Lingering with Delicate Sitting Ducks

I was examining the shape, color, texture and black underside of mushrooms today. They are visually interesting, a delicate sitting duck in the too-tall grass of August.

Mushrooms are popping up everywhere after the torrential rains in the state. I want to photograph them and see what comes of it.

Modern Photography: Mushrooms dallying in the breeze.

I am including a visual of marbles on fabric to demonstrate what experimenting with colors, textures, shapes and lighting can do in a photograph. I have been exploring these concepts while reading “Photographic Lighting: Learning to See” by Ralph Hattersley.

Consider this thought from Hattersley,

“We insist to ourselves that we see things, whereas our eyes are only constructed to see light. In truth, nothing else is visible.”

Words Like Rain

I am often thinking of words: words of a lover, organized tiles from the Scrabble games; in my head they tumble and fall spilling like warm rain in my hair.

Excerpt from "Romance"
by Claude McKay


To lie at full length, taut, with cheek to cheek,
And tease your mouth with kisses till you speak

Love words, mad words, dream words, sweet senseless words,
Melodious like notes of mating birds;

Cy and Lori at the 2007 Iowa State Fair

Here we are, Cy the Cyclone- the Iowa State University mascot- and me. I enjoy the days that Cy strolls around the ISU campus waving the thumbs up to everyone. It's a signal that all is well in the universe when a large red cyclone bird is high-fiving humans on the planet earth.

Fully in Touch

I needed the Daily Dharma for today! I am posting it so that I can read it when I need a reminder; Feeling pain is part of life and learning.


Tricycle's Daily Dharma: August 5, 2007

Fully In Touch

The person that desires to have only pleasure and refuses pain expends an enormous amount of energy resisting life--and at the same time misses out enormously. He or she is on a self-defeating mission in any case, for just as we evade certain forms of suffering we inevitably fall victim to others. Underlying our glitzy modern consumer culture there is a deep spiritual under-nourishment and malaise that manifests all kinds of symptoms: nervous disorders, loneliness, alienation, purposelessness . . . So blanking out, running away, burying our heads in the sand or videotape will take us nowhere in the long run. If we really want to solve our problems--and the world's problems, for they stem from the same roots--we must open up and accept the reality of suffering with full awareness, as it strikes us, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, in the here-now. Then, strange as it may seem, we reap vast rewards. For suffering has its positive side. From it we derive the experience of depth: of the fullness of our humanity. This puts us fully in touch with other people and the rest of the Universe.

--John Snelling