Mental Seeds

Part of the commercial flower shoot for Sakata at the California Spring Trials were sunflowers, the variety ‘Vincent’.  To get them for spring in California they were flown in from Holland, where they waited for two weeks until the show, for when I was on site to take pictures. No, they did not look

I was recently commissioned to photograph a very special magnolia in a very special, private garden.  The resulting photo was to be a surprise gift and I was only allowed access during one afternoon when the owner was away. I wrote about this adventure on my Gardening Gone Wild blog but did not go i

My Mental Seeds blog is a promise to myself.  A promise of personal work.  A promise to find new ways to express what I see.  Even in images I imagined before my eyesight changed. This image has been gnawing on me for years now, waiting to be revealed.  Taken from a group of photos I [...]

I promised myself I would complete a portfolio of images documenting my perceptions after the detached retina.  There were a good number attempts to do this with my G11 camera in the first months after the surgery.  I never got around to working on very many of them. These photos are the weeping cra

Blackwater Pond in the Cape Cod National Seashore, seen here at dusk last October, is rendered using computer manipulation of the digital file.  There was a time, and I can define that time more precisely: before my vision was altered with the series of retina operations, when I would seldom use obv

I am baffled by what I sometimes see. I will slap my face looking at a scene and wonder why am I not seeing what I expect to see.  The Tupelo tree (Nyssa sylvatica) in my front yard commands attention when it comes into fall color, and I expect to be amazed every year.  I [...]

Sometimes the less said about the creative process, the better.  Sometimes I just want to do my work and move on. If you like this computer altered photo of dawn at the beach in North Truro during my recent trip to Cape Cod, I will be most pleased if you stop reading now. Here is [...]

Drifting through Beth’s garden in the quiet still morning I was unsure whether I would take any pictures.  I just wanted some time to appreciate her marvelous Oregon garden so full of choice plants and foliage textures.  Before you take a decent picture you have to see it; and I am unsure of my visi

What the heck is this ? I am not sure I even want to explain.  Ask the eminent photographer David Perry.  We are trading gifts and challenges.  I brought him some colorful Witch Hazel leaves last fall and he hung them on a clothesline.  Mr. Perry’s post. He had wonderful color to work with, many [..

I don’t know where the blurriness of my left eye has led me.  Did I “see” these blurry water reflections, or did I just get lucky ? Standing by the edge of this pond in Mettawa, Illinois late in the afternoon of a long day of shooting, I felt an unwelcome wind pick up and [...]