Wabi Sabi muses aloud so that you might more fully appreciate her complex artistic process:
1. Sunset! Must take a picture!
2. Sunset through glass pyramids! Must take a picture!
3. Sunset through glass pyramids, lots of birds flying around. Must take a picture!
Later, while processing pictures:
4. Birds perched all over the left hand pyramid, not apparent until picture is blown up! Must pretend that was my plan all along!
Researchers have identified the chromosome that–among other things–enables homing pigeons to unerringly find their way back to the roost. According to scientists involved in the study, one of the genes they discovered gives pigeons the ability to read subtle signs in their environment, signs that other species of birds miss.
Happy Monday!
As seen from our seventh-floor apartment.
Actually, I think this first shot can be titled “Paris in the Rain as shot from Standing in Barbara’s Bathtub” if you really wanted to get all GPS on me.
At this point in the trip, my wide-angle lens had pooped out on me and I was left with the 50mm f1.4 lens. So, while other folks were swilling wine and comparing notes on the day, your friend, Wabi Sabi, was playing around with what the lens could do with rain on the rooftops and in the street below.
My primary use for the 50mm is close-ups with great shallow depth of field or magical bokeh…but not distance shots. So really, for me this was like getting to know a brand new lens.
As a bonus, there were no screens on any of the apartment windows and all of them cranked out. I was free to play with focus and depth of field from inside the windows or to hang out and go for a perfectly unobstructed view of the street.
No one was paying attention to me and I am grateful for that. When I get into the “Zone,” I actually process aloud: “Yes!…Okay, okay…wait, no. Try this… All right!”
Fortunately for me, this is a pretty opinionated AND vocal group given to excited utterances, so my own brand of hyper-enthusiasm has plenty of space to blend in.
Like everyone, I have my own list of “Things That Give me Great Joy.” Rain is one. A splash of red is another. Blessings on the woman who showed up in my frame with a red umbrella.
A mix of rooftops and roofscapes. I can spin multiple stories for each one of them, but wouldn’t you rather weave your own?
A golden window is impossible to ignore without imagining the world within. I think that inside that one warmly-lit apartment, a man is beginning to prepare dinner. It’s not a chore, but pleasure, and he is completely invested in the task, right down to the smallest detail.
There is a quiet deftness to his movements that tells us he has made this dish many times before and he works with just the hint of a smile on his face.
Sorry…make that “Wabi Sabi Abroad.”
Darned punctuation “conventions.”
Ten full days in Paris. Maybe 800 pictures. I can break them down into Rain, Rooftops, Cemeteries and Building Facades with a small group labelled Totally Random Stuff. I will be weaving them in and out of posts for the next six months.
Thought I’d start with a rooftop shot.
(Brace yourself. There’s more where this came from.)
Well, I certainly missed you while I was gone.
