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.