IV. Composition / Social Order

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In pictorial art, composition relates to how visual elements are organized within a frame. Both Eastern and Western artists through the centuries developed insightful guidelines to help them maintain the viewer’s attention. Aspiring artists and many in the public appreciate that the organization of elements within a frame influences the viewer’s experience of an image. How does it work? How does composition contribute toward capturing and holding a viewer’s attention? Each of the aesthetic dimensions being treated in this series are contributing factors, but specifically related to composition are the principles of unity, balance, focus, and placement. Because these have been thoroughly confirmed as successful across cultures, adhering to the rules, while no guarantee of success, is believed to be pleasing to the eye. At the same time, the rules can and are often broken. My advice to students was generally to have a good reason for breaking a rule.

Visual Elements and Information Theory

An eye for composition develops more quickly by regarding subject matter as elements, the parts of an image that together make up the whole. By enclosing space within a frame of any sort, the message to viewers is, “Look here, I want you to see this.” Imagine a dot like this ( . ) anywhere on a white background that’s framed. That’s one “bit” of information. It simply “says” it exists. It conveys no meaning because meaning derives from relationship. Add another dot, and a relationship is established. The artist had something in mind, and the viewer’s challenge is to make sense of it—if that’s desirable. Add a third dot and the potential for meaning increases dramatically. Instead of a dyad with two elements, like two people talking, there are three. Because the dots are within a frame, the viewer assumes they have some significance, so he or she reaches to identify the subject, understand its meaning, why it’s being shown.

Being human, we tend to anthropomorphize, so the three stones above could be interpreted as parents and child. Which would be the father? Actually, any of them could be, but our preconceived notions assign “him” to the larger stone because men are generally larger than women and children. What might the differences in texture “say”?  When more elements are added, the relationships become more apparent. Each additional element—line, squiggle, circle, form or subject matter—irregardless of size, shape, texture, or color is another bit of information, and the more information there is, the more readily a viewer can create meaning, even perhaps the artist’s intention, mood or preferences. So what’s the story below? What relationship do you see? What does it mean?

 

Communication Objectives 

In practice, to more consciously create an image, consideration of composition should relate to the “communication objective.” What do I want to say to the viewer, or what do I want them to feel?  Is the intention to communicate or express? Or both? If it’s to communicate, the more visual  elements—information—the better. If it’s to express, to generate an emotion, the starkness of fewer elements—less information—does a better job. 

Unity (Clearwater Skyway)

In the visual sense, unity relates to appropriateness. Are the elements within the frame justified relative to the communication objective? Not one dot, line, surface, form or subject matter is in the frame that doesn’t belong. For instance, the photograph above would not be unified if there was a kite flying in the sky. Aesthetic unification usually requires getting in close, zooming in or changing the angle to exclude anything that doesn’t relate to the principle subject. Unity strengthens the communication objective.

Balance (South Dakota Telephone Poles)

An image is balanced within a frame when the elements are neither bold nor heavy in one area relative to the overall space. Art students are taught to think of the frame as having a fulcrum at the bottom and in the middle of the frame. A balanced composition feels good. An image that’s top or bottom heavy, or heavy right or left, feels “off.” It pulls the attention toward the bold or heavily weighted subject matter, making it challenging for the eye to freely move within the  frame. Of course, if the communication objective is to convey a feeling of instability or attract attention through imbalance, the elements can be purposefully unbalanced.

Focus (Raindrops On Pansy Petals) 

An image is compositionally focused when the subject matter is predominant and prominently placed within the frame. A lack of focus is confusing. What’s this image about? For instance, a seascape that puts the horizon in the middle of the frame top-to-bottom could be a picture of either the sky or the ocean. Which is it? In order for a video camera to be able to zoom-in on a subject and be tack sharp, the operator has to perform a “critical focus” at the point of maximum closeup before taking the shot. Likewise, in composing a still image the focal point is the place in the frame where we want the eye to go first—and return after wandering. It’s the primary subject matter, in that it accomplishes the communication objective. It “says” what the image is about. Again, this is accomplished by going in close, excluding as many secondary elements as possible. Maximizing compositional focus is why photographs taken close up are so powerful.   

Placement (Cincinnati Expressway Underside)

Arguably the most well-recognized aspect of composition has to do with where elements are placed within the frame, and how they are organized. It’s been said that the greatest compliment for an artist is the length of time a viewer attends to his or her work. The arrangement of elements in an enclosed space largely determines how long the viewer will stay with an image, and how their eye will move around the space. In this series of blogs, all the above and all the other “dimensions” to be considered, influence the placement of elements. Placement is an acquired skill, gained by studying the works of the masters, and analyzing our own creations to see what’s effective and what isn’t in terms of keeping the viewer’s eye within the frame. 

