Not the most beautiful Iris picture I have shot but I was pleased to see this little bee appreciating my neighbor’s pollinator garden.
I had to read a long way in John O’Donohue’s book on Beauty to find a quote I like but finally came upon this one:
Beauty is individual and original, a presence from the source.
I noticed my neighbor’s pink dogwood was blooming yesterday but it was too windy to photograph so I made a note to get out there first thing this morning. Unfortunately I had a webinar from England that started at 7 am so the wind was already starting to pick up by 9 when I got out there. Still not too bad. I also couldn’t find my 180 mm macro lens so had to use the Velvet 85. It did a good job but now I can go back with the 180 (which was in the last place I looked of course) tomorrow!
Today from John O’Donohue… this is actually the very next two sentences from yesterday but it so captures why I am doing this I had to use it:
Like music, beauty dwells in some invisible realm adjacent to us, yet it never becomes our possession. But when it emerges to visit us, it wafts us away to a realm where desolation and gravity no longer preside.
I love photographing tulips after the rain. But if you live in Southern Oregon, you know that we haven’t had much rain lately. However, I sat in on some Photoshop classes this morning and I learned how to fake the raindrops using an overlay. I’m not really a fan of fakery in Photoshop but this is more in the line of photographic enhancement for the sake of creating art. Hope you enjoy.
And this from John O’Donohue:
Music brings great beauty into our lives. In the way that it arrives, lingers, and vanishes, if offers us a clue to the eternal nature of beauty.
I took a beauty walk around the neighborhood with my camera this morning. The daffodils may be gone but the lilacs are a blooming and the Iris are coming on strong.
Today’s quote is from Plotinus:
And harmonies unheard in sound create the harmonies we hear and wake the consciousness to beauty.
This will probably be the last daffodil of the season. I have been hard at work on the ancestors so I’m still milking the images from my trip to North Mountain Park the other day. It’s also been pretty windy which is definitely not conducive to flower photography.
Today from John O’Donohue, still on the theme of the beauty of music:
Feeling is where the heart lives. In claiming the heart so swiftly and totally, the beauty of music crosses all psychological and cultural frontiers.
This was about the only thing blooming at North Mountain Park the other day. Made for some pretty bokah though.
I’ve moved into a chapter of John O’Donohue’s book Beauty in which he is exploring the Music of Beauty and more focused on sound than sight so the quotes may seem a little less relevant but are still meaningful and just add another dimension to our study of beauty. Today’s quote is quite apt in these days of sharing music from home:
Perhaps to the animal hearing, there is nothing more beautiful than the sound of wind through a forest or the rhythmic salsa of Wild Ocean as it crashes against a cliff-face. To the human ear, however, music echoes the deepest grandeur and the most sublime intimacy of the soul.
The orchards have finally caught up with the ornamentals. I almost waited too long. Last week no blossoms at all. This week already leafing out. Next week boring green trees.
Today, those famous lines from Keats:
Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
I took a field trip to North Mountain Park this morning to see what might be blooming. The answer is not much, just a few lingering daffodils and some red current and Oregon Grape. The bird feeders are also gone so no easy pickings there but I did find these Canada Geese standing watch on top of the gazebo.
And today from John O’Donohue:
There is a sublime coherence at the heart of beauty, an order which has a lyrical simplicity.
This morning I looked out the window and saw the sun shining through the seedlings hanging on my maple tree against a bright blue sky. I wasn’t able to capture exactly what I saw but I hope this will add a little beauty to your day.
From John O’Donohue:
Only if there is beauty in us can we recognize beauty elsewhere: beauty knows beauty.
My favorite ornamental tree in the neighborhood finally came into bloom.
We turn again to Frederick Turner for today’s inspiration on beauty:
A beautiful thing, though simple in its immediate presence, always gives us a sense of depth below depth, almost an innocent wild vertigo as on falls through its levels.