Iris Undressing

May 08, 2008

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Iris Undressing ~ Canon 30d

After a client meeting in Northeast DC yesterday afternoon, I took advantage of my close proximity to the Franciscan Monastery and the incredible weather to capture some images of the flowers. With statues of St. Francis and a mosaic of the Virgin of Guadeloupe looking on, I carried on conversations with iris in various stages of dress, undress, and blossom. No one has to explain to me the reasons why St. Francis spoke to the flowers ~ they're always the ones initiating the conversations.

Posted by vincent at 02:32 PM | Please share your heart's comments (4)

Port-o-Cherry

May 06, 2008

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Port-o-Cherry ~ Canon 30d

It's been awhile since I've posted due to a very dear friend's sudden and serious illness which happened alongside some minor surgery I had scheduled last week. It's been a week or so filled with pain, fear, healing, and the beauty of friendship and active compassion in my life. My sweet friends here in DC have been so supportive and endearing in the midst of sadness and not knowing what to expect as the weeks and months go by for someone I love. I know life is like this – beauty and mess mingled together. I also know it's the mess that allows us to appreciate the beauty, especially when we find them so close together.

I haven't had the energy or time or even the inspiration to post up here until I looked at this image a second time. It's perfect for what I've been going through. A spot-on description of my inner weather system filled with inspirational blossoms alongside quite a bit of... well... shit. If you happen to be in a similar place, just remember shit is incredible fertilizer, and the deeper you think you're in it, the bigger the opportunity you have to GROW.

Please pray for my friend, who will have his kidney removed sometime
in the coming weeks.

Posted by vincent at 07:49 PM | Please share your heart's comments (10)

Across the Channel

April 28, 2008

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Hains Fog ~ Canon 30d

The images I've posted thus far from my foggy waltz with the cherry blossoms were taken during the latter half of my journey. The entire morning felt as though I was walking through someone else's dream sequence, especially during the earliest and thickest fog while driving the perimeter of Hains Point, stopping my car every mile or so to take a new sequence of pictures. My companions, an occasional lone cyclist and a handful of fishermen, mysteriously appeared ghostlike from the fog only to sink back into the vaporous sea above land moments later.

The image above is the first I would take on this storybook morning. At first, I was at odds with the task of focusing. Autofocus should be abandoned in conditions like this. The photographer is better off feeling her way into the correct plane of focus when her primary subject isn't the landscape, the Queen of the composition here is fog.

Who would have thought the Washington Channel and the Fort McNair golf course lying just beyond the distant trees could look so un-Washingtonian? As a child, my parents would drag me out to that golf course practically every weekend, where I'd initially whine and complain - golfing immediately sank to the bottom of my Personal Passion List - followed by a desire to out-do the rest of the family with my knack for putting. There is no telling how many miles I walked in circles way across the brackish water – too many to count – but one thing I knew for sure, not one of my previous footsteps had any resemblance to this moment. I half-expected my former self to materialize out of the fog, putter in hand, and ask me to skip with her across the water. We'd sit atop the old black cannon firmly planted in the middle of the golf course – the one my brother made a freakish Hole-in-One on after his ball bounced off the cannon and smack into the cup – and consider the many tragedies and miracles that have and will make up a lifetime. Then, looking into our future together as two parts creating a whole, we'd wonder out loud about everything and anything, finally finding ourselves home in the knowing conclusion that being gone, gone, gone far across the channel to the other side of the shore, leaving the past behind and finding the light of all beings inside of this vulnerable artist's heart is more than the two of us could ever ask for.

The Heart Suttra

Gaté, Gaté, Paragate, Para Sam gaté Bodhi svaha

Gaté, Gaté, Paragate, Para Sam gaté Bodhi svaha

Gaté, Gaté, Paragate, Para Sam gaté Bodhisvaha.

Bodhi Svaha


english:

Gone, Gone, Gone beyond Gone utterly beyond

Gone, Gone, Gone beyond Gone utterly beyond

Gone, gone, gone all the way over,

Oh what an Awakening on the shore of enlightenment!


(This Heart Suttra is on the cd, Grace and Gratitude which I wrote about a couple months ago.)

Posted by vincent at 11:40 AM | Please share your heart's comments (3)

Enchanted April

April 27, 2008

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Enchanted Trees ~ Canon 30d

All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colours of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.

She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light. Lovely scents came up to the window and caressed her. A tiny breeze gently lifted her hair. Far out in the bay a cluster of almost motionless fishing boats hovered like a flock of white birds on the tranquil sea. How beautiful, how beautiful. Not to have died before this... to have been allowed to see, breathe, feel this... She stared, her lips parted. Happy? Poor, ordinary, everyday word. But what could one say, how could one describe it? It was as though she could hardly stay inside herself, it was as though she were too small to hold so much joy, it was as though she were washed through with light.

~ Elizabeth von Arnim, Enchanted April


I may not live in Elizabeth von Armin's world, but mine is nonetheless miraculous. Our capacity for beauty knows no limits when we train the heart and eye to find it everywhere.

Posted by vincent at 08:33 AM | Please share your heart's comments (4)

Peking Duck

April 26, 2008

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Karma ~ Canon 30d

Just as I was about to take a picture of this blossom-laden branch, a male mallard duck suddenly came flying in for a cacophonous landing, marked by much quacking, splashing and disruption of water. Luckily, I had the camera set on high exposure mode (or whatever the official term is) and took about 5 images in rapid sequence as the karmic effect of his landing rippled out across the water. My feathered friend is obscured, but he's in there, just behind the blossoms.

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Mallard 1 ~ Canon 30d

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Mallard 2 ~ Canon 30d

Posted by vincent at 07:36 AM | Please share your heart's comments (2)

Cherry Fog

April 24, 2008

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Cherry Fog ~ Canon 30d

This could be my favortie shot of the season! Shot on Hains Point in Washington.

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Spring at Wu-Ling

April 23, 2008

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Water Color ~ Canon 30d

The wind subsides—a fragrance
of petals freshly fallen;
it's late in the day—I'm too tired
to comb my hair.
Things remain but he is gone
and with him everything.
On the verge of words: tears flow.

I hear at Twin Creek spring it's still lovely;
how I long to float there on a small boat—
But I fear at Twin Creek my frail grasshopper boat

could not carry this load of grief.


~ Li Ch'ing-chao (1084?–1151)translated by Eugene Eoyang

Posted by vincent at 08:39 AM | Please share your heart's comments (3)