Between Heaven + Earth: Carolyn Russell

Photography teaches me to be in the moment. One of the things I always liked to remind my students when I taught photography was the idea of luck in photography. It is a component that you often need that not a lot of photographers talk about. In practically all my best images over 45 years there has been that element of luck that feels more like a gift or blessing. Sometimes over the years I have tried to recreate an image and make it better than the first one and that has never been able to be achieved. There is always the option of photoshop to make images “better” but that’s a completely different thing and definitely not what I am talking about. This phenomenon of never really being able to replicate an image goes hand in hand with the luck component and the idea of the blessing and gift of an image.

This image is of my granddaughter on her 4th birthday. The picture of my granddaughter was not planned at all. I looked down from the back deck and saw her catching the big blue ball. I was able to get the image recorded the nano second before that beautiful big blue ball reached her hands.

What a powerful metaphor of receiving and experiencing life! What a blessing it is for the humans of any age that can have their arms and hands open to receive the “big blue ball of life” coming their way!

THE  FOURTH SIGN OF THE ZODIAC (PART 3)

MARY OLIVER

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same. 
So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.

Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.