Perhaps an image that you wouldn’t normally expect here but I was struck by the light on the wall and how the values of the overlapping shadows create a sense of dimension in the arm. This is pure shadow and fleeting light (not a reflection of the figure) coming together for just a few moments. There are possibilities here in the shadows…
*Umbra is Latin for shadow.
Image © Karen McRae, 2012
Map-like surfaces scraped into the rocky shore.
A rare rainy day here, not long ago. It seems as though the entire summer’s worth of rain fell on this one day.
All images © Karen McRae, 2012
I tried posting just one picture…but now there are three.
All images © Karen McRae
I love the sound of it, yes. But also what it infers. Gesture. My impression of this word itself, a movement in my mind.
If you look up the meaning, you might turn a page; a thin paper between your fingers and thumb. A whisper as the page rustles from your movement. A small intake of air as you recall the smell of this book that has been on a shelf close to you for as long as you can remember. You might find that you have stretched this word; made it bigger, filled it with as much meaning as you could get into it. Or, maybe this small word really is that big.
The fleeting gentle moments are the ones that stick in my mind. There is a purity in these moments. The smallest of movements. Communication. A demonstration of respect. Intention. Or without intention even.
Perception.
A time-worn beauty in the curved, slouched back of the man waiting to cross the street. A slight shifting in anticipation. One shoulder leaning into a movement that hasn’t quite begun.
The weight in the feet of the crows as they lift off from the side of the road. Draping feet. Briefly left behind. Suspended.
Voices. Blended voices in harmony. Entering the body and filling you for a moment. From one body into another. Pitch perfect. Grace.
An arm held out. Outstretched, the palm open. Fingers slightly bent. Just barely touching a pane of glass. Hovering. Just barely.
The wind sweeping across the fields. Flattening the grasses. Raising them up. The wind not making up its mind. Shifting the sands. Always shifting.
Fleeting poses. Your arm moving in its own quick gesture to find the lines. To find the light, the dark. A gesture to capture a gesture. Making marks.
These small things, I find they are not small. The people, the landscape they are in, these things are not small.
A single gesture can ripple through them.
© Karen McRae, 2012
I’m not exactly sure of the correct names for all of these lichens but I have dubbed them collectively Cladonia Seussimilis, for to my eye they appear rather Seussian in form. And I like the way it sounds.
I believe the beautifully tiered fountain-like ones, are actually called Ladder Lichen, Cladonia cervicornis.
I’m a bit smitten with them…
Above: Possibly split-peg lichen, Cladonia cariosa
All images © Karen McRae, 2012
The image above is a long exposure. Blurry from the water moving over the sand, resettling things. Nothing is still… August is on the move.
Sandbanks Provincial Park, on Lake Ontario
All images © Karen McRae, 2012
Lichens have always fascinated me, but it’s the little cup lichens that I find exceptionally intriguing. I think these ones may be Cladonia pyxidata, a pixie cup Lichen. They make for an exquisite miniature landscape, and although I didn’t see any myself, it’s not hard to imagine that a Pixie might indeed inhabit this sort of magical place. These pixie cups are growing in small beds of moss and earth tucked into a craggy rock .
I was struck by how they look so remarkably like an underwater landscape of corals and sea anemones and the sense of this is enhanced with a very shallow depth of field. Perhaps too shallow. But I am not finished looking at this tiny world.
All images © Karen McRae, 2012
This little cicada shell was gleaming in the sun like a miniature bronze, and naturally it beckoned to come home with me. It is the moulted shell from the final stage in a cicada’s growth. You may have happened across a similar empty shell tentatively clinging to a tree branch. You’d bring it home too, wouldn’t you?
The escape hatch. A little tear up the back.
*If you are curious about method, this cicada shell was photographed on a mirror.
All images © Karen McRae. 2012
These little transforming seed heads each seem to have their own bit of personality when you look at them closely. I am absorbed with the details of form, depth of field, and light (of course!). And they are very cooperative subjects. It is really the breeze that is most playful.
All images © Karen McRae, 2012
draw and shoot 