Reduced to Light
when a moment is more than what you see
Warmth is warmer when its walls press up against cold that is just right there. Warmth is a golden glow, a dancing flame, embers racing heavenward, and a hypnotizing crackle, sound translated directly into temperature.
Just right there the evergreen forest is deep, the chill is deep, the throaty calls of owls are soul-deep.
This is Campfire Light. It is all the comfort and energy and nostalgia of a campfire, reduced to a few layered orbs of light.
There is something to be said for a sharp photo, for a technically correct likeness that allows you to drink in all the delicious beauty of some wonder of nature. All vibrant color, crisp detail, reminding you that life is intensely intricate, a marvel of complexity and precision and exquisite structure. Your eyes see all that, and the closer you look, the more you can always see!
And yet, there is much about what we see that is beyond what we actually see, outside of what we actually see. There are entire spectrums of light that we don’t see at all. There are energies and resonances and simple qualities of life that are perhaps best represented in ways that are vastly different from what a technical image would capture.
This crashing wave was beautiful in person. But when I thought about the feeling of standing in those crashing waves on a sunny summer day at Acadia National Park, I found that there were also aspects of the crashing wave that were better represented when I dialed the color all the way down - or all the way up! Crashing waves are mesmerizing, drawing you in, progressively shedding everything around you until your world is nothing more than a sparkle of spray. Crashing waves are summertime energy, filling the whole world to overflowing with vibrance, as color and sound endlessly pile one atop another. One image is more visually accurate - but the other two might be more emotionally accurate!
Or consider the way that astrophotographers capture the night sky or images of the universe. Much of what is visible in these images doesn’t actually exist in front of our physical eyes. A lot is revealed by long-exposure or becomes visible after different energy spectrums are layered in using different colors. These techniques are not accurate according to what our eyes can see, and yet we intrinsically understand that this is a more fundamentally truthful representation of that celestial object.
And so I think it’s only natural that, over time and with observation, we begin to expand our definition of “seeing.” Some of my favorite nature moments occur in the abstract, as I wander about thinking to myself, what would happen if I took this moment in nature and reduced it down to just light?
Summer light is a dancing wildflower field, droplets of sunshine mixing with warm breezes dappling shade from the forest edge.
Autumn light is stained glass, each pane its own life story, lit together to form a celebration of all that life has been, and will be again.
And winter light…A light so bright and pure that it has shrugged off the weight of warmth. All blue shadows and impossible rainbow sparkles. I searched for winter light first on the snow, where it is always dancing…
And then I stumbled across it in an icicle forest.
In any given image, there’s always this moment of connection that I’m experiencing, that I’m hoping to stuff into pixels and translate to you :) I often do that through drawing very near, portrait style, letting beautiful detail or vibrant color or a bright eye do the work of connecting…But sometimes, connection is softer, maybe a bit obscure, actually stronger for being intangible. Sometimes, we can get to know our world better by approaching a moment with open curiosity and reducing it to light.
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Beauty is everywhere isn’t it, Sydney? even when the lens is thrown out of focus. I love what you’re seeing here. Somehow, it boils down to the essentials: light and color. Thank you for sharing!
I found my way here via your images of frost. My vision has shifted through the medium of water to a place where the feel of an image determines its look, and to something that more closely resembles my uncorrected vision. So you are very much speaking a language I relate to.