Because we read left-to-right and top-to-bottom in Western cultures, the eye is best directed within a frame by having the primary element, for instance a face or animal, situated on the right of the frame looking into the space, or placed at the bottom of the frame looking up. Otherwise, if the subject is situated on the left of the frame, the viewer’s eye enters the space at left and goes off the space to the right, out of the frame. I’ll have more to say about this on the topic of “Vectors.” Suffice to say here, that generally speaking, the rule is to keep the viewer’s attention engaged within the frame, the elements should be arranged so that no line, sight-line, or vector leads the eye out of it.  

(South Dakota prairie dog)
Rule Of Thirds

To situate subject matter within the frame in the most pleasing way, and to better control eye movement within it, artists devised a scheme where they divided an imaginary frame into thirds to create a grid. The “rule of thirds” advises us to not place the principle subject matter dead center in the frame, instead, to place it where the lines of the grid intersect. The illustrations would take too much space here, so I recommend a visit to an excellent site—Company Folders.

Sacred Geometry

Anciently, the world around, artists discovered ways of ordering elements within a frame such that they evoke a noumenous feeling, a sense of spiritual wholeness or grandeur. They found that certain geometric forms, those with specific mathematical properties, somehow set up a resonance within us. And it occurs universally. Here too, the subject is vast, so I recommend a visit to another well-illustrated page in Ancient Wisdom. Ignore the ads. Especially applicable for photographers is the “Golden Ratio,” illustrated by the spiral. It’s based on a 5:8 proportion. I’ve used it extensively for many years to format images and place primary subject matter on the imaginary “sweet spots.” I highly recommend a book, Sacred Geometry by Robert Lawlor. Its many illustrations allowed me to translate the philosophy into tools for everyday use. (Used copies are inexpensive).

Reflections On Personal and Social Order

Composition is all about organization—order, the ordering of visual elements. In painting and photography, the medium is a two-dimensional surface. In society, the medium is the three-dimensional world. In any given space, we observe that the elements within it are organized at one end of the continuum, or disordered, chaotic, at the other. Further, it makes a difference that we not only recognize order and chaos, we feel it. 

When objects—books, chairs & tables, houses, cars, buildings, neighborhoods are ordered, they establish and display a regular pattern or sequential arrangement that looks and feels complete, appropriate, managed. When all our “ducks” are in a row, they’re in a satisfying and assessable alignment. Order and disorder communicate, so we have to be careful in making judgments based on the composition of other people’s environments. For instance, there’s the backyard of a neighbor who has toys and tools scattered all over the place, left out in the rain with weeds growing over them. Then there’s the neighbor who has their toys and tools neatly stowed in a garage, leaving the grass open and well-trimmed. We may be tempted to think the former suggests an uneducated, uncaring person. Even reading these descriptions, it’s likely you formed an opinion. But the disorderly neighbor could have a Ph.D. in microbiology and sing in the church choir, and the orderly neighbor could be an ex-convict building a well-organized collection of handguns preparing for a terrorist attack. Admitedly, not very likely. 

A principle in the anthropology of visual communication holds that “everybody notices everything.” Another is, “What we see we evaluate relative to our history, experience and worldview.” Yet another, “We tend to see what we want to see, and find what we’re looking for.” On the positive side, judgments relating to order help us to place ourselves and others within a social context. On the other hand, if we let them, our judgments can build walls of separation and encourage stereotyping. The order-disorder continuum alone, is therefore not a good criteria for making judgments about people.

Expanding the context from personal to social order, Margaret Wheatley, noted systems theorist and management consultant, offered social principles relating to the subject of order and organizations—how we compose our lives.

  • The messiness that plunges you into chaos never feels good, but it is, in fact, the source of new order. Life is intent on finding what works, not what’s right.
  • Organizations and societies are living systems. We live in a universe that is alive, creative, and experimenting all the time to discover what’s possible.
  • It is the natural tendency of life to organize—to seek greater levels of complexity and diversity.
  • Life uses messes to get to well-ordered solutions.

Expanding the subject even further, to the nature of reality, theoretical physicist David Bohm  developed the concept of “implicate” and “explicate” orders. Using the analogy of a rolled-up carpet, he proposed that we should think of the objective or Absolute Reality as a “pattern” that already exists, complete and fully formed within the roll. The pattern is already there, but hidden. As the carpet unfolds with time, parts of that pattern becomes visible and that’s the reality we experience. Dr. Bohm was one of the first scientists, extrapolating from quantum theory, who theorized that reality and consciousness constitute a coherent whole that’s in a process of unfolding.     

Industrial Matting

Chaos is infinitely complex order.

David Bohm

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VI. Depth Of Field

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Technically, “depth of field” (DOF) is the optical phenomenon of a lens that expresses the distance about the plane of focus where objects appear acceptably sharp in an image. Creatively speaking, it’s the relative degree of sharpness between objects that are close to or farther away from a lens. When both distances, near and far, are sharp the DOF is said to be “long” or “deep.” When only the point of critical focus is sharp with the background out of focus, the DOF is “narrow” or “shallow.” 

