The Gryphon's Feather Studio

Sharing Light 6: Rain

Photograph the rain.

 
Let the rain kiss you,

Let the rain beat upon your head with ilver liquid drops,

Let the rain sing you a lullaby,

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk,

The rain makes running pools in the gutter,

The rain plays a liitle sleep song on our roof at night,

And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes

 
 

Sharing Light 5 : Twelve

 

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.  Ansel Adams

Choose your best twelve photographs from 2009, or any one, single year.  No more than TWELVE.  Print them out in a size that allows you to place them in your journal so that they fill a page- even if you have to turn your journal from vertical to horizontal. 

Before placing them into your journal, lay them out a a group on a table or the floor.  Make some notes for a journal entry. What about this body of work stands out?  What does the group of images say?  What qualities do they share?  How are they dissimilar? How do you feel about this body of work? 

If you want to journal about individual images, journal on the opposing page of the spread.  Otherwise, leave the opposing page blank.

 

Sharing Light 4: Bridges Crossed

my favorite footbridge over the Scrubgrass

What bridges did you cross last year? Find a symbolic stand-in for one and photograph it for your journal. Before adhering your image, cover the page with written journaling about this transition, and then paste in your image....

Sharing Light: 3 Photograph your old photographs

 

A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years, but a photograph always remains the same.  Albert Einstein

The Sharing Light photograph + journaling prompt is - Photograph Your Old Photographs.

FInd a box of old photographs that you have taken.  Look through them and choose some to photograph as a group. 

What are these photographs about?  Who were you when you made these images?  How are the photos you have chosen to photograph again for this prompt significant  or meaningful?  Do you see yourself in the images- not literally- but figuratively?

Point & Shoot Journaling: Daily Inspirations and Sharing the Light 2

Point & Shoot Journaling:  Daily Inspirations

Daily Inspirations is a class that consists of thirty days of prompts designed to make you think, help you see, and boost your creativity  as you photograph with your point & shoot camera.  

Each day will offer you a fresh photograph + journaling prompt. You will find a new photo assignment for you to shoot and a journaling prompt for you to ruminate upon each day.  

Accompanying these Photograph + Journaling Prompts will be quotes, bits of writing,  and/or links and ideas to consider. I'll sprinkle in book recommendations and tip for improving your shooting and journaling.   I'll add some of my photography to the prompts or show journal pages, when appropriate. (I do know from teaching and personal experience, sometimes seeing the photographs of others can limit your interpretation of a photograph prompt- your visual mind can get a little stuck on the idea you see.) 

Whether you photograph everyday or keep your prompts handy for when you need a creative snack,  you will find these prompts will increase your creativity when taking photographs, beyond the photograph prompt.  The journaling prompt will encourage you to be more intentional in how photograph, and to have a larger understanding of your visual content. 

You'll find you photograph more frequently and shoot more images- the way to get great photographs is to shoot, shoot, shoot.  While it sounds simple enough, Blank Mind can arrive when you have your camera in hand and are out and about.  Having some prompts and assignments can really get you moving, and improve your photos. You'll also be able to ask questions via the blog or by email. 

Thirty Photograph + Journaling Prompts will be posted onto a password protected blog in numerical order, beginning with Day One and continuing on to Day 30.  Daily Inspirations will commence on January 15 and complete on February 13.  Your access to the prompts will continue until March 15. 

Class cost is $25.  Refunds are only available up until you receive the class username and password.

The prompts will be similar to what you see below- some longer, some shorter.  They may be more concrete in the assignment, more educational, more inspirational, or offer more room for interpretation.  Variety is good. 

 

 

 

"Between the worlds of men and make believe I can be found."  Dan Fogelberg

 

The photograph prompt for today, Day Zero, is hidden doorways. 

  

Your photo assignment, then, is to spy out a hidden doorway, an entrance to some place in between here and there, then and now, mundane and magical...  and record it with your camera.

  

Your journaling prompt asks, "What is the story of your doorway?"  Imagine one.  Then, give some thought to what the doorway represents. Does it mean something specific to your imagined story?  What about for you, personally?  If you look at symbolic interpretations of doorways, are there interpretations that connect to your story?  Are there symbolic interpretations that connect to your daily life? 

  

You can also think about your story. 

In Gestalt dream theory, we are all the objects, things, and people in our dreams.  What if you applied this to your story?

  

 

Just for reference: various interpretations of doorways:

While doorway has a narrow view of the world on the other side of the door, a person can can step through.  Stepping through changes everything about the view- and so can symbolize a chance to make a change in the way we see things.

Janus, the Roman god of change and transition, had two faces- looking both forward and backward.  Doorways and gates were consecrated to Janus.  He was the god of progression from past to future, from one vision to another.

