Tag Archives: photography

Zen and the Art of Golf

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Angry Golf

Angry Golf

I’m always being told that playing golf (like photography for that matter) requires a certain Zen frame of mind. I’m beginning to understand that, and I’m beginning to allow myself to enjoy the game, in spite of all the slices, shanks, three and four putts, or lost balls. There’s a course near where we live that’s both beautiful and difficult, where going after an out-of-bounds ball might mean rappeling into a canyon or coming face-to-face with a rattlesnake. I’ve had to hit around large bucks and coyotes lounging in cool, grassy areas next to fairways. Once, I witnessed a bobcat trot past me down the cart path toward the clubhouse. And yet…..the game, or how well one plays the game, can get under the skin. More than once, I’ve heard other players’ loud expletives echoing throughout the hills. Sometimes those expletives have been mine. I’ve seen other players throw clubs, but I’ve never seen the results of someone breaking a club over a tree trunk, until recently. Angry golf is not fun, and it’s the furthest one can get from a Zen state of mind. The day I found this broken club was during one of my best games, a game where I was able to stay in that Zen place from the first hole to the eighteenth. So, I keep this image to remind me of the importance of maintaining a certain level of detachment, something useful in other areas of life as well. But on the golf course, I’m reminded of Kevin Spacey’s character in the film American Beauty, who says “It’s hard to stay mad when there’s all this beauty in the world.”

The End of a Season

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Dried

Dried

Ah, when to the heart of a man                                                                                                Was it ever less than a treason                                                                                          To go with the drift of things,                                                                                                  To yield with a grace to reason,                                                                                         And bow and accept the end                                                                                                  Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost, “Reluctance”

And he remembered it no more…..

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And he remembered it no more....

And he remembered it no more….

I found this small, leather-bound SwedishPsalmbok in a used bookstore in Ventura, CA. In addition to how lovely it feels in the hand, its leather softened by the hands of another, its delicate weight, the fact that it is written in Swedish was intriguing. How had that book made a journey from Sweden to southern California? Moreover, who is Kris Lind, whose name is embossed in gold on the bottom right corner of the front cover, and how did he or she end up in California? Did his or her effects end up in this bookstore after a death, both book and man to be remembered no more (a line at the edge of the page reads, “Och han minnes den ej mer…” meaning, “And he remembered it no more……”)? Although I can’t read Swedish, I recognized the language on the page as some of my ancestors emigrated from Sweden to live in the northeast region of the U.S., where my maternal grandfather, Bernard Oscar Sandquist, was born. Growing up, I was told I was named for his mother.

Kris Lind may not be related to me in any way, but his or her Psalmbok now lives with me, no longer stripped from memory.

Vila väl, Kris Lind. Inte alla är glömt.

Color Vs. Black and White

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Most of the time, I work in black and white. For me, color can be a distraction and with black and white, a subject is reduced to its essence, to its light and shadows. This subject, however, demanded to be seen in all its resplended hues. Yesterday, this dragonfly landed on a leaf of our bird of paradise outside a living room window.  He stayed there, clinging to its perch as the wind swayed the leaf back and forth in the strong afternoon light. During lulls in the breeze, I reached for my telephoto lens and took some shots. With the dark background, this already brilliantly colored being seemed to pop off the screen. The color feels extravagant, almost painful, even after I reduced some of the saturation. There’s an impulse to shade my eyes against this radiant red. Still, what a glittering, beautiful jewel…..

Dragonfly

Dragonfly in Color

Today, I transformed this being into black and white. It’s not the same image, but something more delicate and surprisingly ethereal. For me, there is something about black and white images (barring extremely high key processing) that provides respite for the eye from the daily bombardment of a rioting world of color.

Dragonfly

Dragonfly