There are mathematical considerations that affect the DOF, but in practice, the features that concern the photographer are a) the lens’s aperture or f-stop, b) the focal length of the lens, and c) the camera-to-subject distance. Each is an independent variable, but they combine to produce the DOF.

Application
Aperture

At one extreme, long depth of field—where objects near and far are sharp—spreads the viewer’s attention over the entire image, encouraging the eye to explore all of the details within the frame. When a lens is “stopped down,” admitting little light, the f-stop numbers hover around f16, f22, f32. The higher the number, the longer the DOF. In this range, when “critically focusing” on a near subject, the background will also be sharp—sharper at f32 than at f16.

At the other extreme, narrow DOF compels the eye to stay focused on the point or in the area where the subject is sharpest. DOF is controlled by the choices of aperture, lens and distance from the subject. When the lens is “wide open,” admitting more light, the f-stop numbers hover around f1.4, f2.8, f 3.5, f4. The lower the number, the narrower the DOF. In this range, when critically focusing on a near-to-the-camera object, the background will be out of focus.

Focal Length of the Lens

The focal length of a lens determines the magnification at which it images distant objects. From a given position, a “wide angle” lens will show the sky, plaza, and fountain. (Fountain Square, downtown Cincinnati)

A “medium” or “normal” focal length lens will show a bit of sky, buildings, and details on the fountain.

And a telephoto lens will exclude everything except the fountain and what’s behind it. Here, the camera’s aperture was fairly wide open, rendering the building out of focus.

A very wide angle lens, even with the aperture wide open, will likely render both the foreground and background as sharp. Conversely, the aperture of a telephoto lens has to be “stopped down” considerably in order to keep the background sharp. This is one of the reasons why professionals carry many lenses—or a zoom lens where the focal length can be varied from wide to telephoto. (“The Genius of Water” atop the Tyler Davidson Fountain in Cincinnati). 

Camera-To-Subject Distance

As a camera comes closer to the primary subject, the foreground and background in the frame tend to go out of focus, necessitating a smaller aperture to make them sharp. As the distance is increased, objects, both near and far, tend to be in focus. The camera moving closer to a subject is equivalent to a person moving closer. It’s why in movies, directors prefer to use single focal length (“prime”) lenses rather than a zoom lens. They want the viewer to feel like they are in his or her personal space.  

Reflections On “Personal” Depth Of Field

Our eyes shift from wide to medium to closeup perspectives seemingly in an instant. In photography, we refer to these “fields” as if a setting, for instance, a landscape, consists of separate planes or areas. Of course, they don’t. They’re continuous in our experience. Where the camera is a single and objective “eye” that only records in two dimensions, we not only have two eyes that allow us to see in three dimensions, our perception is subjective—we make sense of what’s in front of us—or imagined. 

This observation is so obvious, it hides the significance of perception as a process of thoughts that make meaning, which in turn drive action. If we consider a field then, as a domain of thought, of consciousness, the question arises: What is my personal depth of field? Considering my thoughts, how deep do they go? Most of the time, when I’m not focused on everyday concerns, where do I place my focus? Certainly, like a zoom lens, we shift between close-in, self-oriented and short-term matters, and broader, more other-directed and long-term thinking. As with a camera, it’s under our control. 

As an organism starts to develop it begins to resonate to a certain field, and the more the organism follows that particular path the more it becomes habituated and goes on developing within that field to its final form.

Judy Cannato

Becoming habituated to a particular field is like viewing the world solely through a “normal” lens. But in every day living our personal DOF shifts continuously. Looked at analogously, it provides a framework for self-reflection. For instance, a camera’s aperture controls the amount of light that reaches the recording medium. So how much light—the light of awareness—am I letting in by exposing myself to diverse perspectives, higher consciousness, creative and inspirational sources? What is currently the depth of my thought-field?

Consider also the focal length of a lens that determines the extent of coverage. Am I taking advantage of opportunities to change lenses, to empathize, walk in other people’s shoes, to expand my field of thinking by observing people and circumstances close up, broadly, and farther away in order to supplement my “normal,” routinized ways of thinking?

And with regard to camera-to-subject distance, am I venturing out, exploring other fields of thought, ideas, and values? Of course, there are no right or wrong, better or worse, responses to these questions, but I believe they provide some interesting touchstones when considering where we are in the unfolding process of trying to live our lives more authentically. 

A person has not only perceptions but a will to perceive, not only a capacity to observe the world but a capacity to alter his or her observation of it — which, in the end, is the capacity to alter the world itself. Those people who recognize that imagination is reality’s master we call “sages,” and those who act upon it, we call “artists.”

