“Still Point”

Posted on Jan, Tue, 2020 in Gallery Image, Landscapes, Musings from Still Point, Uncategorized

“Still Point”  16″x24″   Collector’s Edition of 10     C.G. Baker, 2020     

Is there anyone who hasn’t tired of the myriad reed and grass photos, most composed in early morning mist or afternoon fog? As a child, over 60 years ago, I recall a black and white photo from “Life” magazine featuring reeds reflecting on a smooth lake. With my mother’s hand-me-down camera I wasted lots of film and her patience trying to replicate that image in a neighbor’s pond. Amateurish would be a very generous description of those photos. Ever since, I’ve shied away from the reed pictures that have seduced infinite photographers and generated infinite images. The few I’ve attempted have been unoriginal at best.

With that preamble I succumbed to temptation this afternoon when I spotted this array of marsh grass at the far end of Schweitzer’s marsh. Today’s fog diffused the light making for ideal conditions to capture the subtlety of color. It also provided the unlikely possibility of finding something new in a hackneyed subject. A small, single reed in the foreground adds dimension and lends perspective. This image draws my attention for some reason – the geometry possibly but as much the color transitions from reflections on the surface.

See what you think. It may be nothing more than the addled effects of the years on me.

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“Toward Heaven Still”

Posted on Jan, Wed, 2020 in Black & White, Landscapes, Musings from Still Point, Musings from Still Point

“Toward Heaven Still”

In a couple of his poems (“After Apple Picking and “Birches”), Robert Frost summoned both imagery and metaphor through the phrase, “toward heaven” and “toward heaven still.” I’ve often thought this towering pin oak, anchored in less than three feet of water at the north end of Schweitzer marsh, was “pointed toward heaven still”; ascending from its base, reaching into the firmament.

Exploring the marsh, beech groves and hawthorn gauntlets as young boys of ten or eleven, my friends and I could always spot this tree above the others and orient ourselves. The pin oaks pictured here were already dead and ghostly by the mid 50’s, almost seventy years ago, yet the grove “still” stands.  More than I can say for myself at times.

 

 

 

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