Past Contrasts

Each snippet of the past is shaped by contrast. Then and now. Before and during and after. The light that was and the light we now see. The place where we stood, the air we breathed, the living and the dead.

When I took the above photo, I was struck by the near-perfect parallel positions of an eternal rock and a juvenile Plover (who may have been preening or its opposite, hiding from relatively giant petite me). They shared cream undersides and identically angled topcoats of variegated rust and oak.

A single sentient being and an eternally evolving rocky shore, perfectly positioned together in the millisecond I captured them.

And each photo I take represents another contrast: I am both outside and in my own head, here today and somewhere in the past.

In a single image you may find opaque and transparant, solid and liquid, shallow and deep. Man-made and nature-born. Straight lines turned to wavering reflections. Black and unbound color. Earth and fire and water and sky. Day and night.

Earthly and ethereal. Prickly and soft: an adorable peril. Black and white.

Oil and water. Aloft and anchored. Vibrant and fading.

Liquid and solid. Water and ice. Trapped and free, by degrees.

An unfinished panorama my husband
had been piecing together

Finished and unfinished. Work and play. Practice and perfection. Hits and misses. Monsters and men. On and off base.

Sound and silence. Alone in a crowd.

Gone and still here.