Evanescent Images
the wind speaks to me:
sit on the rock beside the lake
it’s early in the morning
the fog hasn’t lifted yet
your work of making pictures of birds
is finished for today
you were up there with them
flying as one of them
you felt it
you were part of it
transcendent
you lived in my embrace
outside of yourself
you can’t think of any reason
to go back to the earth
the birds were my hopes
my visions of beauty, my ideals
I captured images of evanescent angels
whose flight trails were rainbows
then as suddenly as the sound of their wings
I lost them
I can’t find them any more
I don’t try any more
the wind knows
the wind commands me
how you long to keep the rapture!
there is only one way
you must do this:
touch the very still water
early in the morning
when the lake is misty and wondrous
when the air is cool and sweet
touch the water
leave your body here
fall back thousands of years to simplicity
leave it and fall back
touch the water so gently
stir it slowly
fall into simplicity
fall, and as you do
watch a woman’s face take form in the ripples
her face is luminous, it is real
she calls to you
she wants you to come back to her
thousands of years ago
when you were both innocent
when the air was clean and sweet smelling
listen to her
she wants you to return to her time
go to her now
touch the water
touch her image
move closer to it
don’t be afraid
fall back
touch it
enter it
BECOME
“The world is continually proclaiming these words: Beware, I am evanescent, and so are all my outward appearances and colours. Take ye heed of the changes and chances contrived within me and be ye roused from your slumber. Nevertheless there is no discerning eye to see, nor is there a hearing ear to hearken.” — Bahá’u’lláh
This poem is important to me because it explains my image making process which is essentially a transcendental feeling. Read more at my website.
Tags: Artist, Baha'i, Baha'i Faith, Birds, Enoch, Light, Poetry, ReligionRelated posts
240 New Pictures to Look At
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The writings and teachings of the Baha’i faith motivate and inspire my photography. I am a Baha’i. My faith gives meaning to my life and infuses it with beauty and inspiration. Even when I was a child, I wanted to grow up to be an artist but later on failed to pursue my ambition. During a brief period that lived in Chicago, I visited the Baha’i House of Worship in Wilmette many times. I bought my first camera to take pictures of it. |
Some of my images of the temple in Wilmette offer unique views from upper balconies where tourists seldom go and the very top on the outside of the building where almost nobody is ever allowed to go.
| I have replaced all but two of the images that were on my website and added more than 80 new images that I haven’t exhibited before. The replacements are the result of rescanning and post processing about half of my photo library of 500 images. These are the majority of the images that survived a disastrous flood and that I chose to save. |  |
This article is a continuation of the four-part series that began with Through a Scanner Brightly.
The Gallery Catalog page asks a question taken from the movie Finding Neverland and poses an answer that I hope will resonate with you.
Did you like it?
It was magical.
Thank you.
Related posts
Streams of Divine Wisdom
A meditation on the symbolism of water in the Bahá’í sacred writings — variously expressed as “streams,” “living waters,” and “wellsprings.”
Thus will all peoples witness the power of the Most Great Name, and every nation acknowledge the might of the Ancient Beauty, and see how He hath toppled down the walls of discord, and how surely He hath guided all the peoples of the earth to oneness; how He hath lit man’s world, and made this earth of dust to send forth streams of light.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 21
O God, my God! This is thy radiant servant, Thy spiritual thrall, who hath drawn nigh unto Thee and approached Thy presence. He hath turned his face unto Thine, acknowledging Thy oneness, confessing Thy singleness, and he hath called out in Thy name among the nations, and led the people to the streaming waters of Thy mercy, O Thou Most generous Lord! To those who asked He hath given to drink from the cup of guidance that brimmeth over with the wine of Thy measureless grace.
