I think it’s probably best to let this image just be there without analyzing it or giving it context.

I’ll give a little ancient and recent meta-info though.

I had been photographing only with a 4 x 5 view camera for years up to about this time. Then I bought a used and inexpensive twin lens reflex camera. I loved the fact that I could suddenly make images like the one above but still have quality that wasn’t a total compromise. Not as good as the 4 x 5, but a new world of possibilities. I also loved that the camera looked so funky and non-threatening, like something you’d find in your grandfather’s attic. Funky, stealthy, and retro. (Though something half the size of a toaster can only be called stealthy when compared to a view camera, and only by virtue of its non-threatening appearance).

The up to the minute context for this image is that I haven’t yet re-found the negative. I don’t know if it’s still buried after my most recent move, two years ago, or if it got mis-filed and buried in an earlier move, or independent of a move. “I’ll just tuck these really important negatives inside the dictionary, under “R” for Really Important. I’ll never forget that!”

So here, I scanned a silver print from the darkroom days. I’ve got a handful of silver silver prints of this image. I like it a lot. Since it wasn’t easy to print, I printed a handful while I was at it. I’m so glad at least I’ve got the prints, and hopefully soon I’ll have a nice high res scan of the negative too.

I’m working in a few directions with photography these days, but this is the image making it up here for almost-explicable  reasons. I’m working on scanning some old black and white film, which is amazing. These old pieces of sheet film remind me of the first time I saw a Van Gogh painting up close. I had a shock of recognition: Van Gogh had managed to put some kind of energy — the energy of his mind, his experience, his contact with the world; something intangible but palpable — he had put that energy into each brush stroke. I could feel it, standing there in front of the painting. And I realized that what I was trying to do then as a young man was possible. I didn’t know exactly how to do it, but I had the strong aspiration to contain some kind of energy and awareness into the physical objects, print and film.

I think I sometimes pulled it off, and sometimes still do. These old big pieces of film that I haven’t looked at for many years hit me with a little jolt sometimes, when I get a sense of that some-kind-of-energy trapped in the surface of the silver crystals. But this scanning project is a process just barely underway, and hampered by the same thing my life with sheet film always was — how to find the thing I’m looking for?

The other thread in my thinking is continuing with my interest in the Ukiyo-e, “floating world” composition and aesthetic. I have one of those from last week, new, but I’m not positive it’s good enough to go live.

Anyway, this new image, “dandelion with centurea” is from this spring/early summer. It’s been haunting me a little bit, and I felt compelled to put it online. I like the way it shows the moment as a precarious dot in the space of time. The dandelion gone to seed is at the edge of what it has been, starting the wind-born journey to what it will be. It’s moment is all but gone, yet clearly in focus, master of the moment. And moving into its own is the blue of the early summer garden flower, more than holding its own against the weed.

This image was exposed around the summer solstice this year, the reflection of the balloon bright with rising sun as a family of mergansers swims toward it. Unfortunately I think it works better as a larger print than at this size on screen; here I miss the detail of the ducks and the detail of the curl of water at the bottom of the dam.

It’s funny how this image came up this week. All week I’ve been spending time looking at Ukiyo-e prints. Ukiyo-e means “floating world,” and everyone knows at least one of these images: Hokusai’s Great Wave. Maybe we know a few more Hokusai images or Hiroshige’s, or any number of the countless fantastic prints still available for viewing in museums, galleries and private collections. Also reproductions are available, and now with the magic of the indra-net, we can see thousands of them.

It’s been too too hot, and work a bit slow. Taking time to cool down and look through Ukiyo-e images has been a beautiful thing this week, and they float in my mind through the day and as I lay down to sleep and wake up.

It’s funny, even back when I only made black and white prints, many of the compositional techniques from this genre appealed to me — and even before I saw very many of these prints. Really, so many elements of the genre have permeated my work all along before I even knew much about it: the heartbreaking beauty, the transience, incongruity and tension between elements, and a dynamic tension in the composition. There is a quality of image-as-poem that I’ve always aspired to. The Henri Cartier-Bresson attention to geometry in composition is a tie to the photographic medium, and the Ukiyo-e images also simulate a sense of a “decisive moment” like Cartier-Bresson — though the woodblock carvers were far more free to work with their imagination instead of the far more restraining constraints of actual-moment that we photographers have to deal with.

