Monthly Archives: June 2023

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Telling a Story

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I have to admit that when I saw this week’s challenge theme, I immediately thought of this series of photos I took about 30 years ago of my mother reading a story book to my niece.

How does one photo allude to a story line, an interaction, a web of relationships or events? I think one element might be action, another context. Perhaps the picture begs a question and sends you in search of an explanation.

Just for the record, I have absolutely no idea what the people crawling on the beach were doing. I captured the image at Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz, CA. My own hypothesis is that these were students from UC Santa Cruz doing some kind of observation or exercise about marine biology. Could they be searching for evidence of some life form? What story would you tell?

Thanks to Patti for this week’s challenge and for the wonderful stories she illustrates on her blog.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Spiritual Sites

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“Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” – Exodus 3:5, NIV

Sand art – a labyrinth? a mandala? – at Nye Beach, Oregon

Tina leads the challenge this week with an amazing array of Spiritual Sites from around the world. Spirituality is truly universal. I went to a workshop at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship here, and we tried to come up with a definition of spirituality. What we landed on was “the dynamic of being in the process of being in relationship and being aware of it”…or at least that’s what I wrote in my notes. For me, that just means that I am trying to be aware that I am in relationship to EVERYTHING, and I want continually to try to make these relationships more harmonious and mutually beneficial. At the top of my awareness is my family relationships. That’s where I began my spiritual journey, as an infant. Ancestors and family members are often honored at spiritual sites. There is a church in California where I was married and where my sister, my husband, and my parents are buried. It is a very meaningful place to me.

From an early point in my spiritual journey, I was also aware of the sacredness of Nature. Since 2014, I have been particularly aware of my relationship with Wilderness.

“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” 
– The Wilderness Act of 1964

(Gallery top left to bottom right: Headwaters Wilderness, WI; Black Canyon of the Gunnison Wilderness, CO; Guadalupe Escarpment Wilderness sign, TX; Sturgeon River Gorge Wilderness, MI; Sage Creek Wilderness, Badlands, SD; Ojito Wilderness, NM; Drift Creek Wilderness, OR.)

The first overnight backpacking trip I did in wilderness was at Strawberry Mountain in eastern Oregon. After two nights camping in the wilderness, we reached the summit. I was immensely happy! The relationship I had formed with my hiking friends, with the alpine lakes and trees, with mountain goats and wildflowers, and with my own mind and body, made me feel the energy of being alive and dynamic in the world in a gloriously spiritual way. I sat down in the lotus position on holy ground…and my friend snapped this photo:

May you reverence your connections to your inner and out worlds and find peace, love, and joy in your spiritual journey.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Fragments

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Our guest host, Brian of bushboys world, sets out a poetic challenge this morning in wisps of memory, a fragrant breeze, a wistful thought, a glimpse behind a curtain of time.

Fragments begin an exploration of extrapolation…what is mssng? How to fll t n? Perhaps all photography is fragmentary. No image captures it all. I am reminded of an exercise I once did in art class. We were given a small card with a simple configuration of lines. We were to paste it onto a bigger piece of paper and create a larger drawing around it. In other words, we were given a fragment and asked to reconstruct a whole, using as much imagination as we could muster.

I love Brian’s invitation. It’s as if he said, “Once upon a time….your turn.”
And off you go, Lens-Artists! I look forward to seeing what has sparked your imagination.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: What’s Bugging You?

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I’m beginning to think that maybe Donna of Wind Kisses might be a secret sister to me. I love her challenge to us this week! Last week it was bilingual 3rd graders, this week it was Kindergarteners (70 in all) who sang this song with me:

“Head, thorax, abdomen, abdomen
Head, thorax abdomen, abdomen
Two antennae, four wings and six legs
And don’t forget the exoskeleton!”
OR
“Cabeza, tórax, abdomen, abdomen
Cabeza, tórax, abdomen, abdomen
Dos antenas, cuatro alas y seis patas
Y tambien el exoesqueleto!”

So, which of you Lens-Artists have a dung beetle in your photo archives? This specimen was living on the prairies of South Dakota. Could be elk or buffalo dung it was rolling around into a perfect sphere. I wish I had video to show you how he rolled it with his back legs until the slope’s gravity pulled him up over the top, facing skyward. Fascinating!

Another beetle. Ladybugs feature in nursery rhymes and seem pretty harmless, but my middle daughter discovered at Girl Scout camp that they bite, and so grew to be somewhat afraid of them, especially when some meaner girls threatened to fill her sleeping bag with them.

Okay, I’ll post some of the more glamorous bugs that everyone loves.

…and I’ll post some things that aren’t bugs just to see if you’ll jump.

I think it’s always good to meet the neighbors who sit on other branches of the Tree of Life, get acquainted, and learn to appreciate them. Most of them were here long before we were! I think they make great teachers.