I remember wasps circling around crushed pears fallen from the old tree guarding Grandma’s garden. I remember the doughnut stand in front of the railway station. I remember endless rainy days. The big basin in front of the porch overflowing with rainwater from the drainpipe. I remember the smell of hay. I remember the noises coming from the attic when I couldn’t sleep. I remember the face of Grandma, red and sweaty under her headkerchief from working in the garden. I remember Mom appearing at the other end of the garden when she came to visit. I remember the smell…
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What are stories good for? There may be more than meets the eye for us as individuals or as communities.
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We are all faces in the crowd unless somebody looks at us with the kind of attention and care that takes us out of the crowd. The attention and care that reveals what is unique and lovable and just ours. Or unless we can look at ourselves like that. Tough call. In this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, John asks us to explore what it means to be a face in the crowd. Or to be portrayed as one.
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We listen to stories and tell stories as a way of dealing with change, impermanence, and vulnerability. In doing so, we discover that stories are bigger than our particular readings and understanding of them. They go beyond the storyteller.
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This week, Amy invites us to explore different ways of framing photos. What is framing? For me, it’s how we use physical delimitations, leading lines, light, color, texture, and focus to highlight the photo’s subject matter and to create a coherent narrative.
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A little photo story from a city I love. Alfama is the oldest neighborhood of Lisbon. It lies on the hills between the São Jorge Castle and the Tagus river. Its name comes from the Arabic al-ḥamma, meaning “hot fountains” or “baths”.
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In this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, Ann-Christine invites us to share some work in progress. She is the first to notice that, after all, everything and everybody is work in progress. Endless choices seem to be opening up here. But too many choices can make it as difficult as too few choices.
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I’ve been hiking along the seashore on Cote d’Opale for the past three days. Walking on the high cliffs. From time to time, descending on small rocky beaches. The breeze is strong. It carries with it smells from near and far. Salt, seaweed, myriads of small sea creatures rotting on the beach, memories of long-lost joys and sorrows, forgotten loves, and sea voyages with no return.
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Dawn is hosting this week’s LAPC with the topic “Fences”. I will illustrate this with photos from last year when I was traveling between Belgium and France. I was playing with the idea of a photo project focused on borders. The idea did not turn into a project so far. I guess its time didn’t come yet.
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We live within stories. Often we have a hard time recognizing stories as stories. There are folk tales, bedtime stories, short stories, novels, movies, video games. But there are also national myths, collective stories of greatness, and mental scripts we keep repeating to ourselves. And they can greatly influence how we behave, think, and feel.