Tom Robbins

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Order

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In nature and in the world of man-made objects, geometric order evidences the interrelatedness of all things. Using the above image as a model, humanity may be said to consist of a single string within the spacetime continuum. Rather than forming a straight line—the way we experience time—the process of human evolution has been an ever unfolding and ordering spiral. For the most part we have not yet realized or accepted that order, novelty, expansion and complexity are ultimately unifying forces. But even conflicts over diversity can be seen as drivers, urging us to realize and accommodate to the reality that we are one, interrelated and interdependent species.

In the above image, if one of the segments of string represents a lifetime, we can see how it overlaps and aligns with many others. With a little consideration we can see the process of ordering at work. And we can see that an individual life is just a small segment of an unfathomably long string, one that’s shaped by an enfolded and fundamental order—the core—characterized by infinite potential, patterning and exquisite beauty. Notice how the mind’s eye sees a star in one place and then another. As in certain geometries considered “sacred,” the pattern in this ball of string is dynamic. It seems to move.

Socially we find examples of this dynamic in the messy domains of business and politics, where over time, conflicting perspectives, goals and methods eventually produce more ordered systems and solutions. A crowning example of this is the founding of the United States of America. Because the founders—and we today—differ in perception, values, goals and desires, there was and will always be conflict, argumentation and debate. In the messy process of sorting things out, an order emerges that overcomes psychic entropy—negative thoughts, ideas and ideologies that, if held long enough by a system’s members, leads to dis-integration and eventually the system’s demise. Order then, along with information, is negentropic. It overcomes entropy, at least temporarily.

As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes, “Psychic negentropy refers to an ordered state of energy or knowledge, a state in which work can be carried out with the least waste and effort. A negentropic system, whether physical, informational, or mental, is one in which the parts function together in synergy, with minimal friction or disorder.” In his book, Being Adolescent: Conflict and Growth in the Teenage Years, co-authored with Reed Larson, Mihali identifies the specific traits that carry the highest negentropic potential. These include positive feelings toward self and others, happiness, friendliness, joy, meaning, a sense of energy, competence and intrinsic motivation to be involved with people moving toward constructive goals.

Projected to adults, I can easily see how these would be the forces, among others, that are urging us toward alignment and synergistic engagement. In this way, on each turn of the evolutionary spiral, the invisible hand of Nature winds the string around a core, albeit one that imposes a design that is in process. And one that we are not yet privileged to see.

Writing about traumatic events experienced by adults—such as occur in family life as well as in business and politics—Csikszentmihalyi goes further to say in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, that the ability to draw order from disorder is what transforms negative experience into meaningful challenges. Paul Cézanne famously said it was the artist’s task to become “concentric” with nature, to align with it. I see that happening in this image. I also see how the center—the core of an object or idea—determines the pattern that will emerge as time goes on.

For instance, if the string here pictured were wound around a cube or a triangle a very different pattern would result. The same with an idea or ideology. The core of a belief system shapes thinking, which produces patterns of behavior. It’s the reason for the biblical injunction “By their fruit you shall recognize them.” (Matthew 7:16). Others know us by what we do.

In the above photograph, the winding of a string around a round core results in a star pattern with concentric circles. Standing back, it resembles an eye. Computer scientist, Christopher Langton and others in the field of artificial life observe that the essence of living systems is in their organization, not the involved molecules. It couldn’t be otherwise, because at the atomic level it’s the organization of atoms that determines and discriminates one element from another.

At the heart of the most random or chaotic event lies order, pattern, and causality, if only we can learn to see it in large enough context.

Corinne McLaughlin

It is the natural tendency of life to organize — to seek greater levels of complexity and diversity.

Margaret Wheatley

When driven into far-from-equilibrium conditions, systems do not just break down, they generate new structures that pull higher forms of order out of the surrounding chaos. It is as if nature reaches into herself and draws forth structures that reflect the inherent potential of the system for higher orders of self-organization.

Duane Elgin

About This Image

Title: Ball Of String

I came upon this ball of string at the Cincinnati Zoo. About the size of a grapefruit, it sat on a table with a number of other items. I had a macro lens on the camera, but without a tripod and no direct sunlight I had to increase the ISO setting to 2000 so I could use a fast shutter speed to minimize the blur from camera movement. I was pleasantly surprised that the image was sharp and there was little detectable noise from the increase in sensitivity.

Trust

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Seen from a distance, the colors of Autumn evidence the seasonal transition. The leaves turning brown, yellow or red and then falling from the trees at once signify death and the cyclical nature of life. Up close however, as this image reveals, it is also the time for the deposition of seeds, the first act in replacing the life that came before—and through mutation enhancing the species.

Observing the image of this mature grass with its “finger” of seeds, I think about its forebears, all of whom experienced and survived the vagaries of dramatic changes in soil and climate. Beyond the beauty of this blade of grass, enhanced by the backlight of late sun, the camera has captured the moment in its lifecycle when it’s about to disperse its seeds.

