Author Archives: scillagrace

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Street Art

by

“Art is an evolutionary act. The shape of art and its role in society is constantly changing. At no point is art static. There are no rules.”
― Raymond Salvatore Harmon

My daughter’s partner is working on establishing himself as a club music producer under the label Houseium. He asked me and my sister to do a photo shoot for his promotional material, so we went into Eugene, OR to find some colorful street art as a backdrop for his portraits.

I have become one of Houseium’s top fans on Facebook. I am really impressed by Jake’s ambition to learn to apply new technical skills, new dance skills, and new musical skills to his art. I have a BA in Voice Performance. I studied Classical music and performed my senior recital in four languages, interpreting four different period styles of music from the Baroque era to the 20th Century. Jake is just beginning to learn to read music. But he knows what he likes and what sounds good to him. I have to admit that I don’t listen to his genre of music much or his music in particular. Unless he’s putting on a dance party for the family! Then I dance seamlessly through his array of a couple of hours of music and enjoy every minute!

Thanks to Patti for hosting this week’s challenge and choosing a subject that is new to me and very fun!

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Ordinary Oregon

by

“Oregon welcomed me like a beloved child, enfolded me in her cool arms, shushed my turbulent thoughts, and promised peace through her whispering pines. ”
― Colleen Houck

“Oregonians don’t tan. They rust.” ― Unknown

I have now lived in Oregon for a year. The most ordinary things at hand here are extraordinarily beautiful: raindrops, rock, wood, plants, the ocean.

On any given day, what is at hand is something exquisite, alive, and breath-takingly complex in its interaction with its environment. Just like each one of us humans. I haven’t been around a lot of humans during this entire strange year, so I’m glad to have the company of these common things. Thanks to I J Khanewala, this week’s guest host for Lens-Artists, for inviting us to take another look at Ordinary things.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Seen Better Days

by

“Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.” ― Robert Browning

Last week’s Photo Challenge was all about Autumn color, the beautiful garb of aging, death and decay. How appropriate that Tina chooses for this week’s challenge the idea of how dilapidated, vintage, older things that have “seen better days” capture the photographer’s eye as things of loveliness and interest.

“The love of old things is a way of respecting time.”
― Wu Ming-Yi

 “Of all the footprints, that of the elephant is supreme. Similarly, of all mindfulness meditation, that on death is supreme.” 
― Gautama Buddha

The more I study the beauty of aging and death, the more I am drawn into the transformation of cells and matter. Consider that Life is marked by change, that change is the continuation of Life in new forms. Below is a photo of a petrified tree stump in the Flourissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado, illustrating the change from vegetable into mineral.

Is it any wonder we photographers are fascinated by the visual evidence of the dance of Life and Time? As humans, we are definitely a part of this process. As humans, we take our experience and create Art to celebrate it.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: The Colors of Autumn

by

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
– George Eliot

I can never get enough of the breathtaking beauty of Fall color. Visit Amy’s post for exquisite examples and join in the photo challenge! Just CLICK HERE.

Lens-Artist Photo Challenge: Artificial Light

by

“Talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity.
We use it.” – Maya Angelou

“What is a soul? It’s like electricity – we don’t really know what it is, but it’s a force that can light a room.” – Ray Charles

“Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.” – William Faulkner

The world is turning, and change is in the air. It is actually raining, and darker each day when I wake up. The fire danger is lower, and I breathe easier. I am spending more time with my family and anticipating visits and holidays. This week’s theme is Artificial Light, and I realize that my tendency is to put the camera away when I am indoors in “civilization”. I spend most of my time in natural light, I think, since I started living in remote natural places. And during the pandemic, I have not been in theaters making music and acting. There is something about rehearsal space, the lighting of a stage, and a well-lit display that is art and artifice at the same time. I oscillate between the natural and artificial and realize that it is a human privilege and responsibility. There is grace in the balance, there is Light and Power to be reckoned with.

Thank you, Ann-Christine, for your Northern perspective on the Light in our human lives. Please visit her post to see more about this photo challenge.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Going Wide

by

“Look wide, and even when you think you are looking wide
– look wider still.”
Robert Baden-Powell (founder of the Scouting Movement)

  • Canyonlands National Park, Utah

“Cleverness is like a lens with a very sharp focus.
Wisdom is more like a wide-angle lens.”
Edward de Bono

  • Badlands National Park (Southern Unit), South Dakota

“Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.”
Jordan Peterson

  • North woods, Minnesota

I absolutely adore landscapes! I love to hike and have worked for a land trust protecting land. Just this morning, I was interviewed by a land trust in my new home state of Oregon for their annual appeal video. I was eager and honored to share my passion for an evolving land ethic to guide humanity into better harmony with the Earth and my gratitude for organizations that uphold those ethics.
This week’s challenge is about wide-angle photography. The truth is, however, I don’t own a wide-angle lens. I do have a Landscape setting on my Canon Rebel T3i, though. It provides a large depth of field and color saturation to enhance greens and blues. I use it extensively when I’m out in the wide open spaces of the USA.