Though I haven’t seen a hot air balloon or a duck (rabbits, swallows, frogs, carp, and cats are common), I like to imagine this image above as a modern Floating-World print.

Here are a few ukiyo-e images as thumbnails. The first one of these I bought as a reproduction on ricepaper while I was still in high school (inspired by a similar print on the wall of my flute teacher); I kept it thumbtacked to my wall all through college and for a few years after:

While it’s usually easy to make exposures — especially in some of the times of year when beauty is everywhere I turn — sometimes it’s hard to pick a photo of the week. Sometimes it’s like pulling my own teeth. Sometimes when digging through the catalog, everything looks good. And how to pick? Or sometimes nothing looks worthy. Why am I even doing this?

On Friday when I went pearl diving, I came up with this. I like it a lot. Seeing it in black and white helped pull some of the things I like about photographs: subtlety of tone and texture, dynamic energy in the composition, a poignant pointing-out of the passing of time, the bubble-like nature of experience and existence. This is why I’m doing this work.

update 8.3.2010: this print is now available for sale here

The other morning I was in the garden, and I saw some beautiful light on flowers. I thought I should go get my camera, but I had a lot of other things to do that morning. I thought, “Maybe I’ll photograph tomorrow instead.” And it hit me — “Now. Right now. There is no tomorrow for this light on these flowers.” The main thing that photography has taught me is that there is no tomorrow. The light shining on flower petals in dew will not be the same in ten minutes, yet alone tomorrow. I’ve known this well for a long time, but still I always forget and have to remember it again. To us it seems as if things are solid, they’ll still be there for us, we can take them for granted. It seems that life is solid.

When I was in college, so busy and my mind full of thoughts and tasks in the transition to spring; I would look up while walking between classes and realize that the trees had leafed out. Suddenly it was spring, and I had barely noticed it had happened. I had missed so much while lost in thoughts. Of course, we’re always in transition, and we barely notice it.

And so it is with peony season. The days have gotten longer, the birds have been singing. Iris have come and gone. We should have noticed enough to know that THIS would come, that the world would be so rich and lush, the days so long and full of light and color. If we’re lucky it registers, we really notice; but the petals are already falling, the days already getting shorter. Look! And then it’s already gone.

Remember the flowers, the passing of time, and the people in your life.

One of my favorite peonies over the years has been one called “Crinkled White.” I’ve even moved Crinkled White peony plant a few times as I’ve moved, which is tricky, because it is also one of the least vigorous peonies I’ve ever grown. I think that in the last move the Crinkled White didn’t make it here, back across the river again to Vermont. I ended up buying Crinkled Linen a few years ago, and I might even like this peony better. We’ve also moved here to a handful of huge, established, and unusual peonies, so we’re rich.

update 8.3.2010: this print is now available for sale here

We have a relatively new flower garden in ground that was only broken last year. It’s full of weed seeds, which ran away on us late last summer. This spring it’s a hand and back breaking job to pull the grasses, dandelions,  sedges, curly dock, queen ann’s lace, and others from among the flowers.

I was working there the other morning, with camera at hand, and it turns out that my best photos actually featured the weeds, with the flowers as backdrops.

It is a good perspective to have on Mind as well.

The following is a quote from Suzuki Roshi, from a dharma talk given in November of 1965:

“We say ‘pulling out the weed’.  We make it nourishment of the plant.  We pull the weed and bury the weed near the plant to make it nourishment of the plant.  So even though you have some difficulty in your practice….even though you have some waves while you are sitting, those weeds itself will help you.  So we should not be bothered by the weeds you have in your mind.  We should be rather grateful to the weeds you have in your mind because eventually will enrich your practice.”

update 8.3.2010: this print is now available for sale here

This is a black sand, volcanic beach near the currently active volcano in Iceland — though this year, 2007, the volcano was nothing like active, sleeping under the glacier. We spent the night before this image in a bed and breakfast to the north of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, where in the failing light I made the exposures for this panorama. While we did spend some time with the glacier, most of the day was on a few beautiful black beaches with rough seas, and traveling south a bit, some stunning cliffs.