It’s tricky. Sometimes you can see them and sometimes you can’t. But once you do, you can’t unsee them. I’m talking faces. Faces and other features, mimicked in rock outcroppings or trees.
I’m on the road this week. Since I am visiting Face Rock State Scenic Viewpoint in Bandon, Oregon today, I thought it might be fun to share a few of my images with “spirit people’ in them with you.
Face Rock even has a Native American legend attached to it, so a lot of people have given this sea stack human attributes over the ages. Even so, I had a real hard time seeing the face at first. It’s a nasty, stormy day with gray, flat light that doesn’t bring out the shadows that usually make this rock so distinctive. If you are also having trouble seeing a resemblance to a face, too, the profile is on the right side and she’s looking up towards the sky.
Sometimes these faces are very well known. The Old Man of the Mountain in Franconia, New Hampshire was even a state symbol, printed on the license plates, until erosion did it in about 20 years ago.
That’s the thing about these features. Like the humans they resemble, they are ephemeral, although their life spans are generally much longer than ours!
Occasionally, I take a photo and find the “spirit face” in it after I process the image, having never noticed it when I took the original photograph. Has that ever happened to you? My feature photo is one like that. If you can’t see the face, it’s in the lower middle of the image and looks like a gremlin.
I spent a winter in Hawaii many, many years ago, back in my film photography days. I found spirit faces everywhere in those images when I had them developed! By secret waterfalls, in sacred caves…..it was spooky! There’s more going on out there in the world than our mere human senses will ever fully discern or understand. (Twilight Zone theme)
I find this last image quite remarkable. I hope it doesn’t offend any of you. The tree grew like this naturally, a mother Madrone in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon. I have not changed it in any way. This tree could make you believe in the old Greek myths where young girls pursued by lecherous gods were transformed into nymphs and dryads by jealous goddesses.
I hope you have fun with the resemblances in my post this week. Thank you, Donna of Wind Kisses, for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, “It’s Tricky.”
I’m a nature photographer. It’s what I do. I go wild for my photography.
John of Journeys With Johnbo chose this week’s Lens-Artists Photography Challenge, “The Road Most Traveled”. He asks us to showcase whatever style of photography is our go-to, our favorite, our road most traveled.
I don’t think I can define a particular style as my go-to, but I can definitely define a genre. I do nature photography – to the almost total exclusion of any other kind of photography.
I guess that makes me a bit of a one-dimensional character. Especially since being wild is almost a prerequisite for a photo of mine. Domestic flowers don’t really interest me. I have plenty of opportunities to do pet photography, being a petsitter and all, but I seldom make pictures of my charges. I also have the opportunity to stay in some lovely homes while petsitting. But I rarely take photos of these houses. There are very few farm or country landscapes in my files, and never a cityscape. Like I said, pretty one-dimensional.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate other types of photography. Most folks have broader interests than mine. Architecture, travel, food, portraits, street photography – I admire what other people are doing in those genres. I enjoy seeing these things through their eyes. I just don’t feel inspired to go there myself.
But if it’s wild – then my interest is limitless. Desert, mountains, seashore, I love them all. Grand vistas to teeny tiny details. Animals, plants, water, rock – I can’t get enough of them. Macro to wide-angle to zooming in, black and white, color and monochrome – all tools and techniques that help me to express my greatest love, the natural world.
There is one genre of photography that I rather regret not doing my whole life, and that’s people photography, taking pictures of friends and loved ones. I’ve photographed a few friends’ weddings, and taken pictures at 4th of July parades and a few musical events, but that’s it. I have very few photos of friends and family just enjoying life.
I do understand why I don’t have many people pictures. I only take people pictures at events where my role is one of an observer more than a participant. When I’m with friends and family, I want to be totally present. Those moments are precious to me. I want to be a participant, not an observer. For me, taking pictures at that time would remove me from living in the joy of the present moment. I would be concentrating on taking a good picture instead. Weird, I know.
I’m certainly glad others don’t feel that way. I am eternally grateful to the friends and family who do document those moments. You know who you are, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. The older I get the more precious those people pictures are.
As I ponder the role photography plays in my life, I realize it’s a tool to further what seems to be my mission in life, my vocation and my avocation. In my photography, my writing, and my work as a ranger, I seem to be pursuing the same goals – turning people on to what makes a place or a subject special and unique, and encouraging others to be kind to our Mother the Earth. It’s what I do.
I attempt to capture a scene or a subject in such a way that a viewer can visually and mentally walk into that place themselves, to feel like they could be there even if they’ve never seen it in person. When I know I’ve done that, I feel successful as a photographer.
Nature photography is a meditation for me. It’s how I give praise to Creation. I acknowledge the other beings I share this planet with, both animate and inanimate, by practicing the art of seeing. Focusing my total concentration on a subject or a scene is a way of saying to those beings, “I see you. I honor you. Thank you for being.” I try to capture just a little of the essence of my subject. What makes that being or that landscape essential.
If others can discover just a little of that essence through my nature photography, then hopefully they too will acknowledge that that thing or that place is unique and essential. Perhaps they will feel inspired to care for it and keep it safe.
If my images occasionally fill my viewers with awe for the wonders of the natural world, that makes me proud of a job well done. Or maybe my nature photography will just bring a smile to their faces or a warm feeling in their hearts. That’s a worthy goal, too.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my musings on the art of nature photography. But I hope you enjoy my images of Nature even more.