  • Starved Rock State Park, Illinois

Maybe some day I will invest in additional lenses for my camera. I encourage you to visit Patti’s blog to see some stunning examples of wide-angle photography and learn more!

  • Lake Woodbury, Wisconsin

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Looking Up/Looking Down…on Fungi

by

“A tree’s most important means of staying connected to other trees is a ‘wood wide web’ of soil fungi that connects vegetation in an intimate network that allows the sharing of an enormous
amount of information and goods.”
― Tim Flannery

This week’s photo challenge is hosted by guest Sofia Alves. Her prompt encourages us to Look Up and/or Look Down.
In my photo library, I find fungus and mushrooms in Nature at many levels, high in the trees and underfoot. I recently watched the documentary Fantastic Fungi and was absolutely blown away by the intricacy and importance of mycelial networks and the beauty of a mushroom’s growth over time. I absolutely recommend it for the photography and the ecological information.
Autumn is the perfect season for mushroom spotting. I invite you to take a look at the variety of color, shape, and size in the mushrooms I’ve showcased here, and then go out and see what’s growing in your neck of the woods!

“Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom.”
– Thomas Carlyle

“If a healthy soil is full of death, it is also full of life: worms, fungi, microorganisms of all kinds … Given only the health of the soil, nothing that dies is dead for very long.” – Wendell Berry

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Keep Walking

by

“The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours …but it is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“When you walk, arrive with every step. That is walking meditation. There’s nothing else to it.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh

“I think I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and fields absolutely free from all worldly engagements.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it
without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese.”
― Aldo Leopold

Walking is one of my very favorite activities – specifically, walking in Nature. From a very young age, when I’d walk to school and back twice a day because we allowed to go home for lunch, I’ve used walking time to process my thoughts and feelings. I remember splashing in puddles and kicking up leaves and singing to myself as I passed the houses on the way to kindergarten. I remember rehearsing conversations out loud walking home from junior high. I remember walking over a hill in high school, eager to meet up with my best friend. Now, in retirement, my daily walk is .7 miles down the dirt road to the mailbox. I also find a trailhead and take myself for an adventure several times a week. I am truly fortunate to live in an area with a LOT of trailheads! I don’t use a device to count my steps each day, but I strive to remember to be grateful for each step I take. I hope I will be able to walk for many more years.

Thank you, Amy, for hosting this week’s challenge and for sharing your walking stories and photos.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: It’s All About the Light!

by

“Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film.” – Wikipedia 

“Light! More light!” – Goethe’s last words

My sister Dharam lives in San Francisco. Summers there are dark, cold and foggy on the beach. Here in Oregon, the coast is often brighter and warmer. My sister LOVES the sun, and absolutely loved the light on the beach last Wednesday during her vacation here. We took plenty of photos together!

The amount of vapor in the air greatly affects the way that light is diffused in landscape shots. For comparison, here is the same beach on a hotter day with less fog.

And on a much cloudier, colder day in the winter…

Here is Newport Bridge in various lighting…

I hope you all are enjoying the last days of summer, noticing the splendor of August light. Thank you to Tina for hosting this week’s challenge and showing us such beautiful examples of the light on the “Other Coast” of the U.S.A.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Feet and Shoes

by

“All walking is discovery. On foot we take the time to see things whole.”
~ Hal Borland

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
~ Henry David Thoreau

“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair”
~ Khalil Gibran

“Because the human history is the history of shoes.
The history of places where we ever tread and stand.”
~ Stebby Julionatan

First shoes barely get any wear. I love them for their innocence, their precious smallness, and all the potential of a journey in miniature, striving for growth.

Worn shoes have history. I love them for the stories they could tell, for the job well done, for the weariness and wisdom of travel.

I love this theme for its direct simplicity. Photos of feet and shoes are individual and unique. They tell a personal story, but they are usually whimsical and shy while doing it. Isn’t it the somewhat awkward person who looks at their feet while talking? So now you’ve seen my feet and my shoe photo collection. Now I put my feet up and take a load off.

Thank you to Ann-Christine for this delightful challenge! Please visit her post to see some really elegant and unusual shoes from Sweden plus some adorable pudgy toes.