The Mystery of Nature

I’ve been keeping my head down, figuratively that is, more like sticking it in front of the computer. I’m working on a book about a very special place, and I’ll share more about that soon.  One of the inspirations for the work is the notion of “mystery” and what we don’t understand.  There is really so much in nature that escapes us and I’ve been looking at images from my collections that illustrate that joyous yet perplexing fact.  Here’s one from Manteo taken in 2012.

Obviously it’s a bunch of gulls in a frenzy.  But, what was the frenzy all about?  Normally you’d think “gulls going crazy, must be a fishing boat around here someone throwing some waste overboard.”  Good guess, but in this case, no boat.  I’m standing on the deck of a condo in Manteo, North Carolina. I felt I could practically reach out and touch them.  And no, I didn’t have anything for them to eat.  (You should never feed wildlife, even gulls, with the exception of the strategically thought out bird feeder.)  Of course, maybe they were hamming it up for the camera.  Glad I could oblige.  They were quite professional as colleagues go.

The Quandry of Simplicity

I’ve been seeking the “Holy Grail” recently and as is typically the case, coming up empty handed.  So what constitutes a good photograph?  Stupid question, I know. The answer is “a good photograph.” There is no answer other than, it all depends.  But that doesn’t stop us from trying.  As many wiser people have told me, or written, art is so subjective that if you’re aspiring to practice it, you are buying yourself an on-going confidence problem.  Is it any good?  Well, it really does all depend. You’re supposed to learn the rules of photography when you start getting serious, but then you’re supposed to break them routinely.  My most recently I have been worshipping at the alter of simplicity.  Edie Adams famously said that the best photographs are simple, they have just a one or two elements.  You try to get everything else out of the frame.

That little clump of grass has a true life of its own.  It survives storm after storm, and it’s still there, by itself.  (All the images in this blog are from my recent trip to Manteo, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  This is an early evening shot of Roanoke Sound.)  There is a large bridge just to the right of the frame and closer to the photographer, on either side of the frame is significant and quite attractive foliage.  There is very little beach.  You just get a hint of the rocks in the fore ground.  The image is then heavily cropped, albeit in the lens.

Here’s a somewhat messy location on the other side of the Island, overlooking Croatan Sound.  I have cropped (in camera and in the digital darkroom) severely to simplify the image.  This is a public location but it is poorly kept. This was actually the location of the  Confederate Battery that was supposed to stop the Union Navy from capturing the Island and controlling sea access to North Carolina during the Civil War.  The Confederates were shall we say not successful.

I enjoy the simplicity of the image and the one or two elements (I guess you’d say four actually, counting the sky.)  But can you live your life that way?

Let me say it for you…”what the hell is that?”  That is the bottom of the root system of an overblown tree, half submerged in the water.  You find it along a charming nature walk at Pocosin National Wildlife Refuge in Columbia, NC, not far from the Outer Banks.  It sits there, providing house and home for all sorts of critters.  The Park Service will not touch it, and they shouldn’t.  This tree is going to keep on giving for many years, even though it’s formal life is over.  I find it joyfully complex, almost overwhelming.  Who knows what’s going on in there at any given time.  Probably a lot.  Nature perhaps is not simple.  There are indeed quiet and one could say simple moments of harmony, but the constant state of change we find in nature is neither simple nor harmonious. Photography and art more generally has to somehow grapple with those discontinuities.  My pursuit of a perfectly simple world was off target.  Glad I figured that one out.

Down Under the Highway

Contemplating the passing of another fall, I’m always reminded that fall is why I got into photography in the first place.  When you stop to think about it, why should nature put on such a light show for us?  Seriously???  But she does thank goodness and so we appreciate.  Nature meets humanity.  It is one of the great conundrums of our lives and impacts everything we worry about and enjoy at the same time, from a wonderful day at the beach to global warming.  It’s all about what we experience, or rather notice, and how we interpret what we notice.  So I’ve been looking for points of intersection that seem particularly interesting and I found one, under the highway.  In this case, I’m referring to Route 146, AKA the “little dig” which was transformed a few years ago into the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor that runs from Worcester, Massachusetts to Rhode Island.