I marvel at how this living system, constituted of billions of individual cells, each of which is continually making decisions in its own best interest, knows when and how to manufacture seeds in the first place and then disperse them. I could be wrong, but I don’t imagine there’s much intercellular competition or squabbling going on at that level. In my readings on the life of cells I notice that there isn’t the divisiveness caused by leaders and followers, haves and have nots, liberals and conservatives. The primary differentiating factor for individual cells has everything to do with the choice of function and location. There’s no question that the priority and driving force is the construction of a viable whole system, one that can sustain in order to reproduce.

This particular plant’s existence alone is evidence that its member cells have responded appropriately to both internal and external changes, allowing the whole system to survive, grow and reproduce. Every living cell contains the plan (DNA) for constructing a whole system. And through electrochemical processes, each cell chooses to play a specific role to contribute to the fulfillment of the plan. This is true of all healthy cells.

At the level of the human individual, we have brain-nervous systems that function as the stimulus-responding mechanism to monitor and adjust the body to internal and external changes. What plants have that we lack is a plan for securing the health and well-being of the higher order bodies—the social and global bodies. Human beings are not naturally endowed with a drive to collaborate with other members of the species to construct a society—or world—that can survive, grow and evolve as a unit, a functioning whole system. As a species that is both conscious and social, humanity struggles to coordinate, largely through trial and error. Looked at over just several generations, barely a blip on the evolutionary timeline, it can appear that we are taking two steps forward and one step back. Civilizations, like all living systems, have lifecysles. Should we expect otherwise? The plant kingdom has had the advantage of 140 million years of evolution, compared to our mere 200,000 years.

Whether or not it’s appropriate to parallel our species with the plant kingdom, the fact that both are on  growth trajectories, cycling through internal and external changes is for me reason to trust that nature knows what she’s doing, that the life that’s living us is purposeful and patterned for complexity, expansion and increased consciousness—constructing who know what? As Buckminster Fuller often said, “We can’t learn less, we can only learn more.”  For the moment and from the perspective of evolving life, there’s every reason to trust that, although we as individuals and nations have much to learn about social, political and planetary management, progress is being made. Despite  personal ups and downs, trials and tribulations, all is well and on course. Through the  past winter and summer months—actually and metaphorically—we’ve been busy creating the seeds of our future—the values we hold dear. Now, it’s time to release them so the world can bring forth the next best thing.

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.

Robert Browning

About This Image

Title: A Finger Of Grass

Ordinarily I would walk or drive past a patch of weeds and grass and not give them a thought. But by stalking that same patch with a camera I’m on heightened alert, looking for something that stands out—a pattern or a quality of light that enhances form and texture. Whatever the attraction, I’m compelled to compose the elements in the viewfinder. If it doesn’t work there I move on. If it does I enjoy the sound of the shutter and come away hopeful.

I was photographing in a local park two years ago and came across this blade of grass. What attracted me was the backlight, how against the dark background of forest it created a bright rim around the finger of seeds. Using a macro lens, I critically focused on the finger and opened the aperture wide enough so the background would be out of focus.

Linda’s Garden

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(More images below)

Everything about a flower is meant to attract—its odor, color, shape, line, texture and geometry. These are its aesthetic dimensions. Flowers are the quintessential demonstration of how beauty ties to function and propagation in the natural world. My long-standing attraction to them as photographic subject matter has mostly to do with their color, texture, and geometry, features that combine to evoke the nature and sensibility of all living things, particularly process and change. Flowers may not last long, but the contribution they make to the environment and the human spirit is immense. I find that a flower’s aesthetic qualities are amplified when the camera is close up and the light is coming from behind to emphasize form, or from the side to reveal texture. Color is a given.

I’ve learned from watching Linda that maintaining and nurturing a flower garden is an integrating and humbling activity. The challenges require planning, creativity, knowledge of the subject, patience, management skills, discipline, and hard work, even knowing where and when to get the best quality items at the best price. And there’s a healthy dose of allowing due to fluctuations in the weather and invasions by unwanted pests and weeds to name a few. While I couldn’t do what Linda does, I’m so grateful that I get to share in the end result. Year round I have subject matter to photograph. More importantly, we’re surrounded by beauty every day. All of these photographs were made in her garden.

Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint, and the soil and sky as canvas.

Elizabeth Murray

 

 

 

 

 

Tulips: Diana

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maize

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For me, one of the best things about summer in Ohio is corn! Considering my affinity toward Central America, I prefer the term “maize,” an Indian word meaning “sacred mother,” or “giver of life.” The ancient Maya creation story features the maize god—referred to as “First Father.” When the waters that covered the earth receded, the first mountain to appear contained enormous bounties within it. Having sacrificed himself to defeat certain flaws, the maize god descended into the Underworld. Chaak, a lightning and rain god, came along and with his mighty axe split open the earth, which was perceived as a great turtle or crocodile. The maize  god ascended through the crack, thereby defeating death and distributing the bounty, maize in particular. First Mother ground the maize into a dough and that became flesh for the first human beings. The ancient Maya were known as the “People of Maize” because they literally believed they were constituted of it. And ever after, the maize plant has been a primary metaphor for the human lifecycle.

