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Posts tagged ‘water’

Apr 1

95 Comments

The landscape listens

Good grief!  This new discipline is positively out of control.  Day three and still no signs of being distracted from the task in hand.  Or head.  Or wherever on earth I’ve got it stashed.

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Wednesday.  Not wordless for me, I’m afraid.  Rather I thought I might devote Wednesday to Wanderings.  I thought about making it a day to share walks but decided that, being  somewhat discursive by nature, that I would inevitably stray from the path.  Wandering, on the other hand gives scope for excursions other than walks – a junket here, a jaunt there, a foray and a forage.  Much more pleasing to one as naturally meandering as I.

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Words to accompany these expeditions may be many or may be few but I do promise lots of pictures which may or may not please the eye.  I’m of the little lauded ‘Myopic Point and Shoot School of Photography’ so be gentle … I don’t profess any excellence, simply enthusiasm.

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Today’s little ramble was more than four years ago when I was first living here in Massachusetts.  We subsequently returned to France for eighteen months and I commenced my present life here two years ago.

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Arriving anywhere in winter gives a naked narrative to the unfamiliar landscape.  Nothing is hidden, all is laid bare and it is a season I love for that reason.   Three things struck me immediately about this place:  the water, the light and the sheer volume of trees.  Fortunate since water, trees and light are three  abiding succours of my soul.

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This set of pictures was taken in the Assabet Wildlife Reserve which is literally on our doorstep.  I share them with you for a flavour of what I mean by water, trees and light.  This triptych captivated me then and still does now.  In winter, they are particularly lovely to my eyes.  But in honesty, they are particularly lovely to my eyes in Spring, in Summer and in Autumn also.

 

Weak rays of sunshine burnish the trees and the water reflects them back at us.  One tree is seemingly suspended like a diving acrobat, refusing to succumb to the ground to rot and feed it’s still living compatriots.

Late afternoon light provides a satin lustre to the wetland and the sky silken above deepens as it lights the water beneath

Nature snoozes but never truly sleeps ….

The rosy gleam of the setting sun shimmering on a natural mirror

A long-legged lumber man silhouetted against his eternal landscape

 

PS: the unavoidable PS:  The title is a line from Emily Dickinson’s lovely ‘There’s a certain Slant of Light’.  Dickinson was from Massachusetts, born in Amherst, directly west of here.  She captures her place quite perfectly.

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are –
None may teach it – Any –
‘Tis the seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –
When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –

‘There’s a Certain Slant of Light’

Emily Dickinson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jan 15

50 Comments

I’m an instant star … just add water

I often take part in the wordpress weekly photo challenge but sometimes I just don’t feel moved.  Claudette whose lovely blog is titled ‘To Search and To Find’ with the strapline ‘happiness in every day’ writes beautiful words and takes wonderful photographs and decided to invent something called Emotography and post an example every week.  I commented that it is a delightful idea (whilst also commenting on the beauty and pathos of the first example titled ‘Forlorn’) and she said that she would like other’s to get involved.  So I am and I hope you will too.  Just post a picture and write about the emotion it conjures in you and link it to Claudette’s site.   I’m certain that many of you who I interact with would enjoy this, get value and give value by participating.  There are no rules, you don’t have to commit to every week, just when the mood takes you, share.  It feels rather good to me.

So to mine … this is a picture taken the day after my daughter’s wedding last August when she and her friends were having a recovery party and my husband and I opted out and went instead to Stourhead just down the road from the venue for a recuperative walk.  Stourhead was one of my father’s favourite places – he loved the trees, loved trees in general (I wrote about his love once before, just here) and he was amused by the temples which you can see one of across the water.    For me, I just love the water and the reflection and the clouds, those very English clouds and the whole thing evokes nostalgia for England, for summer and mostly for my dad who loved the place – so I give you my first Emotograph ‘Nostalgia’ …

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PS:  In the week of David Bowies untimely passing, I’ve pinched his words for my title.  When speaking of stardom he said ‘I’m an instant star – just add water and stir’.  Let loose from his last illness I hope he’s kicking some stardust in Heaven.  With my dad.