The Blackstone River has followed that basic route since the last ice age, but it was also the location of the Blackstone River Canal which was designed to run from Worcester to Providence before their war railroads, in the early 1800’s.  Alas, the railroads were not far behind and the Canal never saw much service.   Route 146 was the connector between the two cities and when it was being redesigned at the Worcester end, the State wisely, thankfully, decided to include a path/bikeway and connect the people once again to the river.

As you can see, however, the connection is, to a degree, quite funky.  The river and path share the road with, well the road, the road supports and graffiti artists.  Late at night, we could probably add some other elements to the menu, but you get the idea.  Urban meets nature.  Nevertheless, it creates a compelling, though tough to photograph view.

We were of course lucky to be there just at the peak of the foliage.  The contrast between nature and the artifacts of the urban was intense, but somehow enjoyable.  The river, depleted a bit because of the lack of rain and because of well, the fact that it has a tough life at this point in its career, keeps on flowing nevertheless.

Till next time….

Tech Note:  Photographers will recognize that these shots are “HDR” or high dynamic range shots, pulled together in Photomatix.  Under the highway the difference between dark and light is too great for the sensor to comprehend.  Multiple shots, taken on a tripod, hopefully with no wind and no touching, allow you to capture the highlights and the shadows.  However, the results sometimes don’t look that natural (though I tried to stay true to what I saw), which is the case here.  This to me represents another piece of evidence that nature (our eye balls in this case) can still trump technology, at least for now.

Context and Ambiguity

This summer, I set out to develop a better understanding of creativity as it relates to entrepreneurship, but also to my own photography.  So naturally, I’ve probably been less creative. Ironic I know.  I have been reading, a wonderful way to spend the time.  Most recently, I’ve been working my way through Brooks Jenson’s The Creative Life in Photography.  Brooks is the publisher and editor of LensWork Magazine, one of the most important outlets for good fine art photography. I had the pleasure of doing  a portfolio review with him last year, and I’m still working on the lessons gleaned from the experience.  In his chapter on Photography and the Meaning of Life, he rants as I believe he would say about trivial photography, photography that emerges from the psyche of the photographer and more importantly does not involve an effort to say something that will be meaningful to others.  He then offers a simple, but incredibly powerful exercise:  If you had five minutes left on the earth, or five minutes to talk things over with God, what would you say?  (This is a Kindle book, so the page numbers are strange, this “at” Location 1247.)

That’s quite a challenge.  The point he is trying to make regarding photography, I think, is that when an image is displayed, we’re asking someone else to stop and look at it, to take their precious time and give it to the artist.  Is it worth it?  He feels that too often, it is not.  Time to look in the mirror I suppose.  What would I say?  As a trained academic, I would probably try to take up as much time as I possibly could, so I’d probably want to make quite a few points.  One in particular though, is that things are not always as they appear to be.  That we need to stop and look more closely.

It’s rained quite a bit recently and we’ve gone out to photograph regardless.  Once you get used to it you quickly see that the rain causes the greens and reds to appear deeply saturated.  No Photoshop necessary.  The stand of trees here was beautiful. (Click on the images for a better view, particularly if your on one of the retina displays.)

However, the graphical pattern that makes this stand of trees so beautiful is the result of unwise forest cultivation.  The trees are dead, from Pine Needle Scale, a problem I’ve discussed before.  In reality, most of what we see is actually fairly ambiguous.  Which means that we can interpret things anyway we wish.  Frightening, isn’t it.

This beautiful country road is the back side of Winsor dam, a massive expression of the sheer will of humans to overpower the forces of nature.

The boulders along the shoreline are yet another manifestation of engineering prowess, not millenia of tides and waves, at Goodnough Dike.

