Old Friends
minding anxiety, focusing on love
Dear Friends,
Spring is just around the corner.
For those of you farther south, it has probably already arrived. But for me, spring is still a dream.
Perhaps that’s why these particular images presented themselves out of the tens of thousands in my Lightroom catalogue.
They take my breath away.
Like old friends, they comfort.
They even play well together.1
I needed these old friends this week.
The grand plan to cull images and declutter my Lightroom catalogue started to overwhelm as I distracted myself with one micro-drama after another.
And then these garden images appeared and I smelled the wet mulch and saw the glory of color I had witnessed on Vancouver Island, in the glass house at Kew Gardens and in my own back yard.
Stop, they said.
And like good friends who know you well, they embraced me and whispered, “you can slow down.”
They know that when anxiety presents itself, I buzz.
So I stopped and reconsidered my strategy. What if, instead of starting with all that is not ‘keyworded,’ and not ‘rated,’ I focused on the images I love the most?
What if I reminded myself that it took 13 years to process 13 tons of compost, not 13 days?
Needing guidance, I searched YouTube, where I found Ellie Macdonald’s Mindfulness in Photo Editing and Post Processing.2
Taking her advise, I moved to a favorite chair, listened to birds sing and water flow on the Nature Sounds playlist on Spotify, and took some deep breaths.
I don’t need to angrily push through, as the water did during Hurricane Irene. My images and I can find a way…together, just as these photographs, created at different times in three different states, are connected, not just because they all contain water.3
It’s also the play of light and shadow and the movement embodied in the stillness of the image itself.
Serenity emerges, even when there’s drama.
The Spotify birds sing and rain falls and I am immersed in this moment.
These photographs, I tell myself, are like my buckets of compost - - each one contains multiple micro-dramas, whether food prepared or creatures struggling to survive, hidden in the trees or water in the photographs.
Just show up, I tell myself - - one bucket or one photograph in the archive at a time. Yes, some can be ‘batch processed,’ but honor those that stand alone.
Like this majestic tree in early spring 2016 or this leaping stag in 2011. Five and a half years apart, but on the same piece of property maybe a few hundred yards apart.
The magic is in the moment.
I’m not a wildlife photographer and have never sat waiting for a particular animal to present itself. I don’t have that kind of patience. I just happened to be there when this particular creature chose to run across my path. And me being me, I couldn’t let it get away without my trying to document the moment.
Which is why I have tens of thousands of images.
There are just so many beautiful moments.
Sister and brother.
Mother and son.4
And earlier today daffodils pushing through the leaves - again.
How many times have I photographed this scene? And how often does it take my breath away?
Old friends come in such different forms.
So when the world wearies, return to who and what you love most - - they will keep you grounded and invite you to catch your breath.
As always, thank you for sharing your time and this space with me.
It remains all about 13 tons of love, whether one bucket or one photograph at a time.
With gratitude for you being you,
Lyn
If you liked spending time with these images and words, consider sharing with others. Or if anything here inspired you in any way, let me know in the comments section below (remember - if you reply to this e-mail, I’ll never see your glorious words).
Public gardens are the first places I visit when I travel. I love that my humble back yard works so well visually with The Buchart Gardens on Vancouver, Island, BC and The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew outside of London. And even if my photo from Buchart is replicated in every photo album by every person who has visited the garden in the month of April, so be it. This one belongs to me…and those two friends walking side by side with their umbrellas. Bliss.
Ellie is also on Substack, which is cool Ellie Macdonald While she talks about applying the same intentionality we have when creating an image to working with it post-processing, I applied that to my entire catalogue. I just needed someone to remind me that this work is sacred, even though it inhabits bits and bytes on a computer.
When I turned to corner to the new composting section at the landfill, I was stopped in my tracks - not by the mud in which I stood, but by the power of the clouds and sky to illuminate the space; When we turned a corner on a side road in Norwich, VT after the rains stopped during Hurricane Irene, we, too, stopped in our tracks. The angry water was deafening. My 9 and 11 year old were at once fascinated and frightened; And Cape Flattery, which is the Westernmost point on the Continental United States and is clearly dramatic, is also sacred. We were definitely visitors to these tribal lands, humbled by the enormity and grateful to be with each other at the edge of things.
All of the images were created a while ago with an older camera and a zoom lense or an older iphone. Sometimes there’s just not time or the capacity to set the ideal focal length, as I might have done with Mother & Son. So many distractions! But does that even matter? Most of these are not photographs to submit to shows, they are part of my life. I’m OK with having some of my favorite images be not so great technically. What matters is how they make me feel.
So spring! Joyous and vibrant!