Hope - belief in possibilities other than the present circumstance

an opportunity presented

liberation

passage- a transition or metamorphosis

initiation into some mystery or secret

birth or rebirth

dream symbolism of an opened door- your willingness to accept new ideas

 

(the above class sample will also serve as our second Sharing the Light photograph+ journaling prompt!)

 

 

The Poetic Eye: Sharing Light

I loved doing the photograph prompts for The Light of Winter assignments. Finding just the right words to share an idea to photograph around was an interesting challenge.  I'd sit with books in big heaps by the computer or the arm chair, dog earing pages to find again later.  My brain and I sat before the fire and made lists of ideas, calendar in hand, pending the holidays of Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's... and trying to make ideas universal- so that instead of isolating us from each other based on beliefs or disbeliefs, through the photograph prompts and words I offered, the light in me honored the light in each of you. 

 

If you have seen my Facebook profile, you know that under "Religious Views" I have written "the divine is inside each of us."  One of my favorite books is God Is At Eye Level, by Jan Phillips, a book that is essentially about the idea that the act of creating a photograph is connected to your soul and the idea is that the divine is in everything you see through your viewfinder. Jan Phillips, who once attempted to become a Catholic nun, expresses the idea of artistic spirituality in a way that is accessible to all- quoting Buddha, the Talmud, the Bible, Einstein, and various photographers, poets, and writers. It is not a religious book. It is a book around the idea that creating art, the act of creating is an expression of the divine light within us.

As an aside, I always feel a bit fuzzy when I try to converse here about topics that tread into areas of faith and belief in one's higher power - such personal, powerful stuff.  And, the saying goes, "never to discuss religion or politics in polite company."  Just so you know, I am not discussing religion.  It matters not what denomination or religion you follow, or what name your higher power carries, if any. 

What matters here, is that you are an artist.  You create. with words. with paint. with paper. with ink. with light. with pencils. with metal. with wood. with clay.  with fabric. with crayons. with your mind. your heart. and yes, I'll say it, with your soul.

In this book I mentioned above, Jan Phillips says,

"Carl Jung wrote that in the process of giving shape to archetypal images, we find our way back to our truest, deepest selves.  As we give form to spirit, so are we informed by it, healed by it.  As we express the divine through art, so do we express the divine within..." p.13

she talks about the idea of soul longing:

"...soul longing, the longing that sparks creation.  It is the formless (n.) yearning to be given shape, feeling wanting to be given form. This longing is felt in the heart of every creator, and every creation is a response to its call."  p.76

Anyway, all of this fell into the whirling void that is my overly active brain.  I began to think that perhaps I wanted to offer something more, something different -both in my classes and here on my blog.  I'm not talking about spirituality as a topic- just the idea that we have a need to create that is deeply significant and any photograph- silly or serious, portrait or landscape, is a way of expressing what lies within.

A year ago in October, I decided to really stop writing about my life on my blog.  It had to do with the politics of my little world, and I needed a break from sharing the truly personal.  But it has occurred to me, that even without words, my photography is deeply personal. 

 

I make my photos, my art journal pages, my pieces around what I know, my work is strongly autobiographical.  And, while I have ideas to move me into other ways of working, some things are simply just the Truth.

For my Point & Shoot Journaling classes, I will continue to offer way of working with photos, photo and archive assignments and journaling prompts, but I have some concepts in mind that we will work around- not spiritual concepts, just a more cohesive package that would allow me to add more content, more thinking, more ways of being creative, and ways of teaching about composition and seeing. More about some very cool stuff there soon.

For this blog, The Poetic Eye, I am going to offer twice-a-week photography+journaling prompts.  What I have in mind is to offer up an assignment- an idea, concept, topic, include some writing that pulls us toward the core of the idea, its feeling, and then people are free to give that feeling shape. The assignments in a week may be connected, they may not.  Having more than one assignment to choose from in a week would mean that perhaps more people would find an idea they connect to and with which they wish to work.  You can complete the assignment in a way that suits you- just shoot the photo assignment, pull a photo from your digital files, write in your journal around the prompt, paste your photo into a journal and write, or create an art journal, or visual journal page incorporating your photo, & your response to the prompt.

I like the whole notion of sharing light.  And, wonderfully apropos, photographs are a record of light.

With film, light strikes the film causing a chemical change when the shutter is opened.   Now, with digital cameras, instead of film, light strikes a sensitive material, and based on the electrical charge of the photons (packets of light) a pixel map is created by a charge-coupled device.  This is all based on Einstein's discovery of the photoelectric effect.  (and I do love Einstein, he was so quirky.)

I may or may not include a photo of my own, because I know from teaching, my content can unintentionally limit your content.  Without knowing it, your subconscious uses examples to limit your brain's interpretation of ideas.  Maybe here and there, we'll check out the work of various photographers.  I loved art history classes, taking so many classes that I acquired a minor unintentionally, so expect some of that to seep into both my classes and my blog.

