Project Athena - Day 310 (Framed)

April 13, 2015

I'm Looking Through You

Today while on my nature walk around Saratoga Lake, I came across a spillway where the lake water was rapidly draining into a culvert, sucking with it anything that got trapped in the whirlpool of energy. The water then rushed under the road and dropped down a cement spillway into a natural flowing stream that meandered through some cattail marshes finding its way eventually into another serene mountain lake. The amazing part of this scene was seeing the 20 or so 18"-20" trout fish trying to swim back up stream to the lake from which they had just been dumped. They were literally trying to jump up the spillway and waterfall, exerting tons of energy in an effort to return to what was known and comfortable.

I wanted to turn them around, face them down stream and tell them swim because another beautiful home awaits. Then I realized how many times in my life I am that fish, swimming upstream, unaware of the gifts that await me if I just let go and let life carry me to them.

Project Athena - Day 210 (Winter)

January 3, 2015

Hey Moms, It's Snowing Again

Snow-flakes

“Out of the bosom of the air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Zeke Goes Poetic on SnowflakesNikon D3200 • Nikon 55-200mm lens • 55mm • F/16 • 1/125s • ISO 400 — Zeke Goes Poetic on Snowflakes
Nikon D3200 • Nikon 55-200mm lens • 55mm • F/16 • 1/125s • ISO 400

Project Athena - Day 178 (Threes)

December 2, 2014

The Magic of Three

There is certainly something powerful and magical about the number three. Today, as I was shooting, I was contemplating some of the ways that three shows up in life...heaven, earth, and waters; body, mind and spirit; birth, life, and death; beginning, middle and end; the triangle; the fleur-de-lis; the Holy Trinity; past, present and future; the three wise guys (you know the ones that visited the baby Jesus); the three days of death before the resurrection; the three little pigs; the three bears; three wishes from a genie; on your mark, get set, go; three dimensions; three blind mice; three musketeers; three lines in a haiku poem; three ring circus....

Three WindowsNikon D3200 • Nikon 55-200mm lens • 165mm • F/6.3 • 1/800s • ISO 400 — **Three Windows**
Nikon D3200 • Nikon 55-200mm lens • 165mm • F/6.3 • 1/800s • ISO 400

Project Athena - Day 148 (Reflection)

November 2, 2014

Life is a Mirror

“You do not see the world as it is. You see it as you are.”

— Anais Nin

I hold the belief that my life is a high precision mirror reflecting me to me, literally and metaphorically. I can know who I truly am through my adventures, experiences, relationships, thoughts and emotions, material and physical manifestations, and even this body. In truth, there is nothing in my life that is NOT a reflection of who I am but I often forget or don’t recognize my own self, even though I flaunt myself in front of me.

While it seems like a contradiction, I also believe that the very instant I define myself as "________", I recognize the inadequacy of any word to describe this spirit, this being, this essence who is part of the Infinite Oneness. For an instant in existence, a reflection then becomes a mere glimpse into consciousness revealing that which I am open to "seeing".

Smiling to be shooting reflections this week.