A colony of great egrets has discovered the marsh out behind our neighbor’s house. There’s usually at least one out there all day, and sometimes as many as twenty, two thirds of them juveniles. Initially skittish on approach, they seem to be OK now, particularly with a fence and brush and phragmites between us.
I don’t do much post-processing with my images, as I prefer to get the work done on the front end, and trust my camera’s ability to render a scene.
This shot, though, seemed to call out for significant cropping, as I felt the lawn leading up to the water diluted the drama of the scene. (I didn’t get closer in deference to the property owner.)
Though I wouldn’t consider the image below “much post-processing”, it is a significant crop from the original. I liked the cropped version initially, but now I’m back to the original composition, mostly for its greater sense of space, including that beautiful sky.
Sometimes the contrast between the enormity of this universe, and our lives here on earth, can seem so overwhelming that I have to throttle it back, and consider it only in dribs and drabs.
Around our house, we have an expression for these moments: “…this world…”. It’s a simple phrase but one usually articulated with a depth of feeling from places not normally accessed, expressing anything from deep disgust and despair to the warmest empathy and compassion, to wonder and gratitude.
Sometimes the tone is accusatory (HOW CAN/DOES THIS EXIST!!), sometimes prayerful (how can/does this exist, and, well, thank you !!), and sometimes just a witnessing.
Anne Lamott’s fine book, “Help, Thanks, Wow” explores these notions further, and, if you were to read only one book on prayer, it’s the one I would recommend.
This view, to the southeast, was simply a ninety degree turn from the northeastly direction on the previous image. That’s the mouth of the CT River (behind the trees), where it dumps into the LI Sound. The contrail in this shot is an extension of the one in the previous image.
Brings to mind that old Michael Hurley tune, Blue Navigator. And while you’re at it, check out Wildegeeses, which is perhaps the better soundtrack for this photo. The man was making “Americana” music long before it became known as such. Truly an American original, both a wonderful musician and visual artist (those are his paintings on his album covers); all in all, a real treasure.
Long ago, I shared a stage with him, at Tuner’s Bar in St. Albans VT. He had asked, very politely, if he could go up on one of our breaks. He proceeded to wrap a sheet around his body and a towel around his head, and went off into ten minutes of something or other – I got to wondering if we would ever get the stage back. I happened to be standing next to a woman at the bar who turned out to be his girlfriend; she had some tomatoes and said “You know, I was supposed to throw these at him, but I don’t think I can do it.”