Leaf Ghosts

    These patterns of color and shading appear to be leaves, but actually are simply an impression on a sidewalk, a remnant from a leaf no longer there.
    People leave impressions on the world after they are no longer there.  When these impressions are so vivid that it feels like we are seeing the person, some say that it feels like they have seen a ghost.
    But usually the impressions of those no longer with us are more vague and fleeting, like the places in the grass where leaves have been after they are raked or blown away.  But even if it's not a conscious impression or clear image, we remember.

The star of the show, Sean; also, calendars

I've been absent from writing, even though I've got lots of photos and ideas.
But I thought I'd introduce you to the dog who gets me out walking.
This is Sean.


More pictures and thoughts soon.  Some of my photos are coming out in 2 calendars, one of which features Sean on the November page.  Let me know if you'd like to buy one:  I only made 25 of each design, most of which are going to family, friends, neighbors, coworkers.  I would be delighted to sell it at cost, $20 including shipping it to you, just to know that someone reads this blog.  Below is the version featuring Sean (though that picture is not visible below; it's a picture of him on a snowy sidewalk).  The other version has the red leave and dog print as the cover, and a few different photos.  Have a pleasant wrap up to your year!

vapor trail sunrise

Is this sunrise any less beautiful if we realize that most of the “clouds” are actually jet airplane vapor trails?

Human perception of beauty seems to be generally modeled after nature:  people tend to see beauty when the pattern of light or sound is a pattern that is not totally random (noise, mess) and not totally orderly (checkerboard, repeated tones).  We find total randomness and total order to be both boring and annoying, but somewhere in between, like a face or a flower, to be pleasant.  Even with faces and flowers, though we like symmetry, we prefer the tiniest bit of variation from perfection to make it “natural”; this is perhaps why in some periods of fashion history a mole on a cheek or edge of the lip was called a “beauty mark.” 

Nature provides this middle ground between randomness and order.  Nature has a lot of order to it; think of a shell’s lines or spirals, the uncurled self-similar branching of a fern, or the fact that the spacing of branches in a tree can be described by the Fibonacci sequence of adding the last two numbers to get the next one in a sequence. 

Humans are more likely to produce boring orderly patterns when they are intentionally crafting something artificial, like an airplane.  The paths that airplanes take are fairly orderly, due to decisions and pathways designed to keep them from crashing into each other.  But the whole picture above is a mix of trees (plus an artifice: a streetlight), wisps of “natural” clouds, jet contrails, and the way the trails are gradually spread and bent by the wind.

Humans create art on purpose to present beauty and meaning to the observer.  But everyday human behavior such as flying a plane, or cracking a wry half-smile in a moment of shared realization, especially in combination with some elements provided by nature, may produce beauty as well.

Ultimately, this distinction between nature and artifice breaks down.  Our products, technology, and behaviors, and vapor trails are, at least indirectly, part of the processes set in motion eons ago. 

Speaking of humans and other parts of nature mixing together; my dog is getting patient about not tugging at the leash as I stop to take photos like this. 

Slivers of light and worlds

I called to other early morning walkers (also led by a dog) and suggesed that they cross the street and look through the trees at this:  the moon, which is both a slivered crescent but also visible as a disc.
    This view of the moon reminds us that the moon is not a light, it's an immense rock lit up by the sun and by sun's light reflected off the Earth onto the moon.
   This view is also a reminder that when we walk through our daily world, we should occasionally look up,m and look past our immediate surroundings to see the worlds beyond.

Morning sun rays, please add sounds or meaning

Sometimes the morning dog walk is not so routine.

Add your own sound effects, 

such as a descending space ship, 

or a choir of angels.

Asking you to do this suggests that photography has something in common with poetry:  Both draw their material from the world, selecting just certain details and certain angles and certain frames to present, using the medium of pixels or words, and leaving it to the reader/viewer/listener to add more, to bring in their own meanings and experiences and images and sound effects.  

Art, (or pictures taken with my dog tugging at the leash while I aspire to art with nature's help), is an experience that requires the participation of a viewer to make it complete.  I hope someone views this. It's not a very unique kind of picture, but maybe it will trigger a comment about the experience you bring to help you enjoy my picture or my words. 

