I’ve often said that photography is my ‘excuse’ to connect with nature. When looking through my artist eyes I go beyond what’s in front of me to the essence of life expressing itself…through a sunset, a sunrise, whale eye….dolphin smile. When I compose an image its as if something from out there calls me to expose the magic of life through a photograph.
When I allow my mind and heart to be open, connect with life around me and approach it with a spirit of playfulness, the connection happens effortlessly. I lose myself in an experience of oneness and feel a part of life.
Several years ago a group of us took a weekend to photograph the Smoky Mountains. On the final day I was standing with my friends photographing the sunset. A guy walked up to me and asked what my settings were. I shoot with manual settings of aperture and shutter speed but I couldn’t tell him without looking at my camera because I don’t work with a formula or figure it out with my left brain. I play with the settings, beginning where I suspect the exposure will create the feeling I want. After the initial shot, adjustments are made according to the mood I want to capture.
Nature calls me to connect for my own balance and healing. I show up, connect with an open heart and simply play in hope that in some way I can translate the magic of life.
One grain of sand is the beginning of a precious gem. We might not see a grain of sand as precious if it finds its way under a sandal strap or onto the rim of a water bottle and into a thirsty mouth. The amount of irritation one little grain of sand can cause is incredible. Once inside a mouth it seems no amount of swishing or spitting can dislodge it.
Imagine a giant clam at the bottom of the sea. Within the velvety folds of pink muscle is a huge, luminescent pearl. Years ago a tiny irritant floated into the clam as it opened to receive nourishment. It created discomfort so with infinite patience the clam used the same substance from which its outer shells were formed to surround the object of its suffering. The outcome….a beautiful, lustrous gem.
It didn’t stop being a clam or living its life. It didn’t rage through the sea declaring how wounded it felt. It used its own nacre or mother-of-pearl to coat the irritant with layers of its beautiful, iridescent self.
As I was contemplating the formation of a pearl it occurred to me that we have the same opportunity as clams and oysters. It’s common for us to have an irritant, a core issue, that follows us throughout life.
Haven’t I already dealt with this? Why does this keep coming up for me? I can’t open up to love, I was hurt in the past. I failed before so how can I try again? Why does this theme keep surfacing after years of working on it?
We become pearls by using the substance of which we are made…precious light….to create a beautiful life. The choice is ours. We can surrender to the irritant and become a victim of our past or we can use the magic of self-transformation to form a gem of our lives.
A pearl really is layers and layers of light surrounding a single grain of sand. Imagine the possibilities.
Sleepy sea turtle awaiting darkness to begin her crawl to sea.
This is my fifth season volunteering in Alabama’s sea turtle program and the magic of sea turtles emerging from over 50 days deep underground has not faded. Their instinctual wisdom continues to amaze me. From the mother returning to her own birth beach over 20 years after her hatching, to the babies knowing to crawl up in darkness to some unknown place…it’s a sacred mystery.
We listen with stethoscopes as they work under the sand. Over twelve inches…up to two feet underground…they work hard to escape. They sleep underground, they rest, they work. A tiny egg sac feeds and hydrates them as they crawl up in darkness. By the time they escape they have used up the egg sac and must reach the sea to secure nourishment.
They reach the surface of the sand. Sometimes they rest there until darkness and then, once it’s night, crawl to the sea….or to light. Our program helps them by shielding artificial light sources such as porch lights and street lights) so they will crawl toward the sea.
Being a volunteer means long evenings on the beach waiting for an event that might not happen for days. So, in their wisdom, sea turtles teach us patience, teach us to wait calmly.
They also remind us of cycles, of returning to that place from which we came…the sand, the sea, waiting, moving forward…infinite patience, infinite wisdom.
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All sea turtle photographs taken with permission from USFW under conditions that do not harm sea turtles.
The Big Dipper hangs at the northern horizon as I push up from the white sand. The stethoscope is still in my ears after it transmitted progress of the baby sea turtles hatching, scratching and making their way up…up…up from the darkness to the starlight.
With no moon to dim them, the stars are spectacular and are like jewels in the velvet sky. They seem to twinkle into infinity as the Milky Way winds its way through Scorpio and other constellations hanging gracefully over the Gulf of Mexico.