First cultivated in Mexico, maize was developed by natives living in Central America—Olmec and Maya—at least 7,000 years ago. It was heavily traded throughout North, Central, and South America. Native Americans used sweet corn leaves as chewing gum. Columbus brought it back to Europe. The early settlers in the New World learned from the natives how to make various dishes including corn bread, corn pudding, corn soup, and fried corn cakes.

Maize is a domesticated grass. It does not exist in the wild. The tassel at the top of the stalk is the male part and the silk of the ear is the female part. The tassel releases millions of grains of pollen, and some of them are caught by the silk. There’s one strand of silk for each kernel on a cob. Depending upon the cultivated type, the crop may be ready for harvesting in 65-90 days. On average an ear of maize has 800 kernels in 16 rows, and there is always an even number of rows on every cob. Amazing!

The U.S. corn crop acreage, put together, would cover all of Germany. In the U.S., it takes 91 gallons of water to produce one pound of corn (European word). Maize is cholesterol free and a good source of vitamin C and A, potassium, thiamine and fiber. It’s very high in antioxidants, is 100% whole grain, and high in natural sugars/starches.

If you wish to make an impact for one year, plant corn; if you wish to make an impact for a generation, plant a tree; if you wish to make an impact for an eternity, educate a child.

Chinese Proverb

Change

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Aligning and allowing can make the best of it

This image has special meaning for me. I was in high school, a new member of the camera club, wandering the streets of downtown Cincinnati at night looking for something to photograph. A building had recently been demolished at the corner of 5th and Plum Streets and, unlike today where such places are fenced in, I was free to walk around. I  made several exposures of City Hall and the Cathedral in the distance, with beams and mounds of bricks and debris from the demolished building silhouetted in the foreground. The shattered glass on the ground caught my eye and this photograph is the result.

Eight years later I was employed by the television station that had built a new facility on that very spot—the same station where I’d performed on The Dottie Mack Show, as one-third of her special guests, The Pantomime Trio. I was eleven years old. Fast forward several decades and the TV station was replaced by a much larger structure that evolved into the current Cincinnati Convention Center. As if my being attracted to the place where I would be employed as a cinematographer were not enough of a synchronicity, when I took the position of director of the Television Center at Xavier University, I inherited the lighting grid from that same station—the lights that my sister, a friend and I had performed under.

Now, looking at this image, I reflect on the process of change. Buildings are demolished to make way for more, bigger and better structures. Mortar, glass and steel are still used, but in much improved and variable forms. We speak of “positive” and “negative change,” but the labels only apply to us because we are flesh and bone and have feelings, all of which can easily be hurt. From a much broader perspective, change is evidence of life. And as such, it affirms that life is evolving. Advancing. Nothing stays the same. When scientists define “life” as that which changes, they’re inadvertently stating that the universe and everything in it is “alive,” a living system.

At the human level, because I think and feel, I have preferences and expectations. I want the changes I experience to satisfy my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs and wants. When that happens I’m in my comfort zone, moving forward on the crest of the universal “tide.” On the other hand, when entropy manifests as breakdowns or blocks in these areas, it feels like the universe is not friendly, not cooperating, holding me back or making things difficult.

Placing blame is a natural first response. And then I search for reasons. Why is this happening? What does it mean? And then I remember, in themselves breakdowns and blocks are not the cause of my distress or disappointment. It’s my disappointment or  resistance to them that precipitates a negative experience, not getting my way, things not working they way I want or expect them to. For instance, my experience of the difference between a morning when the traffic flows on the expressway, and the next when it’s backed up entirely depends upon my response to it. I can rail against it and look for someone or something to blame. Or I can settle back, observe and allow that this is the way life is moving and wait for the situation to change. And it will. Nothing says the same. What’s “negative” about change is either the perception or the response.

It’s wonderful and inspiring to hear people expressing a desire to create “positive change” or “make a difference in the world” by improving conditions for individuals, systems and societies. I salute them and they give me hope for the future. Equally, I honor and respect those who, by the quiet manner of their courageous living—I think of my dad—the quality of their character or simply their loving presence are affecting change. Mathematician Petru Dumitriu wrote, “If I love the world as it is, I’m already changing it: a first fragment of the world has been changed, and that is my own heart.” What encourages my patience and optimism in the face of negative changes are those three little words—loving the universe “as it is”—stepping back to observe, allow and love the moment whatever it brings.

