Sight unseen

I hope everyone has a happy Halloween! (Or Samhain, or All Hallow's Eve, or whatever you celebrate!) I had hoped to post something a little more festive, but this was all I had (taken recently, at least).

It's the warty side of a squash. Look at the colors! =)

Okay, just because I like you guys so much...here's me in last year's costume. I was one of the Sybilline Sisters from Doctor Who's "The Fires of Pompeii" episode. (They're prophetic "witches".) I had a navy cloak instead of a red one, but I did have eyes on the backs of my hands to complete it. The prof of my Fairy and Folk Tales class thought it was great, though he didn't understand the exact reference.

These corners

I was going to post this last night, but I got tired and didn't want to wait for uploads and such. So, I'll make another post today to make up. ;)

This probably seems like an unusual image for me to be posting. Lately I've been a little shutter-happy, but there's not currently anything for me to take pictures of, so I've been shooting a bunch of random things around the house with my macro-fitted lensbaby, just trying to capture details of the house I've spent my whole life in. All the tiny patterns and light refractions and textures I've spent my life around, slowly absorbing them. You know when you look at something, and even though you knew it was always there, you somehow never quite saw it? That's sort of how it's been--a meditation of re-examining. How many of these tiny, meaningless details have shaped my consciousness, the way I view the world? It's fun to think about, and even more fun to explore with a camera.

Sword is the soul

© 2008 Rasmus Mogensen

The sword was to be far more than a simple weapon;
it had to be an answer to life's questions.
-Eji Yoshikawa

I don't know how many of my blogger readers know that I was a fencer. At soul, I still am. I started in high school, lucky enough to have an after-school club devoted to fencing. I learned modest foil, as do most people just starting out, and while I never had the best form or patience for every tilt, I had a passion for the length of steel fixed in my hand. And a fierce aggression for demonstrating it.

In college I learned that my university had a varsity fencing team. I had never considered myself a competitive fencer--my competitive nature was reserved for equestrian, but it did mean that I could fence. Again, I started out as a member of the foil team, a large group of crazy, generally high-cultured bunch of dorks (I say so very lovingly). Fencers are interesting people, if you haven't known any yourself. And how can they not be, when you get academics and intellectuals who love to hit each other with metal then squabble over right-of-way and whether or not that slip of footing cost you the touch. Even as the eccentric pagan who growled at people, I fit in very easily.

My first two tournaments went relatively well. My technique was still a bit loose and overly aggressive, but in that respect I won a few bouts simply because I was fast and easily intimidated my opponents. Then our sabre coach stole me and I found my rightful place, where speed and a mix of well-played aggression and tactics reigns. Where touches are won in a matter of seconds and a simple, ill-timed blink can cost you the whole bout.

© Adam Pretty (?)

I loved it--I still love it. I miss it terribly.

One of my last tournaments, held at Notre Dame where the fencing takes place in the same building as the hokey rink, did not exactly go well. It was a qualifying event for regionals (and nationals), which meant that it featured team as well as individual matches. I had a cold, aggravated by the rink next to us, and by my body's intense dislike of prednisone (I was on it by doctor's orders for my tendinitis and arthritis, which was slowly robbing me of all my favorite activities, let alone basic function such as holding a pen without pain). In result, my legs turned completely blue and numb. I worried my coaches and teammates, but refused to give up on the tournament. Especially because I was to bout against Olympic gold-medal fencer Mariel Zagunis.

I expected a bout lasting no longer than twenty seconds. Fifteen touches, because it was an individual match. I expected to look like a stuffed fencing dummy compared to her. (I did, really.) And yet, somehow, I got two touches against her. One was simple, I retreated from her advances, went to block to my inside, did it sloppily enough that, while successful, wobbled my whole blade enough to brush the sleeve of her lamé. I don't even remember the second one. Every move of hers was a flash. I lost, not exactly standing still, but still immensely overpowered by her skill. Still, it's awesome to be able to say that I fenced against her.


