story theme, I began by showing  a series of images of the ocean. Many of those images were made with a strong west wind blowing. Each image presented a different appearance and I composed differently based on the common elements of waves and wind and sky with one major difference--the light. The light in each image was different and while the weather conditions might have been similar, the quality and color temperature of the light, whether it was dramatic or soft or flat, elicited different emotional responses to each image I shared.

I love a west wind, particularly after a nor'easter. The seas typically run high for at least a day or two following a blow, sometimes longer, and when the wind shifts the ocean is to me its most dramatic. We've had west winds and high seas for a couple days now on the Outer Banks, and yesterday afternoon, I walked out on Kitty Hawk Pier near sunset. One of those images is below.

This last image is from this morning, shortly after sunrise.  Here, the story included a new set of characters--gulls who repeatedly flew into and around the wave splashes. No one was attempting to catch any fish for breakfast. In the spirit of Jonathan Livingston, these gulls seemed to be enjoying the morning cacophony of waves with as much glee as I, for sheer joy.

Weather or not...

 Ah, Punxsutawney Phil! I imagine you are a hero today to lots of folks who remember last year's record-breaking cold and snow, and who are already tired of being housebound by recent deep snows and ice in the northeast.  Early spring...six more weeks of winter...one thing is for certain: Groundhog Day lends a little magic, a little excitement in the middle of a season that is often long, cold, dark and difficult for lots of folks. What's not to like about the thought of an early spring?

Here on the Outer Banks, longtime locals have a saying: if you don't like the weather, just wait an hour or two; it'll change.

December boasted record-setting warm days. My little front yard crab-apple tree, which had already come through fall and shed its leaves, quickly put out a new green leafy crop, complete with tiny apples. Frost and thin ice followed for New Year's Eve, reddening the apples in what must have seemed to the tree to be the shortest summer ever.

A scant 30 days later, and the tree was in full autumn, its leaves an out-of-season golden. January rocked between overnight lows in the upper 20s and highs in the 70s.

Now the leaves are falling again, and I wonder, what will the little tree do when spring comes in earnest? I'm betting it somehow finds the strength to go through its seasonal cycle all over again, hopefully in a more timely and leisurely fashion than its recent ready-set-go, cramming a year's worth of living in the past six weeks.

My crab apple's saga reminds me how resilient nature manages to be, how hopeful. The air turned warm, and my apple tree responded because, as the Geico commercial reminds us, that's what apple trees do. They grow apples.

Seeing its response, I couldn't help but reach for my camera because I am a photographer. Clicking the shutter is what I do. One gift photographers receive is the celebration and remembrance of moments that might otherwise pass unnoticed. Years from now these images will be visual reminders of the summer-in-winter the Outer Banks enjoyed back in 2015/16, even if briefly. Even if it snows tomorrow. Whether we have six more weeks of winter, or are graced with an early spring, what was important in January shines through these reminders: nature's resilience, nature's hope.