Images

Watching with glittering eyes…

/ Sherry Galey / 21 Comments

madison and apples

Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

Roald Dahl

This is the way I want to see the world, as a child does, with glittering eyes and an unconditioned mind and an open heart. And this is the way I do see the world more now than ever before because of photography.

Today I am celebrating and paying tribute to the many online friends and photography buffs that I have connected with in Canada, the United States and many other countries through social media.

Thank you for sharing with me the magic you find in the world and the unique and exciting ways YOU see it — through your images and your words. I am regularly gobsmacked (good Irish expression there) by your particular vision and passion.

We use our eyes and our lenses and our artistic tools so differently, but what we share is profound — a gratitude and appreciation for the gifts that keep coming — even in the times that challenge us to our core. We support each other and encourage each other. And we keep coming back to what is truly important.

Indeed Rumi is right: “there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

 

Weekly photo challenge: The sea

/ Sherry Galey / 18 Comments

Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave until it gets to shore.

Rumi

bathtub

Last winter, when we were living on our sailboat, I became quite entranced with a section of the beach on Hutchinson Island, Florida called the Bathtub Reef. The contrast of the craggy coral reef and the smooth, long-exposure waves, really captivated me.

There’s a museum in this spot that is the last remaining House of Refuge along Florida’s Atlantic Coast. Called Gilbert’s Bar House of Refuge, it was a life-saving station staffed by a “keeper,” who, with their families, led solitary lives in order to find, rescue, and minister to those who fell victim to Florida’s treacherous reefs and shoals. It was damaged in two recent hurricanes but has since been fully rebuilt and is well worth a visit today.

Looking down…

/ Sherry Galey / 8 Comments

despair

Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Still…

/ Sherry Galey / 8 Comments
Open Doors, Mexico City

Open Doors, Mexico City by Tina Modotti from the Getty Collection that has now been made open for use.

Still…

I love this word and the way it contains paradoxical meanings. It inspired the name of my blog, Still and All.

This wonderful still was made by Tina Modotti, a photographer working in the 1920s. It is part of the Getty Collection that is now open to public use. (In this program, the Getty makes available, without charge, all available digital images to which the Getty holds the rights or that are in the public domain to be used for any purpose. No permission is required. Go have a look at the photography collection!)

Tina Modotti is considered to follow the tradition of contemplative photographers, which has captured my attention and curiosity. Being interested in photography has led me to an interest in photographers, particularly female ones.

Tina Modotti was a fascinating character who had a varied and full life, having been an actress, model, activist, photographer’s assistant and then photographer. She apprenticed with Edward Weston and was a contemporary of Frida Khalo. She documented many of Diego Rivera’s works, and in addition to still lifes, she focused her lens on the country people of Mexico.

Kim Manley Ort has written a piece on Tina Modotti for her blog that you may want to have a look at.

The August Break 2013

Faraway…

/ Sherry Galey / 18 Comments

IMG

Faraway in time, not space…

I love this old polaroid of me sitting under our crabapple tree (planted in 1967 to celebrate Canada’s Centennial) with my little sister on the left and a friend from down the street on the right. My Dad took it, I’m sure, maybe he was trying out his Polaroid camera.

These were the summers of playing outside all day, every day, making forts in the fields, leaving notes for each other in “the old gutter” and only coming in when we had to for supper. TV watching was rare and of course there were no personal computers. We were always living in the moment.

We left the moment — as you need to sometimes — to dream and imagine different worlds by reading books at night, sometimes getting so involved we didn’t want to stop so we read under the covers with flashlights.

Everything seemed possible, then…but everything we did and dreamed then is still with me now…

The August Break 2013