If you participate, you can post your photo, your journal writing, or a subsequent art journal page on your blog.

I don't want to set a schedule for which two days the prompts will appear.  I have three littles, a dh, a puppy, a house, my art, teaching, and writing, my family, my making... so I know, if I make a schedule and say Mondays and Wednedays, something will happen, and I will be late.  Then, I will feel guilty.  No guilt.  This is about joy.  So, I'll just post two prompts each week. You can always subcribe to my blog, and then you'll know I've posted something anyway.

We'll begin today. Your first prompt for Sharing Light is below...

And, please feel free to mention this on or blogs or link to my post- the more the merrier..

Sharing Light: 1 Daily Travels

The photograph + journaling prompt is - Daily Travels.

  

And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.  Ayrton Senna

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated.   Jean Baudrillard

  

 

I used to commute to work an hour each way. Five days a week, excepting vacations and holidays.  So, I spent about 500 hours a year, traveling a very familiar path. That calculates out to twenty eight days of non-stop driving each year. Over the eleven years that I worked at the university, that would amount to about three hundred and eight days of driving.  Nearly a year, seated in a car, I drove down country roads, state routes, and along the interstate highway.  Seasons passed, weather fell, life happened.  

So familiar was my route, I did too much of what I refer to as "zen driving", where suddenly I'd be at my exit, with very little recollection of the intervening time- I was wide awake, but daydreaming, pondering, creating.   But, most often, I looked for photographs.  I didn't know, at first, that is what I was doing.  I just knew I was seeing a view I liked, and later, I realized I was carrying on a habit I'd acquired in childhood- I was making photogrpahs in my mind.  I was mentally collecting images- the rose color in the tree branches filling a hillside in late March when the trees have come into bud, , the graffiti in the underpass, a large, lone tree in the middle of a rolling pasture, horses racing up a hillside, twisted silver guardrail, mountains of cinder streaked snow the plow had left on the shoulder, fields of wildflowers planted in the meridian,  the curving, contrasting  lines of the cloverleaf and overpass at an interstate exit... photographs were everywhere.

Chances are you drive, ride, or walk some place regularly.  If you haven't already, put your camera in your bag, and look for photographs in your daily travels.  MAKE THE PHOTOS.  There is some reason you look at those places, something about that juxtaposition of light and line or of color and texture... or the actual content that draws your eye. 

Once you have taken your photos, and upload them, choose one or two.  Journal around the following questions: What about that photograph do you like?  (light, color, texture, line, composition, content, symbolism...) Why did that scene catch your eye to begin with?  Were you able to get close to what your eye saw with your photograph? If it doesn't match exactly, what content can you add with words- adjectives, adverbs, superlatives, nouns, verbs - sentences, thoughts, poems- to bring you closer to that view?  Is there anything in the image that connects or contrasts with your destination?  What feelings come up when you think of that view?

 

3 January 2010, pulling off Kennerdell Road to photograph Scrubgrass Creek, after having watched this particular view for three winters.
 

 

 

 

New Year's Eve Light

Yes, New Year's Eve was several days ago.  We were at our place on the river for the change of the year.  There was much snow, sledding, scrabble, reading, playing, and eating.

It was too overcast for a view of the blue moon, but we made our own light in the darkness of the last day of 2009.

 

A favorite cousin came with her family for the weekend.  Friends from down the road came for a beef tenderloin and crab legs holiday dinner and fierce scrabble wars.  The cousin's very kind German husband created a startling flaming wine punch called Feuerzangenbowle (Flaming Fire Tongs Punch) which indeed was flaming and exciting to watch.  It smelled yummy but tasted strongly of the rum, so I didn't have any beyond the first non-flaming sip.  (and I forgot to take photos ).  We had champagne and fireworks and fell asleep before midnight, full, warm, and happy.

It is very dark in the woods at night, so our pathway to the road was lit with luminarias. 

The Light of Winter Day 19 January 1

Today, January 1, the photograph prompt is:   The Light of a New Year

Life is like a journey,

Each year a new milestone,

But where is there a signpost? 

A guide to the lost life wanderer?

~~~Theodor Fontane

 

This day, the first day of 2009, create the guide for the lost life wanderer.  Make photos that serve as signposts.

What are the truths you want to carry forward into this new year?  Skip the resolutions unless they speak to more of the same and the true.  Affirm what was right, what was good, what was real, what you enjoyed- dig up those images from this past year.  They are your signposts, their addition to your journal creates your guide.   Instead of resolutions to fix what is wrong, affirm what is right, what you need more of in your life... Carry positive energy forward into the new year.

 

 

The Light of Winter Day 18 December 31

Today, December 31, the photograph prompt is:  The Light of the Gate of Year

And, I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, " Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unkown." And, he replied, " Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than a light and safer than a known way."  ~~Minnie Louise Haskins