Out of the shadows

We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul.

John O Donohue

It wasn't a great summer; grey skies, too much rain, cold seas. But for a couple of days the golden sun lit up our lives and we all came out of the shadows.

Photographers call it the "golden hour".  It's that time of the day, early or late, when light slides in at an angle casting lanky silhouettes and tinting the world with warmth. When you study light and peer endlessly through a lens, you are drawn to this like a moth to a flame.

But the best part? In the gloaming, back doors, front doors, windows and hearts are opened to the light. Glasses of wine and cups of coffee are brought down to the shore. Youngsters are chatting, perched on the low walls, barbecues are set and smoking. Our small community is united by staring into the light show of an evening sky.

This golden life force, our sun, makes us smile, feeds our souls and entices us out of the shadows. And this is even more true for photographers!

The gloaming

In winter our planet moves around to the best possible angle for evening sun. Through my kitchen window, night after December night, the gloaming envelops everything with it's vibrance. And as 2014 is coming to an end, it's now time to hibernate, look back and look forward.

Every year around this time I choose a word to guide me through the following year. Last year it was Pilgrimage which allowed me to sail into my sixties with imagination. This year I am being drawn in another direction.

Here's how it works.

Around this time of the year I start to doodle in a journal. Spider mind maps, lists, words. I started one thread recently by thinking about the lake, then lake goddesses, then deep water, deep-end, out of my depth, deeper, and so on...... it's about exploring rather than planning, it's playing.

Later in the New Year of 2015  I will settle on a word which becomes like a loose web into which my life and work fall. Something like that anyway! In 2012 I chose EXPAND, in 2013 I chose LIGHT.

So maybe you would like to have a go this year? Susannah Conway has a Workbook which might help. Or you could design your own method? Just choose a word that will light you up and allow your mind to run amuck with delight! For some reason the vagueness and focus of choosing ONE word, works a kind of alchemy.... if you let it.

Have you ever experimented with choosing a word for your year? If so I'd love to hear about it. If not then I hope you will enjoy the hibernation of advent and these December skies

Reflections up on the roof

It's the witching hour, the gloaming. Patterns and shadows play across an amber horizon and as usual I am drawn towards the sky. Paddy who likes to predict tomorrows weather, is also skywatching and suddenly shouts "Come here and see this"

We both run up to the roof for the best view. Even after all these years, the sun setting in the west is impossible for either of us to ignore. Now it is all autumn gold and deep navy blue.

We are reluctant to let the day go. We carry on pottering until there is nothing else left to fix or tend. Himself eeking out the evening with forays into the garden, or myself following the light to capture the last silhouettes. Of all the hours in the day, of all the magic moments, the last dying rays of the sun hold us inthrall yet again. Neither of us wants to close the curtains on it.

I used to fear the dark and lonely silence of the night, that fading light, the end of things. The unfamiliar noises of twitching bushes of gorse on the hill or the scuttling of bats leaving their daytime home in the rafters.

I've learned that it's ok. Ok to hold on, and Ok to let go. This is how it happens.

First let the darkness envelop you like a cosy blanket. Then cheer on the black swooping bats as they disappear off into the night sky. Finally set the alarm for an early walk to snap the sparkly dewy cobwebs at the break of day.

I don't believe it! Is this me letting go of the past to make way for the new? Is this me making plans for tomorrow?





More autumnal images here

Nothing to fear

Sometimes I go down to the lake shore at around dusk, the gloaming, the closing of the day. In that magical twilight time the light changes. As it becomes less intense it softens and warms the reeds, the land, the fresh water.

In that quiet space, there is nothing to fear.

I used to jump at sudden movements or rustling in the long grass. The smallest crawly thing would make me recoil and yelp. But just by being out there and observing on a daily basis, I have begun to feel safer in the world.

We still startle each other out there. Sometimes a heron will fly in to land near where I am sitting and vere off suddenly spotting me at the last moment. An ocasional fish will spookily rise to the surface and eyeball me. A flying beetle will land on my lap.

But startling is one thing and threatening is another. There is a peaceful living side by side underlying it all, it is mainly I who must be extra careful not to create too much of a disturbance.