You see a car wash.
I see beauty.
All art is a point of view.
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What heart could have thought you?—
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapour?—
“God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapour,
To lust of His mind;—
Thou could’st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.
Francis Thompson (1859 –1907) was an English poet; he is best known for his poem “The Hound of Heaven.”
To read more poems, click here.
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange (1895 – 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist. She is best known for her work for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression.
To read more quotes, click here. To read more on photography, click here.
The sheep get up and make their many tracks
And bear a load of snow upon their backs,
And gnaw the frozen turnip to the ground
With sharp quick bite, and then go noising round
The boy that pecks the turnips all the day
And knocks his hands to keep the cold away
And laps his legs in straw to keep them warm
And hides behind the hedges from the storm.
The sheep, as tame as dogs, go where he goes
And try to shake their fleeces from the snows,
Then leave their frozen meal and wander round
The stubble stack that stands beside the ground,
And lie all night and face the drizzling storm
And shun the hovel where they might be warm.
John Clare (1793 – 1864) was an English peasant poet of the Romantic school, and one of the English literature’s finest nature poets.
To read more poems, click here.
Another year, another month, other photos. I took this photo of a calla back in July when there was plenty of natural light. I usually take a lot of shots during spring and summer, which I can later edit during the long, dark winter days.
For this particular photo, I decided to give it a cool edit to complement the winter season.
Eurasian tree sparrow (Passer montanus), winter edition. I love how the few remaining leaves poke through the snow and add a splash of color to the wintery scene.
Wood nuthatch (Sitta europaea) striking a pose. Nuthatches have such a graceful way of landing and taking off, pausing for a few seconds while posing like a model on the catwalk!
I photographed this common redpoll female (Acanthis flammea) back in 2022 but only got around to processing it now. When I looked through my photo library for an image to edit, I realized I hadn’t seen many redpoles last year. I’m not sure why. I do hope they’ll return that year; they’re so beautiful and always fun to photograph, especially the males; they have pink breasts!
Blackbird female (T. merula). I shot this in the darkest December last year at ISO 12.800. It was 11am, and the brightest light you could get was some kind of grayish twilight. You wait and wait for the daylight to appear, and then, suddenly, the sun starts to set, and it gets dark again.
As mentioned above, I rarely shoot in November/December because it’s too dark. As you can see, you can still get beautiful photos, but I find it’s too much work; it’s not worth it. I ran the image through Topaz Photo AI to reduce the noise and then Nik Color Effex to retrieve some feather details.
To get away shooting in low light with a high ISO, you do need to shoot to the right (of the histogram), as noise hides in the darker areas. It helps if you have a lens with a large aperture (f/2.8 or F/4) to let in more light, but unfortunately, I don’t. My Canon RF100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM lens’ largest aperture is f/7.1 at 500mm.
On the other hand, problems are good; they force you to get creative and work around them. As I always say, creativity thrives on constraints. Look past the issues and see the opportunities!
As an avid birdwatcher and photographer, I always try to capture the beauty and grace of these magnificent creatures. Birds are fascinating creatures that come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and taking their photos can be a challenging yet rewarding experience.
Overall, these photos are just a tiny glimpse into the incredible beauty of the natural world. By taking pictures like these and sharing them with others, I hope to inspire a love and appreciation for nature that will hopefully last for generations.
I hope you enjoyed these photos; there are more to come next month.
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There is no Life or Death,
Only activity
And in the absolute
Is no declivity.
There is no Love or Lust
Only propensity
Who would possess
Is a nonentity.
There is no First or Last
Only equality
And who would rule
Joins the majority.
There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity.
Mina Loy (1882 – 1966) was a British-born artist, writer, poet, and painter labeled as a Futurist, Dadaist, Surrealist, feminist, conceptualist, modernist, and post-modernist artist.
To read more poems, click here.
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.
Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams (1902-1984), American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West.
To read more quotes, click here. To read more on photography, click here.
