{i suspect this may become another extremely irregular series because i do so love mark rothko’s paintings.}

“Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.”

– Amy Lowell

the world will be a marvelous place when we all feel free to be our own stunning, radiant, sparkling selves. or even when we all believe that we are stunning, radiant, sparkling selves.

(easier said than done, of course, but i do believe this to be true.)

{my attempt to capture 52 photos that represent trust – my word for 2011}.

i
look around
all around
up, down, sideways

waiting
hoping
that someone
anyone
(but not just anyone)
(only the right someone)
will tell me
what to do
(what to think, how to feel, who to be)

when i know
of course i know
i always know
the answer

the answers are there
hiding
(not hiding at all)
waiting
hoping
sitting in the silence

i hear them
of course i hear them
i have always heard them

my work
(the work of a lifetime)
is in finding the courage
to follow them

when i am completely grounded in myself and in my truth, i am never alone.

i believe in something bigger than all of us. the name i use depends on the day.

i believe in angels. i say thank you to them every night and sometimes i ask them for a sign to let me know they're near.

i believe in faeries. i build them summer cottages in the woods and ask them to keep the wasps away from atlas.

i believe that trees have spirits. (well, i believe that everything has a spirit.) once, when i said hello to a tree, i heard it say hello back in a deep, kind voice. it was so amazing that it brought me to tears.

i tell the trees and the flowers and the weeds how beautiful they are.

i say hello to the squirrels and the bees and the blue jays that stop by my window.

i talk to spiders and ladybugs and butterflies and dragonflies.

once, i even called a slug "sweetie", as in, "sweetie, you are the most gigantic slug in all the world!" (it came out unconsciously, which made me think that i use the term a bit too often.)

i am finding my way to my own truth.

the point is not to try to convince you that angels or faeries exist or that trees talk. i feel very strongly that we all have our own truth and i have no wish to try to convince anyone out of their truth and into mine.

the point is not even that angels or faeries exist or that trees talk. it's entirely possible that they don't.

the point is that i want to choose what to believe in.

i choose to believe in these things because the me who believes in them is different than the me who doesn't believe in them.

the me who believes in faeries and angels and talking trees is open to magic and mystery and possibility and wonder. she lives in a world where anything is possible and where things can happen in the blink of an eye. she remembers the inherent value in everyone and everything. she sees the goodness in everyone around her. she makes choices that are based on hope and faith. she makes choices that are based on the kind of world she wants to live in – a world full of peace and joy and kindness and love.

living in that world is important to me. the things i choose to believe remind me of that world. they help me to access the wiser part of me, the part of me who can rise above my fears and make those choices.

this isn't to say that i am always the me who believes in angels and faeries and talking trees; however, even in my most doubtful moments, i believe in the possibility of all of them.

i’ve fumbled through a few attempts to explain how i take my nearsighted photos via email so i decided it was time to fumble through an explanation on my blog. i will apologize in advance for the fuzziness of the explanation. (though perhaps fuzzy photos deserve a fuzzy explanation.)

for starters:

i use my 50mm lens and set the focus as close as possible.

i put the camera in aperture mode and open the lens as wide as possible (mine goes to f/1.8).

the fuzziness (of the explanation) comes in because i find it hard to break what i am doing down into steps that you can follow. this is mostly because what i am really doing is playing, but i’ve been playing for long enough now that i have a pretty good idea of what will work and how to get the results i want.

here are the general rules i follow:

i don’t look through the lens to take the photos. i insert the camera into the scene and snap and occasionally glance at the photos to make sure the background is close to how i envisioned. i don’t look through the lens because it gives me a lot more freedom to play with angles and motion and it’s easier to shoot up into scenes. (plus, it saves me from having to spend a lot of time lying on the very wet and muddy ground in potentially awkward places while attached to a very large and strong dog who does not stand still. you may not have these problems.)

i put the camera too close to the subject(s) so that if anything is in focus, it is not where you’d expect it to be.

i tend to point the camera up through the scene toward the sky. if it is sunny, i either shoot directly into the sun or have the sun just off to the side of the lens. pointing the camera up through the scene toward a colored wall or a car or an umbrella is also fun. if that doesn’t work, i point the camera into the scene.

i will occasionally move the camera at the same time i take the photo (usually a little bit to the right or left).

so far, this seems to work best with things like flowers and grasses and weeds and blossoms and berries.

ok, does this make any sense at all or did i totally confuse you?