Snoop Doggy Blog

On a walk through our small-city neighborhood, my dog does the typical dog behaviors of bolting after squirrels, rabbits, and birds.  He can catch up to a squirrel out in the open, but the most frequent outcome is that he "marks" the tree that the squirrel just climbs.  He of course appears mystified when the birds leave the ground without the help of a tree.  When we are not working as a team to restrain his chasing urges, he is busy with another typical canine behavior:  investigating smells.  He follows smells sometimes to track "prey" or sometimes to follow the trail of another dog that walked by, looking for the places he needs to overmark any marks by other dogs on "his" street.  Sometimes he is tracking a smell of something he may want to nibble on.
    As if I wasn't already projecting enough intentions onto his instinctive behavior, it's tempting to think that some of his sniffing is simply curious.  I am more likely to be projecting my intentions onto him because when I walk him on our one long street, if I have a choice between boredom, annoyance, impatience, nature appreciation, distraction, entertainment, and other activities and states of mind, I sometimes choose:  curiosity.
     Now when humans walk up and down a street feeling curious, the result feels like snooping.  If I look at what's in the recycle bin, or my eye catches an open window or notices what cars are in the driveway or what has changed about a house or yard, I am mentally prying into someone else's life, or at least the part of the life that shows on the exterior of a house.  Once I catch myself curious about the lives behind these outward signs, I find myself self-conscious, trying to keep my gaze on the most impersonal part of the scene (the sidewalk... but then why do some people edge the grass meticulously and other people let it grow more wild over the sidewalk and in the cracks...).  In this kind of neighborhood, like most perhaps, almost everything in the environment is shaped by human choices, and even any part that is growing free is still shaped by current or past choices.  I can enjoy the forces of nature on some days, but on these days of snooping, I'm noticing that nature grows and moves with the influence of human gardeners, farmers, builders. The last pre-development tree on our block collapsed in a storm a couple of years ago, so it's now a street of the oaks planted when the houses were built, plus the various trees planted since then.
     My dog, recapturing my attention by darting or needing me to pull out a cleanup bag, is himself one of those forces of nature growing in a human-designed world.  On my curious/snooping days, I can track the signs left by my human neighbors as my dog follows scents.  On another day's walk, I can go back to noticing what humans don't control, like: the growth of some of those acorns into new trees that may someday fall onto someone's mailbox, or the tendency of grass to grow back over those sidewalks.

The sound of gentle endings

One fall day, on the street, I heard a different sort of rustle in the air than usual:  It wasn’t wind-whipped leaves rattling against each other; there was no breeze at all, not even a wave of a hanging leaf.  In this silence, what was the tapping, clicking, clickleticka-littlededipple I was hearing?

I looked  and around for my answer, and saw spinning, wafting leaves filling the air like fluffy snowflakes.

It was the leaves breathlessly coming to rest against pavement and settling on the edges of other leaves.I looked back up, walked over to a tree branch, and noticed:

Even without a gust of wind to yank it from the tree, each leaf has its moment to part from its branch and join the slowly drifting cascade.

I found myself mesmerized, and sad yet smiling.  It seems that autumn uses sound and motion, not just color, to make endings beautiful.

And then my dog yanked on the leash with a dog tag jingle I don't usually hear, and I left the endings behind.
I hope you use all of your senses as you engage with the world today:  not just the senses being stimulated most, but the ones that are not standing out today.  Smell carefully on a day with no strong scents, look intensely in the dark, run your fingers over a surface that seems featureless, and, as I did sort of by accident on this day, listen carefully when it's quiet.  You may notice something you never noticed that's been around you all the time. 

New ways to experience the familiar

There's pretty much just one path to take as I walk the dog, but many ways to experience the walk.  

I listen for different types of sounds; birds, or cars far away, or wind-rustled leaves.

I imagine what people on my street are thinking about at that time of day. (imagination, not peeking).

I look down at all the plants nestled in the grass that looks more uniform from far away.

I look up at plants, yard signs, different ways of managing yards.

I look further up at the trees or the sky through gaps in the trees.

I mentally practice my new challenge of learning Mandarin as I pass the houses of native Chinese speakers, hoping for the chance to practice, "zaoshang hao, ni hao ma?"

I check voicemail. I take pictures.

I look down and realize it's time to get out a doggie bag (not the restaurant kind).

There are always new ways to engage with the familiar (this goes for family too!)

I hope you all find ways to add interest to the routine parts of your day.