The persistent seed It’s not unusual to see vegetation sprouting through cracks in the pavement, but this little plant was growing in mud alongside a railroad track that had been thoroughly covered with oil. That it’s growing at all speaks to me of the resilience and continuity of life. However the seed got there and […]
How and what we see are interpretations In part, our uniqueness as individuals traces to our capacity to perceive, beyond merely looking. Aldous Huxley famously observed that “The eyes and the nervous system do the sensing, the mind does the perceiving.” The eyes gather information and the nervous system delivers it to the brain […]
Our reality is shaped by how we spend it Fundamentally, the job of the film and television director is “attention management,” capturing and holding the viewer’s attention and moving it from place to place within and between scenes. In ancient cultures, chiefs, rulers and landlords played that role, sending out “criers” who went around shouting […]
A strategy for making the ordinary look special In the early years, I used to spend a lot of time walking up and down the many rows of vendors at outdoor antique fairs looking for that rare situation where the quality of light illuminating an object peaked my aesthetic sensibility. Later on, I noticed that […]
The soul’s feedback mechanism When I first printed this image, I thought it was a nice expression of childhood exuberance. Looking deeper now, I see humanity standing between earth and cosmos expressing joy. Given how our bodies evolved from the earth, it’s like the planet’s rising up here, now conscious, reaching out in a celebration […]
Contemplative Photography 