Through breakdowns, blocks and disappointments, I want to remember that today’s disaster, however small or large—symbolized here by the shattered glass—will give rise to something better tomorrow. And yes, that too will eventually succumb to entropy. But out of the ashes will come another advance, and another and another as life inexorably moves onward and upward. Life began on this planet about 3.7 billion years ago with self-replicating molecules. That we’re still here and considering how far we’ve come is for me, a source of confidence that life “knows” what it’s doing. My challenge and privilege is to accept it on its own terms.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

                                                                    Alan W. Watts, Writer, speaker, philosopher

 

Abundance

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Having more comes great responsibility

Shopping Carts

In the 2010 movie, “Meek’s Cutoff,” a scout, claiming to know a shortcut through part of the treacherous Oregon Trail, led a wagon train of three families across a desert. Although the film doesn’t answer the burning question: “Did they find water after many days without it?” the artful and realistic depiction of their difficulties made a lasting impression on me. In one scene, to lighten their load, the settlers dumped their furniture and other precious items out the back of the buckboards. In another scene, a runaway wagon is destroyed and the family’s water barrel breaks open. And, adding to their mistrust of the guide and at times each other, they argue over whether the Indian they captured is leading them to water or away from it.

In my novel, Jaguar Sun: The Journey of an Ancient Maya Storyteller, the protagonist spends his days traveling jungle trails between cities, some of them seven days apart, on foot, through the tropical cycles of wet and dry seasons. I’m fascinated and amazed by the resilience and determination of those who came before us, across cultures. Relatively speaking, the abundant American lifestyle that we enjoy is a relatively recent development. Our Inter-state highway system is only a few generations old.  When I was a child, my grandparents used a coal-fired stove, had a dirt floor pantry, got water from a cistern and had no indoor plumbing. Now, for Linda and me, the prospect of moving, even within the same city, is quickly dampened by the need to move our—okay, mostly my—stuff.

I’m amazed by what it takes for me to live and be comfortable from morning to night. A recent road trip provided a demonstration. Just to spend a day photographing, my car needed to be filled with stuff—a map (now GP), peanuts in case I had a blood sugar problem, a cooler to keep water and film cold, four camera cases, two tripods, a flash unit, filter kit, exposure meter, log book and a flight bag with waders, socks, underwear, a spare pair of shoes, clothes on hangers and a cell phone.

As life and living become more complex, physical systems seem to expand. Early on, Eastman Kodak Company profited greatly by the fact that cameras needed to consume film and paper, these needed chemicals to be processed and there were variations on these to meet the demands of special circumstances and techniques, thereby generating even more revenue for the company.

Likewise, every appliance is a system that needs to be continuously fed or maintained. We can’t just buy a computer. We need the  peripherals, a warranty and service contract, certain apps, special cables, a backup drive and a printer that consumes paper and ink. The same with smart phones, televisions, DVD players and other entertainment systems. Professionals and hobbyists alike, in every area, need a lot of “stuff” in order to do their work or exercise their creativity. Businesses have an insatiable appetite for consumables, as do sport-related systems that require permissions, contracts, equipment and uniforms. It’s a guess, but I estimate that we use twenty times the number of disposable batteries we used just five years ago.

Those of us who live in an abundance society are privileged, but with it comes the responsibility to minimize our ecological footprint. So also, state and governmental agencies that should be managing resources wisely—sustainably. While “consumerism” and the uncaring, unconscious production and consumption attendant to it can rightly be cited as a contributor to global warming and a variety of social ills, the argument that the earth is finite, a closed system, doesn’t hold water. As a living system, the planet is “autopoietic,” self-creating. At every level, it’s continuously making itself over. Evolutionary biologist, Elisabet Sahtouris, observed that the Earth is an autopoietic system, a whole system, “A giant cell within whose boundary membrane other smaller cells evolve, multiply, die and are recycled—(all these are) holons forming within the great Earth holon.”

The planet adapts and renews itself in response to natural and man-made change. Of course that doesn’t guarantee that the human species can or will survive such adaptations. And that’s one of the good reasons to cultivate foresight and invest in responsible planetary stewardship, to look ahead and plan responses to devastating potentials such as rising sea levels, rogue diseases, terrorism, fascism and asteroid bombardment.

What to do? We can get books, CD’s, DVD and more at a library rather than purchase them. We can donate books, clothing, furniture, cars, etc. We can fly and drive less, recycle our everyday waste and save fuel in a number of ways. The list goes on. But mostly, we can reduce consumption as an overall pattern by becoming more aware of the consequences of our consumption. Is this object or activity necessary? Is it a need or a want? Considering the above image, I can be more aware and selective in what I put in my shopping cart—on and off line.

Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.

Wayne Dyer

Enrichment

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What is it that feeds your soul?

Harvest Moon

Reflecting on this image, I thought about how, at various times of the year, farmers enrich the soil to get desirable results. It led me to consider what I do to enrich my life. And am I sufficiently engaging in those experiences and environments?

