I am obsessed with light. It started in college when I took an art appreciation class and learned about the Impressionist movement. The idea that a painter could paint not an object or scene, but rather the reflections of light, created a whole new way of seeing. Static objects within the landscape became dynamic as my awareness of sun-shifted shadows and highlights intensified their textures and colors. Sunlight unlocks the door to an infinitely more beautiful world.
Around this same time period I began pursuing photography as a hobby, learning to consider light as I composed my shots. I’m not a very technical photographer, partly because I don’t have the patience to learn about and practice the exacting art of manual focus and light control, but digital photography has allowed me to experiment and develop my creativity. To compensate for the restrictions of a point and shoot camera, I began playing with sunlight by filtering or blocking it with objects in the shot to control any resulting lense flares. I remember the first time I raised my camera up to the petals of a back-lit flower to take an extreme close-up while on a hike in the Tetons. The resulting photo gave me a miraculous new appreciation for the natural world.
As we meet our own needs for hunger and thirst throughout the day, it’s easy to forget that the plants and trees around us are constantly taking in nourishment as well. We gardeners know it more than most, especially out west, but even then how often do we really take the time to appreciate the systems that give life to the plant? I’m not a biologist by training, so it took me completely by surprise that night when I got home from hiking and looked at my photo on the computer. The sunlight had highlighted an intricate tracing of veins across the surface of that deep purple larkspur petal, and refracted to reveal a sparkling translucence that literally took my breath away. There are few things more beautiful in this world than a flower bathed in sunlight...
Ever since that day, I’ve been obsessed with documenting the delicate inner workings of leaves and flowers through my photographs. One of my favorite places to be is under a deciduous tree at midday when the sunlight is streaming down, illuminating the canopy of leaves above me. There is a quality to that vivid saturation of colorful light, which makes me feel intensely alive and keenly aware of the life pulsating around me. My body and the tree, we both absorb this invisible bombardment of photons and turn it into physical nourishment. We both move fluid through our veins as a means of surviving and thriving. We breathe in symbiotic partnership, each sustaining the other. In this moment I am reminded that it's not so much a matter of reconnecting with nature as it is simply removing the layers that insulate us from each other. The connection itself is impossible to sever...
This luminous way of seeing requires only a simple shift of perspective for wondrous details to instantly emerge. All you have to do is let your eyes be guided by the light...
