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Author Topic: Lumine_The small back story  (Read 944 times)

Patricia Sheley

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Lumine_The small back story
« on: April 15, 2013, 08:35:28 pm »

At the end of an amazing afternoon/evening along a local river I hurriedly posted my excitement at the wonderful light that had been flowing there...I'm not really even thinking technical photographic merit when this kind of energy is circling, so for those offended at Earth_Water I apologize for the"blobs" suffered...I should remember that as we are at a distance I should have prefaced that post with a warning...It was about the light...

So a bit of the story of that day, to help the understanding of the additional posts...It had been a brutal few weeks, my own fault for being consumed by distractions no one should even heed in old age, but I had...and this stormy grey day kept giving way to momentary breaks of light that were nothing short of astonishing...so my boots, back pack and I headed to the river...It is clearly and sternly marked at my chosen route in, "CLOSED AT SUNSET".

Well, hadn't noticed it coming (the sunset)...the roar, the moments of playing light on the water all conspired to sweep my sleeping sensibilities away leaving me with only an all consuming subtle consciousness of every good moment of my past and those offered on the winds from other sentient beings before me. So when a somewhat angry voice boomed from above and behind me where I was draped over a boulder mid-river with my tripod attached and hanging with parachute cord, we both almost made the plunge. Evidently this Fish and Game officer had been yelling to me from the shore and did not appreciate having to make his way to me. (He thought I was poaching trout out of season, filling my bag. ) (Actually there were so many as I photographed over the edge that I could have have swept some out with my hands and arms).

Once we exchanged identities and made our way back to the river bank (now well through first twilight and into the second) we sat and had a discussion about chromatic greys !!!!! on these wildly changing days of mixed light...He spent some time looking at those I had actually thought to release a shutter on, and we walked out together by flashlight. He also gave me a card to keep within the windshield when I am out with the camera, and had seen my note with phone # left there but didn't call me because he was going to "catch me in the act". We had some good laughs and parted ways...as I drove home I thought about a time years ago at a location I have never been able to find again, where at low tide a granite rock had been carved with the letters L U M I N E.... that was in the mid 1960's...that sentiment has remained with me since then, and Riann, it is for me the equivalent of JMW Turner, and how astonished I was to have you react the way you did. I love that you have found at your young age this extraordinary desire to know the play of light, the almost spiritual radiance that draws those things we too easily know only as solid. Your comment is one of which I am not worthy, but I accept with gratitude. To the gentleman I offended with "blobs", I owed you and will remember the courtesy to warn you that my offering is about the light that day, not my acknowledged lack as to exhibited technique.

Working in NYC after studies, I devoured the museums in off time, and even then, it was about the light...The great thing is that in my awareness of my self dissolving in old age, I have also found that the obstacles and distractions that separate from the opening to a magical subtle consciousness need not even exist...we can walk freely into the wind of all those sentient beings before us and right into clear and beautiful light...
« Last Edit: April 16, 2013, 02:00:00 am by Patricia Sheley »
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Chris Calohan

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Re: Lumine_The small back story
« Reply #1 on: April 16, 2013, 09:05:21 am »

Fun story, but I am curious as these shots look like a technique I've dinked about with over the last few years but not to the quality you "possibly" have achieved - and quite well, quite possible you are not employing this at all - of shooting two or more exposures: one to stop the action, one to allow good slow motion flow and then painting in via a mask the best of both worlds. either or, getting the right light is key and you've found that energy and I suspect you are keeping it under lock and key.
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Patricia Sheley

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Re: Lumine_The small back story
« Reply #2 on: April 16, 2013, 09:11:02 pm »

Nothing under lock and key Chris...have been of late shedding most everything once thought of as belongings, no need for them really. Have come to view my role as caretaker, and temporary only, of whatever has come to me...A few markers along the way that fed my hungers were a family of suicides, a brilliant but brutal father, himself the son of a russian violin maker who understood the tonal glazes of placenta bloods, an extraordinary opportunity to study Color and Light with Sibyl Moholy-Nagy in the mid sixties at the time of the first suicide, and the cavern carved by that made vast space for all she did transmit...we were born on the same day, she in 1903...both Scorpios. She took the role for me of protector, the light and sound waves only overtaking me in these last years. There are some manuscripts left unpublished too by some which I have only been able to read in this past year. The Tibetan Book of the Dead has contributed, the amazing presence always with me of my short time with Minor White...I spent an evening at his grave last week...

The only thing I am able to say is that I wait a long time before the single frame. It is either there , or it is not...For reasons unnessary to this discussion, my eyes do not tolerate sunlight well, which is fine with me, as it is the energies of the intersections, directions and emergings of light , its communication I am grateful to receive.

I used to slip pieces of translucent papers between the source of light and the film in the holders when my only camera was a speed graphic. That is the same sense that informs shooting in any atmosheres of water...Fog, snowstorms, dripping humidity, rain, high seas sitting in the front of the pilot house on the ferry to Monhegan. I've acquired some absurd methods to keep my cameras dry, me , not so much...I love the weather and its light. It is  through all those levels of atmosphere that the play with absolute performs its composition. I'm happy with that. The optical rules are different somehow in the brief margins at the edge of light and darkness. I rarely shoot anything other than ISO 100. I never use AWB. I do play with custom WB, sometimes 9 or 10 readings off a patch in my boot or from the passport checker and set the one that feels like the light to me. Maybe change up a time or two the first twilight but then no more...I have a strong sense of the experience and shoot RAW to afford myself the luxury of later play...but nothing like the complications you suppose...I am somewhat a simpleton and quite happy that way.

When I am painting, I mix my own greys from copper phthalocyanine and carbon black...that seems to feed the palette of my photography... you'd laugh at my brush pot too...as often as not I paint with the handles, or branches or kale as I do the brushes...not much good at using the tools as "I should". Even J Schewe says it's good to play!

I rarely go out with more than one prime. I have wonderful glass acquired along the way, but most is lent to others. I want that constant of one length when having those conversations and the only "trick" I can offer is to constantly with awareness attempt to override how our brain and its optical laws tries to over ride those of our true eyes and seeing. I do dream in colour and have vivid recall, and often those colours turn up behind me in the water when I least expect them...always telling myself to turn around! Sleep allows us to dissolve our sense of self and sometimes I'm lucky to hang on to that when on these hikes...I think old age is helping me there too...

Sibyl Moholy-Nagy's husband, Lazlo, said in 1925, "A few more vitally progressive years, a few more ardent followers of photographic techniques and it will be a matter of universal knowledge that photography was one of the most important factors in the dawn of a new life." Playing outside the rules I think he may still come to be right... It has certainly brought me great joy in my end game!
Lumine....
« Last Edit: April 16, 2013, 09:16:35 pm by Patricia Sheley »
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Chris Calohan

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Re: Lumine_The small back story
« Reply #3 on: April 16, 2013, 11:23:18 pm »

Such a delightful little work pf photographic prose, Ms. Patricia. I enjoyed it very much, reading it twice, then twice more. Simple, darest I say, you are anything but simple, but the complexity is veiled in a desire to go about your ways in your own way. Most may never get that sense from you, though I think those on here not only get the sense, they, like me become immersed in your delights. Please keep them coming.
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