These are not distorted realities.
They’re not illusions.
These are photographs of exactly what I saw.
Exactly.
(maybe)
This is Marymoor Park in Redmond, Washington.
More specifically, the fringes of the park’s off-leash dog area. With forty acres of fields and woods to run in and the Sammamish Slough to swim in, the off leash area is where “dogs can be dogs.” At 6pm on a September evening most of the dogs and their friends are heading home. The sun slips behind a cloud bank, then inches back to set the scenery aglow. Matted animal and human paths wind through stands of tall grass. A few blackberry leaves have turned rose red, the berries themselves are shriveled from the drought. A land snail holds tight, five feet up a dried tansy stalk.
Past the field and through the woods a boardwalk bends out over the tip of Lake Sammamish. Here, lily pads yellow and curl on the water’s surface and rushes and cattails pierce the cool air, as a Kingfisher rattles a complaint overhead. The little bright orange lanterns of Jewelweed shine at the edge of the woods. Like I do every year, I gently grasp and squeeze a ripe pod – after all, the plant’s other name is Touch-me-not. The lime green package springs apart in a quick and efficient burst of seed-scattering. This human being smiles.
We are hovering at the edge of fall, each in our own reality, each connected to the other, and to all.
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“The camera is a mirror with a memory, but it cannot think.” – Arnold Newman
…and I might add, it doesn’t feel.
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A Lensbaby Composer was used for many of these images, a 60mm macro for the rest, on an Olympus om d1.
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