Morning Woods

Morning Woods

I notice a plug for the Roadside Bloomery project over on John Nack on Adobe blog (some nice gallery links, click around there, but come back!) So in the event that perhaps some real photographers might follow John’s link this way today, I’d best get up an image to look at. Larger image link

I would like more shots like this one from the edge of our pasture one morning last week; I’ll have the tripod along next time and maybe try some HDR versions just for fun.

So I keep watching for another day like the one on which this shot was taken, but you know, we don’t get carbon copies of time. No two days are the same if you attend the nuances of light–one reason I love the way photography changes one’s awareness: it can keep you from taking any visual moment for granted. Heck, I’ll just quote myself (from Slow Road Home):

I know this from my photographer’s experience: any image I take is one of a kind. Each composition in light or in words is unique. The light will never be that color from that angle on that exact configuration of barn, tree or wildflower ever again.

And this: that we too often take for granted the extraordinary senses of vision and hearing, touch and smell that are our gifts–-opportunities given us by which we could know the familiar beauties too often missed or dismissed in our hurried lives.

We have so little time in the present and there is so very much to take in and share. There are wonders all around. From our everyday lives, these familiar things may seem unremarkable to us. But in these precious instants in time, if we keep our eyes open and our hearts ready to know it, there is nothing ordinary.

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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