Apr 29

23 Comments

Give me silence, water, hope

I like silence and I like water.  In truth, I am really not quite happy living away from water.  I love the sea, rivers, lakes, even puddles.  I like rain.  Not all the time but I love the soaking showers that spring gives us, sudden fat wet summer rain, misty autumn rain, freezing winter rain and the chance, that teeny chance that you might see the perfect rainbow.  I have many rivers and volcanic lakes to choose from close to home and I have tried and tried with my myopic point and shoot camera technique to learn to photograph it.  I therefore present to you, quite proudly, my first good picture of moving water.  Movement  assigned by the weekly photo challenge is represented beautifully by many other entries here.

DSCF1656PS:  The line pinched for the title is  Pablo Neruda in ‘The Heights of Macho Picchu’ in which he painfully eloquently cries for the men who went before him, the ordinary men of the past and in so doing brings their voices, their lives before us to honour and respect as we ever should but so seldom do.  Today, I think of those in Nepal, their lives ravaged, ruined through no fault, no deed, no action of their own and wonder how long before we all move on and forget them again.  I urge you to remember and to give whatever you can to give them hope.

Mar 8

6 Comments

Gorgeosity and yumyumyum

February was all about the snow here.  It came thick and thicker and The Bean snow-snorkelled through the soft stuff and danced niftily on the icy crusts of the more exposed drifts.  For me, it was the ministry of silly walks as I picked my way over the compacted stuff only to sink thigh high and have to heave my seemingly hulking form onwards (note to self … get some rackets).  We still have snow on the mountains, of course but it’s mostly gone lower down.  For now.  It’s only March and it may return.  The snow poles will stay where they are for several weeks more.  This picture was taken walking at Lac de la Cregut in a break between blizzards the vivid orange of the sign, all of a sudden given beauty by the monochrome pallet created by the snow and the sky, a lighter shade of grey before the clouds begin to tinge with yellow against pure lead ready for the next dump ….    DSCF0843You can see lots of other responses to the title ‘Orange’ in the weekly photo challenge just here

 

PS:   The title?  Anthony Burgess,  ‘A Clockwork Orange’ – slightly more than tenuous but I like it.
       
      

Feb 13

18 Comments

He was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing

When asked to produce something that says ‘symmetry’ I instantly struggle because, like Michael York who once remarked that his fortune was made when he broke his nose as an adolescent, his face otherwise having been too perfect to be handsome, I rather shy away from the precision implied by symmetry.  But the Fountain of Eve (she’s standing calmly at it’s centre looking a little manly to be frank) in the Peterhof Palace Gardens in St Petersburg, has a glorious symmetry to it and the light catching the slender sprays of water makes me think of a glistening crown for Neptune.  And the quote?  Mr Darcy contemplating Elizabeth Bennett whom he has mentally picked to pieces and found in her every fault imaginable is forced to admit to self that despite the lack of symmetry to her form she is pretty damn gorgeous.  I rest my case.

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PS:  All the other interpretations of Symmetry for the Daily Press Photo Challenge are here

 

Jan 16

13 Comments

As blue as in my dreams

So says Red (no irony intended) right at the end of the most feelgood of stories ‘The Shawshank Redemption’.  Finally released after most of a lifetime in jail, he is sitting on a bus and hoping.  And what he is hoping for is serenity … that purest of dreams.  And searching through my pictures I came across this – the lake barely rippling and the castle  reflected in it and nature effortlessly playing her part in making the most serene of pictures so that I with my camera had no more endeavour than a twitch of my finger to capture the perfect picture.  For true serenity is a perfect sensation.  A perfection most of us seek and find to be frustratingly illusive.  Here’s my offering for the weekly photo challenge as a reminder that it can exist ….

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Chateau du Val, Lanobre, Cantal March 2014