I took most of Junior year off simply for the sake of my wrist, only going to practices once in a while. Though every time I did I felt more and more frustrated. My hand hurt all the time. My footwork got sloppy because I could hardly concentrate on anything other than my grip. I could feel the disappointment from the coaches, echoed by every strained smile and every drill we repeated. I felt distant and alienated from my teammates, especially because nearly all my close teammates had already graduated. When the summer before my Senior year brought my riding accident, it also stole the hope I had had about getting back in shape to join the team again. I needed time to recover, not to test whether or not quitting the flute allowed my wrist to heal enough for my sabre.

The Way of the Sword and the Way of Zen are identical,
for they have the same purpose--that of killing the ego.
-Yamada Jirokichi

Moving on from my overly long life's story, I find the above quote to be completely true. Most athletes experience a "zone" effect, where the world around them loses focus and things just seem to click together. I experience that in riding. I experienced that during the best bouts of my short fencing career. Air and floor became energy, and I the electricity that moved between them, my feet drawn to exactly the right places and my blade moving as swiftly as my gaze. The mind and the body's breath and pulse removed from necessity. All actions fold together into a rhythm, a dance. You can read every possibility within a second and control which becomes reality. The successful fisherman is not adept at catching fish. The successful fisherman is a part of the river, a part of his line and hook, a part of the fish caught upon it. The successful fisherman is the fish; there is no difference between them. Likewise, the fencer is the blade and their movement. Energy. There is no difference between them.

Photo © 2008 Rasmus Mogensen

Clusters

VIII Bo

Falling away.
Unfavorable to have somewhere to go.

From my Hinge of the Way series. I know, you probably thought I'd never post another one, right? I wasn't happy with the quality of the other ones, so it took a while for me to get around to re-doing my digital copies. I set up a rather elaborate easel and tripod and curtain arrangement during a gray day, so as not to get any light reflecting off the photos while still getting them light enough to take pictures of. Not my favorite thing, taking photos of photographs...I'm much happier now, though, which is what matters. ;)

You'll also notice that I'm doing something a little different with this one. I've included the Decision lines for the gua this image is titled (randomly) after, provided by Huang's translation. (I really love working with the I Ching myself, and Huang's translation meshes really well with me.) See what you make of the two together.

Movement of Souls

My second acrylic painting. Sadly it doesn't photograph very well--the background is a layered color wash and looks much more vibrant in person, with navies, greens, oranges, and a little bit of purple and red. The only thing I can get to show well in a digital version is the green, the navy looks black, but you can see the brush strokes for the most part. The grays also take on a green tint, which is not the case on the physical canvas. Oh well, I try.

It took me a long time to prep, mostly because I'm such a perfectionist that I had to do a full-size sketch of the horse and rider separately before I even started on canvas. My poor painting prof gave me grief for it, but he understood I'm too stubborn to persuade to "just go for it." (He finally got me to work on letting go when we were doing our oil paintings.)

For this piece I wanted to convey the transcending feeling I experience when Toler and I "click," when everything just fits together naturally and we lose the sense of reality around us. I associate that feeling most as the goal of dressage. So I decided to represent it by a dressage movement, abstracting the forms so they become flame-like, or at least disentangled from true physical weight.

It's a lonely night

Autumn trail rides and designing a business card for myself have occupied most of my non-writing time these days, so I shall share another artist with you in lieu of a photograph--Beth Moon.


Before I say anything about her work, I just want to say that I love her website. It is simple yet effective, remains within the color tone of her images, and doesn't detract from her work at all. Plus the layout makes it very easy to navigate. I also love that every portfolio starts immediately with her artist statements (which are all very well done, in my opinion). Sadly, these things are not always the case for photographer websites.

Moving onto her work, Beth Moon shoots mainly in medium format and hand-prints everything using a palladium process (platinum--which is the most archival of printing processes out there, allowing prints to last centuries). All of her image collections feature a beautiful ethereal, tranquil quality especially present in her Thy Kingdom Come series (depicted above).

Thy Kingdom Come is my favorite collection of hers. At first the images are a mix of spiritual and creepy--children dressed as medieval religious pilgrims with (dead) animals either bound to their backs or held against their faces. But then I study them closer--the velvety detail and soft background haze, the delicate positioning of limbs, the perfectly meditative faces--and the pieces become much more profound, each one like a dream-path unfolding before my feet, a stirring of other-worldly spirit.

