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Maybe, an age of miracles.

H

ave you ever shared a dream? We did. This morning. I woke up thinking ,”Whew, what a dream.” I was thinking about what I saw and felt, when from the other side of the bed came, “Oh my God, what a dream.”

I started talking about my dream and pretty soon she was filling in the parts I was leaving out. Then, we got scared. How is this possible, we wondered? Was this a weird thing or was this the best thing?

Why worry about it? The person closest to me, the one who I adore is able to actually appear in my dream. Well, wait a minute. I was seeing things like I normally would. It was not dream-like. People weren’t just showing up. I was looking and seeing. It was the same thing for her. We were looking for something. We didn’t see each other in this strange land.

Where we looking for each other? Had we split up to save time and distance? I have no idea.

One thing that struck me was the color. It was my kind of color. Bright, bold, contrasty. The scenes were almost cartoon-like. I liked wherever it was that we’d found.

My hope is that one of these nights, well early morning, I return to this place. Maybe this time, we can travel together.

T

he water caught my eye. I just pointed and shot. I repeated that a couple of times, slightly changing the framing and the length of the lens.

The picture at which you are looking is the first one. Sometimes instinct is the driving force behind good art.

I’m not sure that this picture is even close to art, but it’s the thing that I saw first.

It needed a crop to get rid of some clutter. That’s why it’s square.

You know that I’m not a big fan of square crops. I think it displays a lack of confidence by the photographer or designer.

For sure, a group of nine pictures cropped square and laid out as a big square looks very cool, but don’t hurt the photographs.

Never hurt the photograph.

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Wet and wild.

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torms bring and leave their own unique beauty. That’s what I was attempting to capture in order to give you an idea of what it feels like when a big storm moves into my neighborhood.

I think of this picture not as a photograph, but as art. Art isn’t often literal. It’s autobiographical in many ways. That doesn’t mean the viewer must agree with the artist.

Oh no.

The viewer brings about 75% of the meaning to the work of art that is based on their own life experiences. You may see something in this work that is completely different from my intent.

As John Lennon once said when he was asked what his music meant, he replied, “Whatever you want it to mean.”

He said more in that sentence than many people can say in book.

It also confirms my own personal belief, that simpler is better.

What do y’all think?

T

his little attempt at art began as another tree picture.

Hurricane Ida brought the look of fall about two months early.

Once I stripped it down to almost a silhouette I started thinking about improvements.

Make no mistake, often improvements make the image worse. Much worse.

I decide to play with layering. This is tricky. It took me some time to find a picture that might work.

There were a lot of false starts. Finally, I located a picture that was composed of rain drops on a window.

It worked well. All that was left was fine tuning and posting it here.

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M

ore water. More reflections. Even as we dry out, some things don’t change. I think most people have power. Not everyone has internet, which doesn’t seem important but in the modern world it is.

We use Cox. They don’t know what they are doing. They sent us a long email apologizing for the lack of service and yada, yada, yada,

That’s great, but our service returned about an hour after our power was restored.

I guess we are lucky.

The house suffered some damage but it is in the process of being repaired. Compared to our neighbors we did pretty well.

Now it’s time to help where we can.

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In the water.

I

appear to be stuck on reflections. That’s a pretty good thing, I think. It’s especially after a hurricane, another hurricane and seasonal sideways rainfall.

And, good news of all possible good news. The weather is turning cool. It’s been a long hot summer punctuated by Covid fears and untimely passings of people we cared about.

With the change of seasons I feel like we made it through something. We passed through some kind of portal.

What do you think? What do you think is ahead?

I’m going with good things.

.

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S

ometimes I really don’t have much to say about world events. I’ve read enough to know that some days I’m better off staying in bed.

And, on other days I just go for a walk.

This picture found me on a walk. Aside from the square crop, I did nothing to it. It is simply what I saw. Or, what saw me. You know what Rumi said, ”What you seek is seeking you.”

Better be careful what you wish for.

Peace.

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Bits and pieces.

W

hat remains, indeed.

Clean up continues while I wander around taking pictures. In this case, pictures of floating leaves in a pool that had already been cleared of a lot of storm junk, which brings me to the topic of junk.