Movies, television programs and commercials show people having fun, but seldom do they show people engaged in activities that are enriching. Lately, I’ve noticed that in some cities the preference of park boards has been to provide facilities for recreation—picnic shelters and benches, playgrounds, merry-go-rounds,  playing fields, volleyball courts, golf courses, canoeing and walkways where vendors can set up for special occasions. Other cities place more emphasize on managing the natural environment.

The Metro Park system in Columbus, Ohio has as its stated mission, “To conserve open spaces, while providing places and opportunities that encourage people to discover and experience nature.” In one of their brochures I learned that each year, “More than 7 million people enjoy quality outdoor times in the parks, and more than 180,000 people participate in free nature education programs.” Nature first, human recreation second. Over the years, I’ve driven a hundred miles from Cincinnati to Columbus and back to photograph in those parks. Although there are picnic and play areas, the primary attraction of their parks is nature, largely undisturbed by man-made objects and structures.

Certainly, we who live in urban areas need outdoor places where our families can have fun. But we also need well managed and maintained wilderness places where the spirit can be renewed, where we can walk through tall forests and gorges, meander along creeks and discover meadows, ponds and marshes, diverse ecosystems where birds, reptiles and animals are protected. When in nature we can breathe better.

A recent study at the University of Michigan found that walking in nature improved short-term memory, restored mental energy (reducing fatigue), relieved stress, reduced inflammation, improved vision and concentration, contributed to sharper thinking and creativity, boosted the immune system and reduced the risk of early death. Didn’t we already have a sense of that? We say a walk in nature “re-charges our batteries.” We come away feeling “charged,” enriched with fresh inspiration and clear thinking. Also, the satisfaction from experiencing nature is like having a drink of water after being very thirsty. 

There are many sources of enrichment, such are family gatherings, education, books, movies and varieties of mass media. In our modern society, these sources can also be a distraction. Enrichment that from stillness, contemplation and meditation requires us to guard against the urge to play with our electronic toys, engage in social media or create projects motivated mostly by fame or fortune. Why do I continue to write this blog when the audience is limited and small? Why do I research, write and self-publish novels when the subject matter has limited appeal? And why do I continue to make and self-publish photograph in black and white? Because these activities are enriching, they feed my soul.

Of course, the sources of enrichment vary from person to person. Just as some plants thrive in nitrogen-rich soil, others abhor it. The challenge is to discover the experiences and environments, even the people and social situations, that feed our soul. And engage them regularly.

Everybody needs time to reflect and contemplate, and the most inspirational and peaceful place to do so is in nature.

                                                           —Akiane Kramarik, Artist, “Prince of Peace,” an interpretation of the face of Jesus

Continuity

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The persistent seed

The Persistent Seeds

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 despite the conditions and a harsh winter, when the moment was right, they awakened to the call of Spring and, rising in the direction of heat and light, gave birth to the form of their “ancestors.”

Observing this process—and relating it to the lifecycle of maize plants—the ancient and modern Maya of Central America adopted the belief that death gives rise to life. While the ancients believed that only divine kings would reincarnate, the general population believed—as many do today—that their sons and daughters “replace” the souls of their grandfathers and grandmothers, providing continuity of their lineages essence.

Ethnographers studying the Maya report that within certain societies, when an elder dies his relatives begin to look for his “kex,” a newborn replacement for him within the extended family. This is somewhat similar to the Tibetan’s search for the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. For the Maya, as with maize and other crops, birth and rebirth demonstrates conclusively that life is not a straight line of events from birth to death, but a continuous cycle, a “sacred round” wherein life “breathes” in and out, allowing old forms to die and new forms to be born.

Although the forms we take bear some resemblance to those of our fathers and mothers, and we carry within us their genes—along with many of their values, beliefs and aspirations—we are, like the plants in this image, new and unique individuals carrying forward and evolving our biological essences. And doing this in the context of fresh conditions with expanding social and technological complexity the capacity and direction of thought—consciousness—also evolves.

Just as the composition of the soil influences a plant, the physical, mental and social composition of the environments we grow up in condition our thinking, responding and creating in ways that are different from our parents. Because consciousness increases with complexity, each generation is more knowledgeable and aware than the last. And this increased awareness, particularly as it multiplies and globalizes, will lead us—gracefully at times; painfully at times—to assume greater responsibility for the quality of the “soils” that will nourish our grandchildren and their grandchildren when they “Touch the Earth,” the Maya way of referring to incarnation.

For indigenous people the world around, maize was the perfect metaphor for life because a single stalk cannot stand; it will easily be toppled by gusts of wind. To survive, it must grow in close community where there is mutual support.

To live is to communicate life, because life is essentially a spreading, growing phenomenon. Therefore, the more one communicates life, affirms life in one’s fellows, gives oneself to enhance their lives, the more one is alive, is truly living, and thus, is truly oneself.

Beatrice Bruteau, Philosopher

Author, Radical Optimism: Practical spirituality in an uncertain world