Some folk believe a white moth and/or butterfly represents spiritual growth, transition or even good luck. You know, depending on who you ask.
In any event, it's an old belief.
So for today let's just say that's true, then I can share this little bit of good fortune with you...
It's always struck me odd that northerners refer to the dependably darkest time of their each and every year as 'the season of light.'
Like with everything else we do, there're a host of compiled reasons. Cultural, scientific, you name it. Dating all the way back to probably before the Pagans and in various forms sailing on clear through to today.
Believe whatever you want, for whatever reasons you wish. Regardless, this far north winter solstice spells deep dark and lots of it.
And it'll stay that way into March, so far as anyone'll notice on a daily basis. Then, as if the sky turned on a spigot, light and life will return.
Before that, winter promises a long climb and that's where we're at today.
This project is called "In Search of Perfect Light" not because perfect light's particularly rare. It isn't.
Many/most days feature some, however briefly.
But you must be looking for it.
Then willing & able to take what unexpectedly comes your way, and make the most of that.
My most perfect light of 2021 occurred during the last days of October. It was wholly unexpected, but I'd put myself in place to see it and when the opportunity came, I didn't miss.
Fungi are old. Way older than the human race. Ridiculously older than any mere belief. That pretty much by definition means fungus is more successful than we, at least to date.
Fungi are among the largest life forms on Earth. There's one in the U.P. that's three times the size of a Blue Whale.
Fungi are inherently collaborative. Imagine that.
Right down to their core existence, a fungus understands that life requires collaboration and without it, the community that sustains life dies.
I don't suppose most people give the 'lowly' fungus much thought, unless it's in their salad.
So I saved my most perfect light of 2021 to share during our communal acknowledgment of regeneration. A rich, stark light to pierce the dark season's most impenetrable days and remind us of what's to come.
What was there remains, even if hard to discern.
What is there still will be, when better light returns for us to see.
#winter #solstice
In need of symmetry to work with, the weatherman tells us today's the first day of winter, and it's all downhill from here.
Until it's not.
Science is good. I like science. But accumulated human knowledge is, by & large, provisional.
There's always more work to do. That's a good thing.
This year I'm entirely content to wait on the Pagans for to usher winter in, then out at the same celestial moment. Handy how that works, eh?
The hard season of cold light is on us soon enough. In some places, it's already here.
Time enough left, for a look back.
Enriched by autumn rains, parts of the prairie stayed wide awake well into October.
It was a pleasure to be out & about, except the light was too often flat and dull.
The rains subsided. The sun shone bright. Long light pierced through fading woods.
More visitors stopped by.
The air turned chill, yet a few things held on.
Day by day, the light sank.
Then it was all but gone.
We got four inches of rain during October. An unusual amount, but it'd been dry for so long the water was welcome.
Then it turned unexpectedly nice. Late autumn prairie blooms held on. Some few even seemed to start afresh.
A pair of visitors stopped by.
How long they stayed I can't say. It's safe to assume they've flown from these parts by today.
Near the end of October, change accelerated. Light grew longer.
Autumn piled on.
At times the light fell near perfect. Then life on the prairie was revealed in high relief.
After shooting my last film in November 2012, I'd no intention of making the transition to digital capture.
Screw learning curves, I thought. There'd been a lot of those over the years.
I was well and truly done, with decades of photographic pursuit behind me. A closed book, both literally and figuratively.
Surprisingly perhaps, at the time I was pretty well content with that. Personally transformative and creatively productive as it was, the Superior Odyssey flat wore me out.
It was only later that I thought to continue doing what I'd learned to do so well. What'd been an integral part of me, since nearly fifty years ago when Heather brought a cheap Topcon back from Europe, and I promptly stole that from her.
Which theft led me here.
Being rendered technically obsolete three times and survived, the digital learning curve didn't frighten me. And I'd learned to bend that curve to my will, not the other way around.
Damned glad today I persevered. My maternal Gogebic Range roots played their long game to my advantage, credit where credit's due.
The intense saturation of digital capture took some getting used to. It makes Kodachrome in all its translucent glory look like wispy memory rather than vivid real life.
The crazy intense digital detail wasn't entirely dissimilar to shooting large format transparency film @ f64, only with limited depth of field.
Happily, the work's gone back to being natively backlit, so there's that.
Truth is, digital capture's not at all similar to film. It's an entirely new medium for an express new age laden with new expectations. Though some of those adhere to old structures regardless, old habits die hard.
At least until the next shooter wielding singular vision and some later generation of magic wand comes along and shatters the old rules for good.
Again. And then again, to the very last.
What digital files lack in authenticity and nuance they make up for in raw, retrievable information piled incredibly high.
Memory not simply recorded, but creatively unleashed.
By the end I knew film's limitations so well that I'd probably never have even tried to capture this on it.
Yet all these years after film's death I waved my magic wand and voila, here it is:
Damned glad I wasn't truly done, back then. Or now.
Today it seems likely I'll stay a recorder of light and moment until the moment light itself plays out for me.
