“Love prefers twilight to daylight."
             ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

The "magic hour" is often talked about in photography...that hour between the sun's rise or fall and darkness when the light changes into vivid, breathless hues. Twilight wears its own magic colors. In truth, though, I think it is more the "magic thirty-five minutes". I was thinking about this tonight as I was practically galloping from scene to scene at a photo shoot of an elegant custom home. That lovely blue light comes on fast right after sunset and rides hard toward darkness. An hour would have been such a gift; thirty-five minutes makes you gallop.

Outside, inside, lanai and pool. Bracket exposures, bracket compositions, and try not to back into anything expensive or six feet deep in water. And then, almost instantly, that blue is gone and the rodeo is over. You chimp one last shot and the sky has gone black.

It's exciting, I tell you. Chasing that blue light special is just exhilarating. I drove home later thinking about how wonderful it is to be a witness to it, to have it in my palette, and to throw big, bold strokes of it into my photographs.

It is very much worth the gallop.

Nikon D2x, Nikkor 12-24mm at 15mm, 6 seconds, f/10, ISO 160

“The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning."
             ~Ivy Baker Priest

I have a friend and she has a gift: she grows the most exotically beautiful flowers in one of the most unlikely places - Alaska. This gorgeous feast of color and intersecting circles caught my eye in her garden during a visit and like the memory it has become, it now lives with me as a photograph.  And see how beauty spreads like a snow-melt river? I am showing it to you.

I often suspect the backstory of an image may be a little more interesting than the image itself. While this is truly a magnificent bloom, maybe it's just a smidge prettier all dressed up in its past? Perhaps knowing that it sprung up out of cool black soil nourished by the ash of not-so-distant past volcanos on a little tilt of earth overlooking Kachemak Bay makes it glow just a little bit more? Or that the love of good friendship permeated the air that day and it basked just a little more in brightly in all that love and lovely Alaskan light?

Who can say. All I know with any certainty is that I look at this image and it triggers places in my brain that enrich it. Galen Rowell hypothesized that we react to images - to art - *because* of our stored memories. The more I grow into this art, the more I have come to agree with him. 

I'd have to take this theory a small step forward and wonder if those images - those works of art - which appeal universally do not trigger universally stored memories that link us all together in one long roll of developing human film.

Maybe. Someday.

Nikon D100, Nikkor 60mm micro, 1/1600, f/7.1, ISO 200

“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out”
          ~ James Bryant Conant

My camera gathers dust.

It gathers dust in this, the season of selling one's creative offspring. I've been setting up shows and making appearances and checking inventories and giving presentations to local groups and deciding on show decor and whether I should display framed art in triptych or polyptych formations - or not. So much to do, always new lessons on every horizon, always a new way to promote yourself that seems so unfamiliar - and me, watching decisions so big and cumbersome yesterday quickly fade away in today's light. The busy season. The busy-ness season.

Yes, my camera gathers dust.

So tonight, while listening to new music streams via Pandora - a scrumptious tip from a friend - I sat at the desk which seems to have been permanently converted to a darkroom workspace, rummaging through photos I sold out of at a previous show in various formats, gearing up for another show. Don't get me wrong: you don't have to sell many to sell out of one copy.

And so, as Kelly Joe Phelps sang Worn Out/Sky Like A Broken Clock in his raspy voice, I came across these turtles. Florida cooters, actually. Three Florida cooters on a half-sunken tree in Juniper Creek. I remember this day very well.

See, that's the real magic of nature photography for me. I have only to look at one of these little globs of saturated light molecules and memories of a magnificent moment in time come back to me, all smiles and full of bright sunlight, good friendship, very cute turtles and a deliciously clear stream. Instants becomes instances and although nothing - not one single thing - ever stays the same, three little turtles, all tangled in a traffic jam on a wet log in the sunshine can inspire me just as much in my words today as they did with my camera a year ago.

Yes, my camera gathers dust, but it's children laugh and dance to funky music in the darkroom tonight.

Nikon D2x, Nikkor 80-4000 VR @ 210mm, 1/50, f/7.1, ISO 320

“If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.”
          ~ G. K. Chesterton

It has been a long time - weeks - since I have been to the beach and nearly as long since I have picked up a camera. Tonight, a good friend came to pull me out of my work frenzy and my blues to lure me out for a walk at sunset. We walked the path along the beach to Wiggins Pass, then followed the beach back up to the car. It was wonderful to get out again after so long - and even better to delight in that perfect blend of apricot and cyan that we are so often drenched in along our shores. I felt rejuvenated.

I didn't intend to frame this shot in this way on purpose, but I'm pleased with the fringe of sea grape leaves and brambles along the "erosion cliff" where the path passes above the beach. I framed it this way because my eyes, slow to heal from cataract surgery, could see only as far as the tree branches to use as focus points. It feels very odd to hold this camera and not be able to "see".

In all, I shot up only a handful of frames. Small potatoes for this girl who is usually a machine-gunner with this camera. That was ok, though. I enjoyed the walking and sharing of memories, and the feel of sand and moist salt air - and the luscious hues of a winter sunset.

Cyan is a much better color of blue to wear.

Nikon D2x, Nikkor 24-120 VR @ 24mm, 1/125, f/13, ISO 160

"A part of you has grown in me.
And so you see, it's you and me
together forever and never apart,
maybe in distance, but never in heart."
         ~ Unknown

Goodbye, dear friend. It was a very, very good run and a most excellent adventure. You are deeply missed, and even more lovingly remembered.