And this little guy was hiding out right in the middle of a 2500 ft long dike.  How did he get there? Great question.  And he was not alone.  He had friends as well.  I think he knew what he was doing. Perhaps these images trivialize the point but to state it more clearly, they remind me that we are intimately connected with our environment, an environment that we have shaped and continue to shape.  Everything you see here has in some way been influenced by humans.  It is interesting that a great deal of beauty has resulted from that influence, at least as can be seen at these locations, after a nice rain.  Of course, that’s not always the case, regardless of what some might think.  It is important to understand the context of what we see in our environment.   That’s our job.  Thanks for listening.  I think my five minutes are up.

Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

I’ve written previously about the Isaac Newton apple trees on the campus of Babson College, where I work.  They are a wonderful symbol of the intellectual curiosity and excitement of the founder, Roger Babson as well as his appreciation of the natural world.  They were grown from cuttings from the original tree that helped Newton deduce the laws of gravity.  Many trees have come from that line but my favorite, and the favorite of many on campus is this particular tree, which was planted in 1954.

It is old as fruit trees go, quite old.  It’s longevity is really the product of the hard work of the Facilities staff of the College.  But caring ultimately can’t conquer time.  Last Wednesday, was the time chosen for Sir Isaac’s and Roger’s tree to be taken down.  The tree is still producing leaves, as you can see here.  Examination by experts though over several years, made it clear that it was extraordinarily fragile.  Building will be taking place nearby.  It could not survive a move.  So with reluctance, the decision was made that this was the time.  The College did a very good job of communicating the issues to the community, thankfully.  Ever since I came to Babson I have found the tree to be a place of contemplation, a place that was very helpful, even necessary at times.  It turns out, I was not alone.  Other came to say goodbye last Wednesday morning.  It was difficult to watch, to experience, but I’m glad I was there.  The day began like a bad trip to the doctor.  Waiting.

Clearly I have a deep affection for nature and at times, anthropomorphize trees. Relationships are what we put into them.  Watching arborists at work has always fascinated me.  Like many professions whose work doesn’t make it to the TV or computer screen, we don’t realize just how complicated the job is.  I’ve had the good fortune to photograph a number of arborists over the years, and have come to view them as part craftsman/woman, part scientist/engineer, part naturalist, part business person, etc.  They have a lot going on. I was struck here by their exercise of craft.  The removal of a tree in close quarters is difficult and can be dangerous.  In addition, they were quite aware that this tree was special.  I appreciated that.  Preparation took the better part of half an hour.

I was reminded then of the carpenters’ oath:  measure twice, cut once.  The tree was being held up at this point by a cable from a crane, tied carefully to the trunk and upper branches.

The cut took just a minute or two, after which Sir Isaac’s tree was released from the bonds of gravity.

And moved toward the heavens.

The ascent also lasted only a few minutes.

The tree was then laid on the ground and the arborists and staff from the College examined it, and could clearly see that indeed, it was literally a shell of its former self.  Much of the wood, however, as well as the remaining cuttings will be saved for gifts and other symbols.

It is difficult to come to grips with just how powerless we are in the face of our mortality.  We try not to think about it, but there are reminders.

I’m glad that I had a chance to get to know Sir Isaac’s tree, and to share it’s life with quite a few other admirers on the campus.  It occurred to me that, hey, this is a college campus and I’ve been here quite a while.  I’ve never seen any form of disrespect paid to the tree.  Not so much as a piece of liter or toilet paper.  From what I’m told, my perception is accurate.  So now, we move ahead.  Here is Babson’s new apple tree grove, and you can guess where the seedlings came from.

I want to thank Stephen Tolley who was in charge of the project for giving me access and background.  I also want to thank Stephen and colleagues for the care they demonstrated.  Best wishes to those in the USA and elsewhere who observe Memorial Day and pay their respects this weekend.