"The title, in this case refers to the animal kingdom, where animals in an older world move, gifted with senses we have lost, living by voices we do not hear. With a metaphoric language these images examine the relationship between man, animal and earth.

The child intuitively walks these meridians in a pure state of living in the moment, embodying the unreflective consciousness of the animal. Migrating between the two worlds, they carry this awareness on their backs. They are the tangible form of this fusion." -a clip of Beth Moon's TKC artist statement

I simply love this idea. Allow me to repeat a phrase--The child intuitively walks these meridians in a pure state of living in the moment, embodying the unreflective consciousness of the animal. It is spiritual. Shamanic, even. For this reason, these images are very powerful for me. Some of you know that I consider myself to be a therian. Therians, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, are people who consider that part or all of their soul either was or contains the soul of an individual animal. It is a very spiritual thing, for me, and for years I have come to know the animal (canis dirus) consciousness within myself, her instincts and reflexes, her cravings and likings. I say her even though she and I are one in the same, because it makes it easier to talk about (and to understand). I won't go into it further here, but my point is that because of my therianthropic experiences, I keenly identify with Thy Kingdom Come's inner expression. A part of me, like the children Moon depicts, always wears those black over tunics and belts, the body of a dire wolf strapped to my back.

Favorite images: "Three Figures", "Way of the hare", "Listening to the Sky", and "Last Comes the Raven".

Her series, Portraits of Time, is a collection of portraits of ancient trees. The soft tones, contrast, and memory-like haze lend an air of discovery to each image. I imagine walking for hours through forests and suddenly coming upon one of the trees in these photographs, stepping directly into a sublime, timeless world where everything feels familiar. My favorite images: "Much Marcle Yew", "The Yews of Wakehurst", and "Queen Elizabeth Oak".

I'll leave it here and let you explore Seen But Not Heard and The Savage Garden on your own, if you'd like to.

A little change

I've been a bit behind with working on my photos. My excuse this time is that I've been writing a lot, which is a very good thing for me anyway. I have almost 70 pages written at the moment--I'd give a word count, but I'm writing by hand. I love the process of writing--that's actually why I write, not for the finished product but for that trance-like surge of creative energy. It's marvelous. I'd forgotten how much more potent it is when the writing is done by pen rather than by keystroke.

Anyhow. Spurred by this, I decided that it would be nice if I featured artists and specific pieces I like. (It's good for the ego, I've heard...) So today I'm featuring the work of Susan Friedman:


Her bio (on her site) surprised me a bit--she got a BA in Literature, going on in photography and film at SFAI. I've often heard (mostly through J&J) that many graduate-level artists weren't actually art majors in college. Julie made a particular point of telling me, I think as a nudge to say that if I wanted to, it wouldn't be impossible to get in as a non-major.

Friedman has done a lot of excellent film work (I think I've even unwittingly seen something of hers), and even won a Grammy. Nice, eh?

But it's her photography that I'm focusing on here... Her most recent work is Equus. She brings a calm, ethereal and reflective mood to her collection of portraits and motion grids. I was pleased to see that she used a hasselblad (<3) for some of the photos (and a view camera) then scanned the images and toned them digitally, and by the looks of it, added some texture layers as well. I'm not so sure I like the latest trend of photographers texturing their work, but I don't think her photographs would have the same effect without it. I love what she says about her equine work, though:

"There is something in the idea of the horse that evokes what I feel we as humans have lost: our connection to spirit, sense of wildness, and our spontaneity. These motion studies represent the real strength, freedom and individual spirit that exists in these horses, and in us, despite the constraints imposed by frame, and by the confines of our daily lives." -Friedman

This is also one of the few times where I actually got that through the photogarphs before reading the statement. Major props.

My favorite Equus images are "Tesoro - Garden" (gallery 2), "Trotter" (g2), "Vito Smaller 2" (g2), and "Moving Forward" (g1). I think "Trotter" is the most successful motion image, and I simply love the background in Tesoro. It reminds me of a poem by Wordsworth (several, actually).