O Lord, assist him under all conditions, cause him to learn Thy well-guarded mysteries, and shower down upon him Thy hidden pearls. Make of him a banner rippling from castle summits in the winds of Thy heavenly aid, make of him a wellspring of crystal waters.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, p. 43
As to the Holy Manifestations of God, They are the focal points where the signs, tokens and perfections of that sacred, pre-existent Reality appear in all their splendour. They are an eternal grace, a heavenly glory, and on Them dependeth the everlasting life of humankind. To illustrate: the Sun of Truth dwelleth in a sky to which no soul hath any access, and which no mind can reach, and He is far beyond the comprehension of all creatures. Yet the Holy Manifestations of God are even as a looking-glass, burnished and without stain, which gathereth streams of light out of that Sun, and then scattereth the glory over the rest of creation. In that polished surface, the Sun with all Its majesty standeth clearly revealed. Thus, should the mirrored Sun proclaim, ‘I am the Sun!’ this is but truth; and should It cry, ‘I am not the Sun!’ this is the truth as well. And although the Day-Star, with all Its glory, Its beauty, Its perfections, be clearly visible in that mirror without stain, still It hath not come down from Its own lofty station in the realms above, It hath not made Its way into the mirror; rather doth It continue to abide, as It will forever, in the supernal heights of Its own holiness.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, p. 50
We have made each one of Our Names a wellspring from which We have caused the streams of divine wisdom and understanding to gush forth and flow in the garden of Our Cause — streams whose number none can reckon save Thy Lord, the Most Holy, the Omnipotent, the Omniscient, the All-Wise.
Bahá’u’lláh, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts
Download a brief compilation from the Bahá’í sacred writings on the symbolism of Streams, Living Waters, and Wellsprings (16 pages in PDF format).
The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart. ~ Robert Schumann
Tags: Artist, Baha'i, meditation, Religion, Sacred Text, ScriptureRelated posts
My Perception of Color
Except for most of the portraits, the pictures of Akka and other specifically Bahá’í-themed images almost all the images on my website are ‘false color.’ In all but half a dozen cases I created those images in camera using conventional film emulsions. To a limited degree and in a sufficiently detached or partially dissociated state, those were the colors that I really saw. I used multiple optical filters and push-processing to force film to show what I saw in strongly trans-illuminated scenes of nature. My slide copier consisted of an old Nikon F2 body, a Nikon tilt-shift bellows and a 55mm Macro lens. A dichroic color enlarger head provided a very flexible and adjustable light source. I had little need to use any other filters. Nowadays it’s very difficult and expensive to obtain slide duplicating film and even more difficult to process it yourself. You have to buy enormous quantities of film and chemicals which isn’t practical unless you’re running a film lab.
Once I began to do digital film scanning and use Photoshop I was able to re-imagine colors more easily. A consequence was that I totally lost some ability to ever see nature that way again in reality. You could say that technology gave me something wonderful but it also took away something even more wonderful. Last week on an email list someone speculated that it’s possible I’ll grow in perception and will integrate technology and free form analog photography into something harmonious. I feel that will become absolutely necessary because consumer film is essentially obsolete. In my effort for integration I’ve spent a lot of time the past few months re-imagining some of my older images. I upgraded to better image processing tools and learned how to eliminate digital noise, scanning artifacts, and grain from my film scans. By doing that I was able to make color gradations smoother and was more satisfied that the images conveyed what I really saw. It’s more accurate to say I conveyed the colors that I felt.
Everything in my Web galleries is scanned directly from film at very high resolutions which creates files up to 350 MB in size. . The sad part is –as an artist, I mean– is that I have to reduce them by a factor greater than 10,000:1 for display on the Web. Compared to the real image, it’s like showing my work to people across the street …behind a window …in the rain!
This is an example of a throwaway image that I recreated in the slide copier. The original shot had little point of interest and the composition was haphazard because it contained distracting elements.
By manipulating the image and exposing it three times I created this image.
This is an example of a heavily filtered image that I made in camera. I wasn’t pleased with the image’s colors – yet.
I reprocessed it in Photoshop with Kodak’s Restoration of Color (ROC) plug-in. The ROC plug-in can’t reconstruct real life colors from a false color heavily filtered photograph. After the first pass I used a pen tablet and digital brushes to create the final image. I call it Near the Edge of the Kingdom.
The final example is a “real image” which again was uninteresting but had potential.
This is one of three variants that I made of the image. It has what I call emotional color. The other variants have similar colors but more subtle contrast. Images are often more interesting when the light source is near the upper left so this one was rotated horizontally.
I cropped and used the central portion of this image including the prismatic burst rotated 30 degrees on the birth announcement for one of my children with this quote: “Every bestowal emanates from Thee; every benediction is Thine. Thou art mighty. Thou art powerful. Thou art the Giver, and Thou art the Ever-Bounteous.” — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Baha’i Prayers)
The proper artistic response to digital technology is to embrace it as a new window on everything that’s eternally human, and to use it with passion, wisdom, fearlessness and joy. – Ralph Lombreglia, in Atlantic Unbound Tags: Artist, Baha'i, bird photography, digital technology, image processing, image processing tools, Kodak, Nikon