It is a perfect night on the beach. Music of the waves gently lapping against the shore is the background as the babies work diligently underground, in that dark Unknown. With instinct beyond human understanding, they tear and rip the rubbery egg shells and begin to crawl up…up…up to an unknown Source of Life.
Even when a nest hatched early and unattended and most babies crawled toward porch lights or were dispatched by crabs and coyotes and we hunted with visitors and ran and followed tracks with great sadness….there is still a sense of quiet peace. Nature isn’t always cuddly.
I now sit and listen with the stethoscope to the newly born working at the neatly tarped and trenched nest, ready for their imminent arrival, protected from lights that would surely draw them astray. Waves roll onto the shore. A shooting star flashes overhead. The warm breeze caresses my face. I am alone but only isolated from other humans. Everything here pushes in and tells me it’s okay.
The blood of dead hatchlings, killed by ghost crabs, is still on my hands…is on the hands of all humans as we alter and change wild habitat to claim it for ourselves.
The sky and sea as I finished my sea turtle patrol…just a little over an hour before this the sky was filled with outrageous color.
Who could imagine that a little over an hour ago the rather common, blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds had been a blazing inferno of color? Or that the gentle, rolling waves had revealed bottlenose dolphins within a few feet of the shore. The sea and sky gave no hint of their dawn magic but I carried it deeply within, in the space where visceral memories of profound joy reside.
The large cloud overhead appeared white before the sunrise. There was only a hint of color in the eastern sky as the light grew in intensity. The puffy, enormous cloud that hung over the beach where I emerged from my car seemed to grab light greedily and use it to transform itself with each passing moment.
The walking sea turtle patrol rarely disappoints in variety of cloud and colors. This morning it seemed I was walking in beauty generated by a deity whose intention was to create spontaneous laughter from my depths. The colors and intensity of light were quite ridiculous. In a good way.
I have learned over the years to turn around often to watch for changes in the sky. In the west, away from the growing light, that one cloud appeared to glow with fire of the heavens that was more spectacular than the colors of the rising sun in the east. How can the sky look like this, I wondered.
There were great numbers of fish boiling in the water near the shoreline and following them was bottlenose dolphins rolling and pushing their sleek, dark gray bodies through the gentle surf. Everywhere I looked there were dorsal fins in pairs…mothers and babies.
The color isn’t manipulated here. My iPhone may not have gotten the color perfect, but it was close to how I saw it. I didn’t change it at all while processing it.
Then there was the rainbow cloud and by that time I was rather intoxicated by it all. Fortunately there was nobody else on the beach or I might have been reported as a wandering, raving drunk.
Rainbow cloud behind one of our sea turtle nests.
I looked for mother turtle tracks, checked every previously laid and marked nest in this section, and listened with a stethoscope to babies hatching and working hard in their process of being born and climbing into the light of this world. And the sky blazed with brilliance and a rainbow glowed overhead while dolphins feasted within a few feet of the sand where I stood. How could I not feel spontaneous, outrageous joy?
After I finished the section of beach I patrol and turned around to walk back, I allowed my mind to wander. Unless I was willing to experience the blackness before the dawn, I would never know the beauty of light. Isn’t that true in life? Unless we are willing to journey into darkness we will never experience the magic of light that is deep within us…that treasure of magnificent light.
Outrageous colors from east to west in the Pano shot.
I’ve often said that photography is my ‘excuse’ to connect with nature. When looking through my artist eyes I go beyond what’s in front of me to the essence of life expressing itself…through a sunset, a sunrise, whale eye….dolphin smile. When I compose an image its as if something from out there calls me to expose the magic of life through a photograph.
When I allow my mind and heart to be open, connect with life around me and approach it with a spirit of playfulness, the connection happens effortlessly. I lose myself in an experience of oneness and feel a part of life.
Several years ago a group of us took a weekend to photograph the Smoky Mountains. On the final day I was standing with my friends photographing the sunset. A guy walked up to me and asked what my settings were. I shoot with manual settings of aperture and shutter speed but I couldn’t tell him without looking at my camera because I don’t work with a formula or figure it out with my left brain. I play with the settings, beginning where I suspect the exposure will create the feeling I want. After the initial shot, adjustments are made according to the mood I want to capture.
Nature calls me to connect for my own balance and healing. I show up, connect with an open heart and simply play in hope that in some way I can translate the magic of life.