But her Women gallery (pictured in the screen shot above), to me, is the most provacative. There is a raw, almost pagan/spiritual quality to them. Heightened by the level of detail (*cough* HASSELBLAD *cough). My absolute favorite image is "Carol - Franklin Point" (g2). It grabs me and does not let go. I love the light on her skin, the pose that abstracts her form into something other than body. She becomes a moon, the flash of a dolphin or whale among the waves. I also love the narrative of "Martha" (g2). Other top listers are "Women in White 1" (g1), "Nina and Buddha" (g1), "Vivianna" (g1), and "Walks on Water" (g1).

Make me feel

Suddenly it's Tuesday night and I have NO idea where the weekend went. Though part of that posting deficit is that I've been working on digital prints quite a bit. Let me tell you, healing dust spots with a 3:1+ magnification SUCKS. I feel like I'm blind. Or at least seeing spots. (The pixels of the world, perhaps?)

Back to the photo...This is Chase, one of Toler's pasture buds. He has large, expressive eyes just like Toler, but because 1) he's significantly shorter and 2) he's dapple gray, getting nice eye shots of him is WAY easier. Toler and I will work on this.

Exposed

One of the supports for the rafters in the barn. Something tells me it's not very supportive anymore...


This was taken during one of my walks through the woods up north. I rounded a bend in the path and found this *enormous* grove of Queen Anne's Lace flowers (my new favorite wildflower). I can't explain how massive the patch was; this photo does it little justice. It was magical, and almost forbidden for its little grove was entirely surrounded by thorny raspberry and blackberry bushes. Every time I go into that patch of woods I find something new, something that inspires me and bridges the world of the visible with the world of the invisible. (That's why I always carry my runes with me when I walk in them.)

Fun with hay

This is one of Toler's buds in his paddock, who decided that it would be more fun to throw hay than eat it. Well, at least for a moment. I wanted to get more depth of field, but sometimes you only have to time to release the shutter. Oh welll.

Every Inch

Things have been a little crazy lately. Did some yard work and picked a ton of apples, then I helped move boxes for most of a day, made a trial batch of applesauce, and today our modem blew and took out our tv, internet, and phoneline (it was our AT&T U-verse gateway box).

I took a few experimental photos this morning of horses in Toler's paddock--mostly eye shots and the occasional shot like this, returning a little to my Hinge of the Way series. The reason? I wanted to try taking and working with photos in RAW format. Yes, until now I have not shot in RAW but in JPEG. That might not mean much to non-photography gurus, but most serious digital photographers made the switch as soon as it was an option. I just never thought about it. I mean, really, how big of a difference could there be?

Um, a HUGE one. All the RAW photos I took this morning are so much more vibrant, and obviously easier to work with in a digital lab. There's so much more flexability to it. The downside is that RAW format takes up a bit more space, so I probably won't be using it for everything. But for photoshoots and personal projects, I'm definitely making the switch.

By all means, click on the images to see them full-size. =)


In other news...I might be a little lacking in everyday posts for a bit. I'm going to buckle down and work--there's an equine art competition I'd like to enter, so I've got to get some images chosen and finalized. I also have to make hundreds of batchs of applesauce, winterize the horse trailer, and prune everything with a branch around the house. Fun.

Let the Sun Come

Featuring Charlie. This one's already on my DA, but I *love* it, so I'm posting it here, too. ;)

Quietly imagining

A photo of one of the flowers in the front of our house, just after a rainstorm some days ago. Taken with my lensbaby and its +5 macro lens (not a strong magnification). Color treated in Lightroom.

In a different way

To celebrate the end of summer, and the coming of fall! I don't know about you, but fall is my favorite season. If only it lasted longer than ~2 months...


It is in the fall when concrete looks the most dismal, when chipped paint reminds you of all that is missing in your life. Yet you still stay up late every night, just to stand outside in the dark and smell the leaves, crush a newly-fallen nut beneath your heel. Your soul feels peaceful in the day, and although the wind is cold and you do not wear a sweater, you feel invincible, not an inch of you chilled. And a part of you even feels beautiful.