I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover:
My arms shall welcome you when other arms are tired;
I stand to wait for you, patient in the darkness,
Offering forgetfulness of all that you desired.
I ask no merriment, no pretense of gladness,
I can love heavy lids and lips without their rose;
Though you are sorrowful you will not weary me;
I will not go from you when all the tired world goes.
I am the Dark Cavalier; I am the Last Lover;
I promise faithfulness no other lips may keep;
Safe in my bridal place, comforted by darkness,
You shall lie happily, smiling in your sleep.
Margaret Widdemer (1884 – 1978) was an American poet, novelist, and children’s writer.
To read more poems, click here.
“This is not what that background looked like,” my friend said in a half-puzzled, half-accusatory tone. “And it wasn’t snowing.”
My friend had dropped by for a cup of coffee and some girl gossip and was peering at my computer screen while I was making coffee. The screen showed a before and after photo of a blue tit posing on a perch.
And this is the trouble, I thought, with everybody being a photographer nowadays. You snap a picture with your phone, and there you go, a dog, your children, a blue tit. What you see is what you get. Change that, and you alter reality. You fake it. You cheat.
What they fail to see is that even a “real” picture that seems to show you precisely what you saw is a two-dimensional depiction of a three-dimensional reality. Our eyes see more than that camera does. What you’re looking at is what the camera saw, not you.
And what you see is different from what I see. Ask a group of people what they saw, and you’ll hear different accounts of the same thing. We’re different, and we’re interested in different things. If I walk into somebody’s house, my eyes will instantly travel to bookshelves and pictures while my husbands will find the LPs. Same reality, different outlooks.
The important thing here is not what you look at but what you see. Some people would see a blue tit on a perch, and this is what they would attempt to record, the photograph an exact recording of reality. The result may be technically perfect but also impersonal. A good illustration for a bird guide, maybe, but no indication of the creator’s personality.
An artist, on the other hand, has a vision. S/he sees beyond the obvious, beyond the “bird on a stick.” S/he sees the promise, what it could be, the hidden layers of reality. S/he doesn’t attempt to record reality but create it anew.
Photographs are subjective, and it is the photographer’s vision that shapes the final result. This is where the line between photography and art blurs. While anyone can take a photograph, not everyone can create art. An artist sees beyond the obvious and captures the essence of a moment, not just the physical reality of it. They see the hidden layers of reality, and their photographs are a reflection of their unique perspective. The beauty of art is that it is not limited by the camera’s lens or the photographer’s perspective. It is an interpretation of reality; therefore, it can be anything the artist wants it to be. It is a creation, a representation of the world as the artist sees it, rather than a simple recording of it.
Everyone can be a photographer, but not everyone can be an artist.
To read more on photography, click here. Artsy has a good article on how to learn to see the world as an artist here.
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Cold, moist, young phlegmy winter now doth lie
In swaddling clouts, like new-born infancy;
Bound up with frosts, and fur’d with hail & snows,
And, like an infant, still it taller grows.
December is my first, and now the sun
To the southward Tropick his swift race doth run.
This month he’s hous’d in horned Capricorn,
From thence he ’gins to length the shortened morn,
Through Christendom with great festivity,
Now’s held (but guessed) for blest Nativity.
Cold, frozen January next comes in,
Chilling the blood, and shrinking up the skin.
In Aquarius now keeps the long-wish’d sun,
And northward his unwearied course doth run.
The day much longer than it was before,
The cold not lessened, but augmented more.
Now toes and ears, and fingers often freeze,
And travelers their noses sometimes leese.
Moist snowy February is my last,
I care not how the winter-time doth haste.
In Pisces now the golden sun doth shine,
And northward still approaches to the line.
The rivers ’gin to ope, the snows to melt,
And some warm glances from his face are felt;
Which is increased by the lengthen’d day,
Until by’s heat, he drive all cold away.
And thus the year in circle runneth round;
Where first it did begin, in th’ end its found.
Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672) was an England-born American poet, and the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished New World Poet.
To read more poems, click here.
