#seeingbeyondseeing

This is a backyard phone photo of one of my favorite subjects in spring. We have this gorgeous dogwood tree and I just had to share these beautiful blossoms with you in hopes of  lightening the emotional tone that drones on and drains our emotional energy these days. There's much to be thankful for if we choose to seek it out.    

Here we are in May with spring springing all around us, birds are singing and the sounds of social distancing are deafening. Talk about a downer in a normally cheerful and upbeat season of renewal and rebirth!    

Agendas and manipulations abound and continue to sprout forth like weeds in a world of April's tearfully watered fields. As the wildflowers grow, fertilized with glee by those who profit from the fears of a future uncertainty, We are left to wait, watch, and shelter dutifully. We socially distance with only the fertilizer   we are fed to determine the direction in which we will grow.

I may be a simple artist, writer and teacher but fading away quietly while someone plucks my petals and burns my roots with chicken manure isn't my style. It's how we each choose to react to the things we're fed, and those we allow to feed us, that determine whether this field of flowers we call home will continue to blossom freely or simply fade away.    

The art of Seeing beyond seeing. It's more than meets the eye. It's what we experience & share with others using tools like introspection, insight, and imagination. Together let's broaden & deepen our creative skills & practices in  business & life. 

Here's an image that originally began its life as a 35mm transparency in the 1980's. It was digitized in the 1990's, and  transformed   yesterday, by the use of modern software programs, into an image with full extended tonality Ala the Zone System.

If you're not familiar with the Zone System of previsualizing the final outcome of an image's tonality, it was made popular in the 1940's through the black and white large format work of  Ansel Adams. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

I hope you find this little informational tidbit helpful and that      you enjoy the photo as much as I enjoyed creating it and then recreating it for you. I do teach and mentor, groups or individuals      on the subject of photography so if you live in, or near, my area please feel free to connect with      me if you are interested in some instruction. I'm also available for remote teaching via email, phone and Skype.    

The image I'm sharing with you is a little tongue in cheek. Yes, it's my shadow as I wander with seeming aimlessness around my yard searching for something worthy of documenting with my iPhone camera. I was going to name it 'Splendor in The Grass' but that just garnered a significant eye roll from my wife so I went with title B instead. For some reason she said she felt it was more appropriate. It does sort of have that Film Noir, Bela Lugosi, air about it. Mysterious claw hand and all.

Actually there is a point to this seeming aimless rambling thought I'm sharing with you and it's this; Creative imagination is a use it or lose it proposition. The less you allow yourself to simply wander and create in a fluid and organic manner the less you will find yourself able or willing to do so.

Creatives are by nature a shady lot when compared to those who spend most of their  time hunkered down in the left hemisphere of their brain. This isn't an indictment, or an excuse, simply a fact that often bugs the hell out of those who don't understand the power the need to create exerts on those of us in our right mind. Now before you get your hackles up I'm referring to the left logical, right radical, thinking functions of the left and right hemispheres of the human brain.

This may seem a little convoluted or reversed to you, but politics aside, it makes sense to psychologists, neuroscientists, and artists who follow this sort of stuff. In short, if you want to find your Smile, give yourself a creative break now and then and just wander a bit. Just don't spend too much time in the sun or you might end up in front of a computer writing stuff like this.

You are welcome to support my passion and vision for helping people             find their Smile, If you're so inclined, by simply visiting my Fine Art America website where many of the images that accompany these articles can be found. Browse a bit and perhaps make a purchase if you like what you see:        www.michael-d-davis.pixels.com    

   ©2019 Michael D. Davis All Rights Reserved

Life is full of beautiful grandiose gestures if we keep our awareness tuned to such things. It's much too easy to get caught up in the movement and perceived and real pain of  daily living and then miss out on experiencing the truly magnificent as it unfolds before us.

Take this image for instance. Created with the simplest of tools, a phone camera, it was a painting made by nature in the heavens and a sight to behold for the having, simply by the act of looking upward and becoming aware of what was happening. It was the simplest of things but pure joy to the heart and soul to witness at one day's end.

Life is often like this. We find ourselves unprepared for the natural beauty and joy we are given as a gift for simply being alive, aware, conscious and breathing. We often ignore these things that give us respite in a world seemingly gone mad with strife, desperation, confusion and irritation. It can all be wiped away in an instant if we let our senses take in the whole picture and not simply dwell on what we are told is most important. We do well to Look up from the ground occasionally and contemplate the heavens. To truly live we must allow ourselves the privilege to do so. It's our choice. We simply need to remember to allow into our hearts and souls the simplest of things.

All around us we find patterns. They can be found In nature, in art, and in ourselves. Some are comforting and visually or audibly appealing, like the heartbeat of life itself. The symmetry of a plant, the rising of the sun each day, a line of geese winging their way to new possibilities are all patterns we marvel at and admire.

There are other patterns which aren't so admirable or comforting. The way we may preconceive, out of habit, the outcome of a certain situation or how we act and react to certain people and relationships in our lives. Ways we approach situations because that's the way it's always been done can lock us into a pattern of poor choices or a limiting mindset.

It's time for a new day and a new pattern. Often when we break out of a negative pattern, habit or way of thinking, we find ourselves on the edge of positive growth. Like those plants that we admire for their beautiful pattern we too can grow into our own being and bring the world the light and pattern of  positive change.

In the style of photographers like Robert Doisneau and Henri Cartier-Bresson this image portrays two people, lost in their own thoughts, while the world moves in, around and  through them. It was not staged or posed. It is real life as observed.

What are they thinking? Are they sad or happy, in love or comforting one another in sorrow? One caught moment in time. One instant captured and shared whose purpose is to captive you in your own thoughts.

I share this image, as visual art, and as catalyst for connection. What feelings rise to the surface as you contemplate this shared moment? Does it move you in some inexplicable way?

Art it is like a doorway to understanding life and our selves on a different level. We can open it if we so choose and become lost in whatever meaning we may find there. The experience, good or bad, cannot help but change us in some way.

(A series of artistic visual transformations created from a single digital image file)

Let’s back off the brilliance a bit and go more pensive in a painterly way. Is “painterly” even a word? My spell checker has its doubts, but I’m going to use the term anyway. If it wasn’t a word before it sure the heck is now!