When you are sitting around in a hot house at night with little to do because it’s dark and there’s no power, you think.

Most of those thoughts turn strange. Some make no sense in the light of day like ”if I ever get out of here I’m going to kill the first rock I see.”

Huh?

What did a nice rock ever do to me?

Some thoughts make sense. Here’s one now. When I first began my journey on Storyteller, I was advised by people who know more than me that consistency is important. So, I posted every day.

Why?

After taking a storm enforced break, I came to the conclusion that no longer makes me happy. So, I’ll post when I have something to say since it turns out that many of you come here for my words as much as my pictures.

That in itself strikes me as strange but what do I know?

Very little it seems.

Enjoy every sandwich.

.

,

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In a quiet place.

M

any years ago, I used to publish an experimental picture every Sunday. I haven’t done it for a long while. I’d like to say that I’m going to resume, but I’ll probably forget.

Throughout the news sites that I read there have been discussions about CoVid-19 (Over 106,000 daily new infections.), The Olympics, national and global fires, climate change and water.

Since I live in the land of too much water, I thought that I’d focus on that, not so much from a documentary standpoint, but from an artistic standpoint.

So.

This picture is about water. And, leaves. And, branches.

It took some doing to combine these natural elements because they are three separate pictures. We’ll get to that in a minute.

To my mind, all of the news with the exception of The Olympics are nature being nature. Even sports in Japan could fall into the nature category because anyone who competed outside felt the Japanese heat.

I’ve written this in the past, but to me it seems like nature, always seeking stasis, has finally had enough. Ma Nature has decided we — the human race — is the problem and she’s going to do something about us.

Or, we can mend our way. Right this minute. Now.

L

ayers. That’s my trick. As I wrote on the other side, there are three layers here.

Water, leaves and branches. Each of them was photographed at different times.

I started with the water and dropped the leaves into that. I held that back and worked on the branches, which ultimately becomes the base of the entire image.

There was the usual fine tuning and adding the faux bokeh.

I was finished.

I want to discuss one other topic. A friend of mine wrote blog about light. He said that the “overused painting with light” was really not in the discussion.

I wonder why he did that. Photography is literally the Greek words for “Painting with light.” Or, really, “Drawing with light.”

That’s the very first thing you learn in a photo class at any level.

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Water, water everywhere.

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ot talking. That’s what I’m not going to do. Before I do I need an apology. And, a promise from that guy to never darken my door again. Yes. That’s how I can be.

S

ee the scene. Push the button. Make sure the the colors are as I saw them. Publish it on Storyteller.

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Sometimes in summer.

S

ometimes in early summer the Mississippi River looks like this, especially after a very snowy winter up north. The snow melts, turns into water and flows into a local river which flows into the Mississippi River.

Eventually, the water makes its way down river where either upriver gates are opened to spread it out over a flood plain, or it arrives in New Orleans. Usually, it’s a little of both.

This is not a big deal and we are ready for it, but people who live in other places read or watch a small news item and start emailing me. I assure them that we are okay.

I know that this picture makes the river look like it’s well overflown its banks. Not really. This is the lower Westbank. The land that is flooded is meant for that. The small buildings that you see underwater is a little children’s amusement park that was designed to get wet.

After a couple of hundred years of living in our extremes, we have a pretty good idea of what to do.

That experience matters, maybe in everything that we do. That’s why experts tell us to do something 10,000 times before we are good at whatever we turned our attention to.

That’s why I suggest that new photographers slow down a little, take their time and learn for their successes and, more importantly, from they mistakes.

Besides, they could be like me. I’ve made so many mistakes that I must know a lot of stuff.

F

inding a picture like this is a case of listening to local news reports and checking the light.

The rest is F 8 and be there.

For sure, I amped the color up because I wanted the drama.

That may be the take away today.

If you are going to tinker with pictures well beyond normal, have a reason.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of well over amped pictures of New Mexico.

I lived in New Mexico. I know what the skies look like. For sure, they probably hold more color the 90% of the earth.

But, this were atomic skies, electric skies.

Don’t go that far unless you have a reason.

I’m thinking that claiming drama for a reason is a little shaky.