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Portals
Portal: an entrance, a doorway, a threshold. My first foray on the Camino led to many thresholds. Walking an obscure section of one of four historic pilgrimage routes in France, I traipsed past chateaus and hamlets, endless globes of hay and moody cows, country roads and fields of sunflowers scattered across vast swathes of farmland. […]
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Breathing With Both Lungs
Lungs. A place of life and death and vulnerability… Breathing With Both Lungs I once heard it said Our lungs are where we hold our grief. When I inhale sharply, to remember Why does it hurt to breathe? Lament happened so long ago Or has it been only a moment or so. How fully has […]
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Photo Painting Series No. 1 ~ 4
For a few years now, I’ve had this nudge to take photographs I have made, get them printed in B&W on watercolor paper, large scale, and paint on them using gouache and watercolors. I liked the idea, but never knew where to start. Immediately after I returned home from a trip to rural France this […]
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Remembrance
Throughout shadowed corners of churches crisscrossing Europe sit tiers and tires and trees of glowing candles. Icons of the voice of our longings, singing of our hope to recover what we’ve lost, to connect with beloved ones gone yet alive in our hearts. This image from my B&W film days calls to me every November, […]
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Voie de Vézelay ~ Day 3
As I have been busy acclimating to France, and starting my walking pilgrimage, all my posts are going to be be published out of order for awhile, so bear with me! {Voie de Vézelay ~ Day 3} I am on day 3 of about 7, and just passed through Anthien. This is totally in the […]
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My film camera on pilgrimage
A run to replace the tiny battery in my trusty old film camera also yielded a colorful set of notebooks made with fancy German paper – on sale and just the right size for a portable, packable journal. Preparations for my trip abroad are coming along, and the countdown is in the single digits. Giddy […]
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Alignment: a way of life
“To photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It’s a way of life.” ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson My recent trip to San Diego ended with two solid days spent at the museums in Balboa Park, admiring the architecture, and glorying in the sunshine. Inspirations galore, including this quote spotted on a tote […]
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Photo essay: Antique Air Show, Part 1
The title of poet of the skies could easily be given to French pilot Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry. The author of the fantastical story The Little Prince also gave us several dramatic flight books, such as Night Flight, Southern Mail, and Wind, Sand and Stars. They are, from what I hear, as contemplative as they are […]
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Photo essay: St. Demetrios, Seattle
This evening I am sitting in a tiny cafe with high ceilings as a lively local Greek band, Dromeno, serenades an enthusiastic double circle of Balkan dancing. I count a good twenty people at least. I would be joining in except I’m nursing my first cold of the rainy season. But the music is so joyous […]
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Getting un-stalled, Part 1: Lots of Ideas, publishing nothing
What happens when you are working on a project and you hit a wall? Call it an impasse, writer’s block, getting stalled…. call it what you will, I think it happens to most of us. Here on this blog we seem to have reached that point. The past couple weeks, getting from publishing Post No. 4 […]