Inspiration in Black and White

One of the things I love most about my parent's house is the fact that the next door neighbours have these beautiful trees lining the fence between our backyard and their's. Granted, the crab apples falling all over our driveway gets kind of annoying, but otherwise I love them. In the winter they are covered with frost, in the spring they get beautiful flowers on them (one is white, one is light pink, and one is dark pink), in the summer they are leafy and lovely, and in the fall they have lovely leaves. Anyway, I took this picture of them just as the sun was setting one day near the end of autumn a couple years ago. I love it so much. Light fascinates me and so I enjoy trying to capture it and its effects on film.

In his "Biographia Literaria", Samuel Taylor Coleridge explains that "the sudden Charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moon-light or sun-set diffused over a known and familiar landscape...are the poetry of nature." For him nature produces its own sort of poetry and his task as a poet is to capture this crystaline moments and put them into words. Well, I too think that this is the poetry of nature, I just prefer to try to capture it in photos.

Ever have one of those days where you feel profoundly artsy? How about one of those days where you finally feel validated in something you've been working at for a long time? Or where you finally feel like you are making progress in something? That was today for me. First, I had a good friend tell me that she loves my blog. Which was pretty awesome, since I never really know if anyone is going to read these things when I start them. So, a profound and heartfelt thank you to those of you who do read this. I am really enjoying it. I love the opportunity to share my photos with you guys. I also love getting feedback, so feel free to comment on stuff, whether positive or negative (constructively so, of course). Second, I got back this assignment for school today for which I had to write three poems. It's just a pass/fail grade so I wasn't too worried about it, but the comments on the poems were so encouraging. I almost never share my poetry or songs with people because they somehow feel too personal, like I'm letting someone read my diary, so to finally put a few of my babies out there and have them well recieved (both in my poetry and photography) was incredibly encouraging. I have been forming this idea of who I want to be in my head and things are finally starting to fall into place for it to come true. Sorry about the novel-esque length of today's post and the effusions about how well things are going, but I can't seem to keep from gushing about it.