The colour of August…
Photos of the month - August - from cool to breathless heat in 31 days.
Hi, I feel as though I’ve been MIA for months!
Forgive my absence, the last month of a crazy summer has been one of unforgiving heat and lack of time but routine days began once again today. For which I should feel thankful but truthfully, I love the chaos of the summer holidays!
Thank you for baring with me.
I am back exercising my scribbling muscles and literally dusting off my imagination, as said by wonderfully eloquent Barrie
, as fast as my overheated mind will allow.I have added a new section to my publication which I’ve called Colours of the Month. Here I will add my favourite photos of the past month, for all the reasons stated below:
The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand.”
— Margaret Bourke-White
Photograph; have you ever considered the word completely apart from the actual visual end production?
Photo meaning light and graph meaning to either write or draw?
What a magical gift; to be able to draw or write with the light….
Most of us are guilty of using this gift, whether we recognise it as one or not. We snap and save thousands upon thousands of tiny squares of coloured memories so liberally that it has become almost an unconscious act. But it shouldn’t be! Each and every one should be visual light filled poem of reminder to be read like a good book. Each page filled with all the light and emotion of the moment captured. Perhaps not all are a perfect representation but without doubt, all have the ability to transport us to a different time or place, a different mood.
This planet we live on is crazy beautiful, full of the wonders of light and dark and shape. Each season, month or day inspiring its own, constantly changing intensity of feeling, be it town or country, ocean or mountain. The possibility to be bewitched by beauty is infinite. Watching the changing light of each season becomes a fairytale of colourful stories of natures diversity, the windswept hair of the stranger on an unknown street a love story, the pure simplicity of a shadow on a wall, dust caught in a sunbeam under a table, each and every given image can translate to myriad stories and we don’t have to even speak the language!
When we have a camera in our hands and open our eyes, almost any given moment has the potential to be transformed into something extraordinary.
No internal resistance exists, it is a free ride to wherever you want it to take you.
I am not a photographer. I would never in my wildest dreams lay claim to such an untruth. I am simply someone who walks with her eyes open and ready and waiting for magic to appear. And, since this is a self admission, photography imposes no barriers and I am free of that horribly debilitating affliction, imposter syndrome. I admit, it is highly unlikely I could even tell you what all the buttons are meant for on my camera! I have never had the inclination to take any of the thousands of courses offered online either because I have never wanted to take a photograph that has been the shaped by another. Preferring to develop my own style and feeling for equipment and subject I have taught myself how to capture a moment in time that is important or exciting to me. Nobody can interpret any given scene in the same way of course, the feeling of that precise second of perfect light to keep for those moments of need when magic is less present is very personal.
What ever the image, it matters little though because for the most of us, they are simply little squares of colour, held in a portable library which end up just floating around in the ether with a hundred trillion other equally colourful little squares in that great library in the sky called the Cloud…
And to me that seems like a very great pity because regardless of professional status, every single one of those trillions of photographs has a meaning and a story to tell.
So I thought I’d show you just a few of my favourites — if you don’t mind of course…
“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”
― Ansel Adams
Layers
As I sat at my desk, through the window distant wild fires were burning across the valley, smoke curled between the valleys in the late evening light forming golden layers. In front of me the tips of faded catmint, dull in the stark light of the day, looked like tiny embers suspended in a sunbeam and under great oaks, shadows faded on the parched meadow, hiding seeds to brighten our days after those that are long and grey during winter.
All this light and layers of thought captured in a few seconds as a sultry dusk disappear into night…
“A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.”
— Eudora Welty
Words I firmly believe for all the reasons I hope you can see.
A moment is a moment, it cannot be repeated in exactly the same light or feeling twice, therefore each one is a unique layer of all the elements in that place at that time.
August has been a colourful month, beginning with unseasonably cool weather and unusually, every shade of green imaginable. My garden looked lush, everything was behaving as I’d hoped for… which made a wonderful and unexpected change!
And equally, not days later, so hot we were unable to breathe… the meadows turned to the colour of sand, arid, brittle and dry. Trees now look as though they’ve stepped through a door, almost overnight into autumn, their leaves falling already, crispy from lack of water - everything living is parched and thirsty.
Rain was forecast, day after day and yet all we heard was the thunder in the distant hills. When finally the storm arrived, every drop of rain that fell was followed by a once more scorching sun and evaporated in seconds. My garden that flourished just a few days prior is now a sad and wilted desert.
And so another month begins… with still warm days dressed in their faded best.
Happy September where ever you may be.
With love X
For all photography lovers and visual story tellers I can thoroughly recommend Andy Adams curated pages of subliminal words and images.
Oh my Susie, your words and visually captured moments spoke to my heart. I agree with everything you shared. Like you, I shoot what I feel. I believe not all stories are meant to be conveyed in words but rather felt. The magic of photography has the ability to expand, stir or consume our soul, hopefully be embraced and connected to the amazing universe we live in. Thank you! Love and hugs.
I very much like the idea of ‘Colours of the Month’ and your drawing with light: beautiful!