Elixir Vitae
Elixir Vitae – Ann Arbor, Michigan
shadow
Find the Light
“Find the light. Find it and harness it. It’s ours.”
Justin Nicole Melville, fellow Jackson artist and photographer.
Bad Ground
On the first of October last year, I took a walk in the Whitehouse Nature Center in Albion, Michigan. It was a beautiful fall day, one that only hinted at the darkness to come. The leaves were just starting to fall, and I wanted to play with the light and see what I could capture.
This what I came up with – edited and processed more than a full year later.
I’m doing this more and more: letting projects sit for a while, and then addressing them months (or a year) later to see what sticks out, creatively. For these leaves, I knew I wanted to let them marinate for a while.
Here’s to the last days of October.
Better In the In-Between
Big transitions in my life the past year or so: the birth of my daughter, a new job, getting ready to sell our house and move into the city.
So it is with the seasons as well. The temperatures here in Michigan are dropping steadily, the leaves are changing, pumpkins are popping up at roadside stands. Autumn is in the air.
Much like last year, I’m trying to stay on top of all the transitions and stay involved with creative projects. It’s tough. And I’m not working on anything specific now, but I have some ideas and plans brewing.
Here’s to the in-between.
Bending Light On The Wall
Bending Light On The Wall – Jackson, Michigan
Great light in a studio space in downtown Jackson. I was there for a portrait project, but the way the light was coming in the windows was too great not to grab.
Pools Of Light
Summer nights around the house – when the angle of sunlight turns the mundane into dramatic.
It’s enough to get lost in. Evenings like this, there’s entertainment in simply watching the light move, and shape, and shift.
Like some mythic, benevolent dictator, the sun shows its preferences in direct ways. A set of headphones here, the neighbors yard over there. You can’t question it. You just record it.
And hope the light shines on you.
Where you could sit on the edge of your bed
And you could stare into your own shoes
And in the pools of light there
Go wherever you choose
The Tragically Hip, “Vapour Trails”
Crazy Cowboy
Jackson, Michigan
What I love about mobile photography is that you get to capture magic when you see it, without any fussing around.
The Lodge
The lodge at Tobermory, Ontario, offered a perfect view of Lake Huron and the Georgian Bay off the back patio. The way the light came into the main sitting room was perfect.
Fangorn Forest – Flowerpot Island
We take the ferry out to the island at a leisurely pace, seeing shipwrecks as we travel in Lake Huron, on a bright and sunny July day.
Things are different up here. There’s no sandy beaches, and the water is a degree or two above freezing. It’s just rock and water and wood. A peninsula jutting into the Georgian Bay, surrounding by little uninhabited rocky islands.
We get to Flowerpot Island, and there are tourists everywhere on the initial beach. Well-dressed Asian ladies and children scrambling over the limestone shore, into the freezing water.
But as you go deeper along the trails, away from the “flowerpots” that named the island, things are quieter. No screaming kids, no well-dressed Asian ladies. It’s just moss and rock and cedar trees.
And little trails of mottled light that reach the forest floor.
It reminded me of one of Tolkien’s forests, full of story. The trees here aren’t nearly as old as Fangorn because their roots can’t get a good grip on the limestone rock, and so they fall. No tree here is ancient.
They are hardy, though, and they grip to life through terrible winters and stiff winds from the lake.
The sunlight reaches the forest floor in patches, highlighting a felled tree here, or a moss-grown rock there. It’s dramatic, and on parts of the island no one ever sees it.
I had a lot of fun stopping at the more lovely light patches to grab a few photos. Shadow and light – the mix was addictive after hiking along the trails, and I had to stay in the back of our group so I didn’t hold anyone up.
It was worth it. The photos have a mystique to them. Places without people often do, and that’s why we go there.
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