It's not often mentioned, but most photographer's shots - mine at least - fail. And when I say most, I'm mean easily over 90% - in my case one in 10 would be pretty good overall :). Sometimes I get on a roll and hit a few in a row; but usually, something goes wrong. Sometimes, its the obvious: the thumb in the picture, here holding a yellow filter and hoping to shade the lens from the sun's rays. Other times, it's the darkslide, or the forgotten level, the wrong iso setting, the bumped tripod, or the untightened knob; the list is extremely long of ways in which I have - and continue to - ruin otherwise perfectly good images. But, the worse kind are the kind where I've suffered a lack of intent; when the image was made more or less out of habit, aye there's the rot.

"Wherever you go, go with all your heart" - Confucius

Be thou blessed, may you never take the scene for granted, may you never look without seeing, may you never stand without awe before the countless moments of magic all around us.

"If I never meet you in this world, let me feel the lack." - from The Thin Red Line

Photo: Failed, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

Sometimes, a place can take your breath away - you stand mute, eyes darting, unable to articulate your feelings in all but the most brutish of terms. The mouth becomes dry, and a weight of time bears upon the chest - at the most extreme, a sob attempts to well up past the defenses, a tear forms. What is ascendent in our deep selves - our secret hopes for the divine - this place we stand in, tempts us to celebrate, to give voice, to raise up our songs unto the very heavens which, for all we know, may be inhabited by nothing more than our hubris.

From Lassus to Leadbelly, the cry of our song comes from the deep wellsprings of our pain, the haunting loneliness of a vast and unending universe. And if there is no God, then we will create one in our own image.

Photo: Ascendent, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

O'er the methane seas,
sailed the tentacled thieves,
blasting a fugal tune,
'neith a Jovian moon,

and the barnacled sheen
of the mermaid queen
led many a man
to his wat'ry doom

tales 'twere told
in rhymes of old
were but the pale
facsimile of the truth

and many a salt,
swooning with malt,
sings regrets of the
actions of youth

O' I hear a knocker,
in Davy Jones' locker
a canker in the
womb of the sea

She'll spit him back up
and he'll raise his bony cup
and give a gallant toast
to his family.

"Me ma was a tart
me pa was a fart
and gave never a mind
to their progeny

I raised myself up
drank from the bloody cup
and stood toe to toe
with those better 'n me

'twere your last breath
as you stand it's your death
if you get between
what's coming and me

I give as was given
to dead and the livin'
and stands no man
between God and me."

---

OK, so-so poetry, but the point is, IR images
hinting at what the world might look like
through other alien irises seeing different
wavelengths...

Photo: Through the eyes of others, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

Sudek

"I remember one time, in one of the Romanesque halls, deep below the spires of the cathedral [St. Vitus]--it was dark as in catacombs--with just a small window below street level inside the massive medieval walls. We set up the tripod and camera and then sat down on the floor and talked. Suddenly Sudek was up like lightening. A ray of sun had entered the darkness and both of us were waving cloths to raise mountains of dust 'to see the light,' as Sudek said. Obviously he had known that the sun would reach here perhaps two or three times a year, and he was waiting for it." - Sonja Bullaty

For me, Sudek is a mentor - a vague faraway force, whose muted axioms lay hidden in the layers of his deceptively simple work. I assert that you cannot take a better photograph of an onion than Sudek - his glow with an inner light unseen by most mortals in possession of an imaging system be it digital or film - though perhaps an old master of oils could equal the effort.

A glass on the windowsill. I flip past seeking the images my over-saturated eye has come to expect and need as 'art' - and yet I return thinking - but it's just a glass of water, how could the muse be reflected in that? and then I notice that somehow through a distant mirror, Sudek has winked at me, led me into his little room, shared his facility with the north facing window's miserly light, implanted a bit-o-the-equivalence, slyly, sneaking it under the door of my pseudo-refined artistic editor/conscience and tweaked my nose with a cryptic smile. I, who will willingly drive hundreds of miles to take photographs, have to acknowledge that Sudek travelled far in his little room.

Photo: Neo-romantic, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

what I found in the forest

... and so I walked into the woods, as oft I do, a glance beckoning me towards soft light falling amidst the tall leviathans. I grab gear and venture but a short distance from the road, set the equipment down and start to wander, surveying the locale, listening, smelling, kneeling down to touch the earth; why am I here?

After a few moments of silence, I realize that I am far from the bustle of the world. Look: faeries dance, ravens cackle, and old snags drift lazily in the evening swell wagging their forms against the twilight. Orcs and goblins peek from behind distant trees, shapes move, figures play with the edge of my vision: I am alone in the dark woods and find myself brushing up against primal fears in my mind. A snapping twig: was that a footstep? My posture stiffens, no one is here yet I am intimately aware of all the sounds in the woods around me. My spine requires it, the vestigial reptilian inside me ensures that I am on heightened alert here. These are just the woods, my educated brain says: no one is here, no mountain lions, no bears, and yet the sense of wild pervades even though I am but mere yards from the road.

A dark wooded ravine runs down into the deeper woods, and my mind plays with thoughts of what walks there while I sleep. How oft we forget that we are but animals, and beneath the layers of civility, the same terrified primal outlook of a deer resides in us. Occasionally we remember, and this remembrance can exhilarate, terrify, or awaken a wanderlust to seek out the primordial in ourselves.

Photo: Wizard's wand, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

lost coast

The north coast of California is the edge of the great migration, the final shore upon which the waves of westward seekers washed up. But it is a formidable country: rugged, incessantly damp, covered by thick forests of redwood, Douglas fur, and western hemlock. So after the logging slowed, most went their way to sunnier climes where the living was easier.

According to the occasional roadside attraction, Bigfoot lives here, his visage along with other denizens of the mythic stand in mute testimony to the back recesses of time and our psyche. We need there to be wild places,where man is but a seldom visitor at most, where the mind can still believe that mystery lives.

Photo: Wild coast morning, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

seen better days

Every moment contains some echo of the past, rippling forward with lessening vigour, until it is but a whisper to those who would listen. I hear these whispers of the past - the echos of the sunny day when this screen door was new and freshly hewn, the functional exemplar of its form. What days passed, what weeds grew, what attentions wandered in the interim, I sculpt with imagination, filling the blanks with a loving brushstroke. Others might seek a different tale, each according to their desire, and therein lies one of the Great Mysteries of Art.

Photo: Seen better days, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom