Spring is full-on, completely changing the surrounding forest from it’s winter barren appearance  presenting additional green each day during our morning walk.

Of course there’s been a price to pay — pollen and allergies.

iPhone4 photographs

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I often make photographs of the same type.  I look and develop a vision about what I find interesting in the scene or what the particular scene is saying to me.  I’ll then use the camera to capture the “good bones” of the scene as best I can.  Later I compare what I captured and my vision making “renovations” in post processing to fulfill one with the other as best I can.

Of course when renovating a home you’re vision will change mid-process as you introduce new possibilities.  That was our case in some of our home renovations and has often been the case with my photographic process as well.  I will see something else in the scene during post-processing that changes my direction — I believe a vision should be “alive” and fresh, not stagnant.

One of the home areas we’ve worked on is the back yard.  Initially very rough dirt and grass, several years ago we did landscaping — including having stone walkways and an Italian style arbor built. The first year yellow jasmine planted to cover the arbor died during a harsh winter but was replanted last spring and has managed now to covered two corners of the arbor.  It’s already attracting a multitude of butterflies and we hope it will meet in the middle this summer to also provide needed shade.

The rest of the plants and bushes planted during the landscaping are also reaching a level of maturity that’s beginning to match our original visions of a backyard we could enjoy and one which would provide us pleasure from it’s functionality and beauty.

So here’s to “good bones,” recognizing them and making them fit your own personal vision — in photography or elsewhere.

Above are photos made of and from our own backyard this spring.

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Walking the fields and woods nearly every morning this winter I’d grown accustomed to the dull brown and grey leafless winter landscape.  This past week I witnessed a sudden  change in the color pallet nature is “painting” with.

There is an infectious freshness and vibrance to the  landscape now and each day marks more noticeable changes.

I’d wish this vibrance would lend energy to my legs during my morning walks but I’m thankful for at least a temporary uplift of mind and spirit.

The variance of weather patterns, I believe due to  mankind influenced climate change but others may not, has made predicting  day-to-day weather hap-hazardous at best.

As Henry Van Dyke said,  “The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.”

I’m happy to report, and to have experienced, a few of those “first spring days” here already. I’m also hopeful spring will bring back my enthusiasm for photography and even blogging — both have been suffering recently, almost to the point of apathy.

Universal British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee belived, “Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.”

It doesn’t sound difficult to counteract apathy when put in Toynbee’s terms – especially since he never states the idea or the plan has to be grand — the idea only need capture the imagination.

I do have a few imaginative but undeveloped ideas rattling around in my head, perhaps I’ve been only missing the needed plans.

What about you — any specific ideas you’d like to carrying into practice this new season?

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The last week was full of preparation for the outdoors, spring and another summer.

The yard equipment is all ready now — inspections, repairs, changing oil/filters, cleaning air filters, greasing spindles and sharping blades.  I’ll admit there’s pleasure for me in preforming these tasks and more than a small amount of satisfaction when they’re done.  It also connects me to my father.

I’ve mentioned I was raised on a small farm.  In my father’s time there was no such thing as a disposable society or way of living.  He certainly never had very much disposable income and always lived by if you wanted something, you worked hard, saved your money, bought it for cash and then took meticulous care of it so it lasted forever.  Most home and farming equipment he ever owned he purchased used and those same pieces were still functioning decades later when he passed away.

His farming began with a 1938 model Ford tractor which was later upgraded to a slightly larger one from the 40′s or early 50′s.  This second tractor worked the farm for close to 40 years and I personally spent many a long day on it as I was growing up.  The same was true of the mowers, sowers, plows, disks and other equipment he accumulated. Equipment or tasks he didn’t or couldn’t own or do himself he bartered for with his labor or payed someone to do.

This philosophy wasn’t limited to his farming efforts, it was the way he lived his life.  I could name/count most of the cars and pickups he ever owned on one hand. The first new vehicle I can remember him buying (a ’64 Ford pickup) was a big deal for the whole family. He drove that truck for 20 years and when he sold it it was still in great shape.

I don’t believe he was unique in this philosophy. Many if not most of his generation lived the same way. Certainly those were different times and a different philosophy of living from what seems to exist for many today.  These days planned obsolescence is often calculated in the early design phase.

These were thoughts occupying my mind as I recently mowed the yard with our seven year old mower that seems to run and mow better now then it did when new.  I  may never own, or hopefully need, another mower.

Thanks, Dad. I was listening and watching even when you probably thought I wasn’t…at least on some things!

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