“There comes a moment in every life when the Universe presents you with an opportunity to rise to your potential. An open door that only requires the heart to walk through, seize it and hang on.
The choice is never simple. It’s never easy. It’s not supposed to be. But those who travel this path have always looked back and realized that the test was always about the heart. …The rest is just practice.”
― Jaime Buckley, Prelude to a Hero
As a photographer, I feel the Universe presents me with daily opportunities to rise to my potential, but I have to be willing to photograph my own back yard over and over, seeming to repeat shots I have made year after year.
Can I sustain passion for the quotidian beings of my local Delta Ponds? The temptation is to say, “Oh, I’ve photographed this Great Blue Heron or his relatives for twenty-three years of walking this bike path.” Yet, just this week, a Little Green Heron has started strutting up and down the turtle log. For the first time, I saw young killdeer playing and practicing short flights in their hyper-fast, comic little way.
Walking the ponds is not only a daily photography practice, but a daily challenge to observe, be present, and learn that, as the Chinese philosopher teaches me, I can never enter the same five mile pond loop twiice.
https://vimeo.com/131946903
This short video is only one of three I made about the Delta Ponds here in Eugene, Oregon this last week of June 2015. For the inquiring minds amongst you, I made it on a new app produced by Vimeo called Cameo. It is my first effort using their product, and it’s different from Replay or iMovie in that you can’t include still photos. No transitions are on offer–it’s pretty minimalist.
However, overall, it was fun to use this one time, and I was able to include all of my animal friends met along the Delta Pond path.
Hail fellow, well met! Red-Winged Blackbird foraging at pond’s edge.