View allAll Photos Tagged WELLSPRING
happy new year everyone!! here's to a fantastic 2014~
background is the incredible Mt. Rainier, model is from Miss Aniela Fashion Shoot Experience workshop in LA 2012.
model: Shameka Jones
stylist: Kendrik Osorio
MUA: Maya Segirah
hair: Kerrie Urban
dress: House of Devali
jewelry: Sue Wong
#TravelTuesday: Join us in #Rwanda in February! ••• Find out more at ift.tt/1xWD4Bp ••• #travel #trip #education #transformation #vision #wellspring #globalgoals #goal4 #qualityeducation
Decided to pick up RAGE again. I played the game a few times, but it never really clicked with me, so I never really got that far. I decided to give it another try. I am really trying to get ReShade working on this game, but it doesn't seem to work, I know it should work since I checked the compatibility list for ReShade. If there is anybody that can help, it would be much appreciated. Besides that, on a graphical standpoint, this game looks pretty good. The textures are not that great, but for lighting and art design, it is really friggin' good.
Teachers who go through our training are taught a learner-centric method of #education. This helps them to develop love and respect for their students and to even extend that care beyond the classroom. Learn more about a student and teacher who experienced this in another Wellspring 2016 highlight here: ift.tt/2gjwDop ⠀ Remember that generous donors are MATCHING your donations until Dec. 31st. Every dollar you give becomes TWO dollars. Will you help us transform education in #Rwanda?⠀ ⠀ #transformation #goal4
Another image from a very famous place
Do we need another image from Tunnel View in Yosemite National Park? One could argue that after Adams took his iconic "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park" in 1944 there has been little need to recapture the public's imagination with the view of this grand valley from a simple roadside pull-out. Yet there is rarely any shortage of photographers and nature lovers peering out over the stone wall making memories and photographs of the valley's major features laid out in such stunning symmetry. So then, what is the reason for snapping away (see below for proof of just how many people bore witness to the grandeur represented in this photograph)? Do we need more nature images of landscapes thoroughly inhabited and (theoretically) protected? Why is a culture so hell-bent on consuming and utilizing every natural resource possible even interested in nature photographs, especially of landscapes which have been (at least temporarily) spared from mining, drilling, clear-cutting and development? I have two answers to these questions - the general and the personal.
The Wellspring
The valley called Yosemite, and a few other spots on Earth, have served as the nursery for ideas. These ideas were the basis for a series of successful and unsuccessful marches in the name of conservationism and environmentalism. The valley was the gray-walled and sand-floored crib of Muir's preservationism. If Muir loved the wilds before (and he certainly did) he came to Yosemite, he got so near to the heartbeat of the Earth that he wanted for the rest of his life to try and get nearer. The valley was the luminous, storm-ravaged epic landscape of Adams' classic photograph - laid out like some glamourous nude, covering just enough with a lacy veil of fog and snowcloud to elicit excitement and inspire others to the same end as Ansel. Camp 4 was the cradle of the American love affair with rock climbing and the first rungs of Rowell's ladder from a poor mechanic to influential photojournalist and world-explorer. Perhaps too The Valley has been the nursemaid to our love of hiking and exploring the wilder places of America as something, if not vocation, then more dear than avocation. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure." Conservationism did not die as some antiquated nineteenth century ideal, but it too must be refreshed from time to time. It's night-soils were the words of Muir, the photographs of Adams, Rowell, and others. There is much yet in this world, and even in the Yosemite Valley, that needs protecting and conserving. I don't know that my photographs will change anyone else's mind about how to behave in the valley or in their own backyards, but I do know the process of taking photographs of this place has fixed in my mind the value of this wonderful place. The argument, therefore, is that ideas need expression and the continual flow of nature imagery is an effort to convince the apathetic and timid of the great value inherent in conservation. Great photography is a call to action, it draws the breath from our lungs and the blood from our hearts for a moment only to rush it back two-fold and inspire us to do more (by doing less) than gnaw with an axe at old, pine-perfumed gardens. Maybe Ansel's was just an aperitif to some great and yet-unmade masterpiece more completely encapsulating the million-fold images, emotions and experiences that are Yosemite. Not all of us are going to make these still epics, however, and the reason to justify our personal photographic efforts are perhaps subtly different.
Making memories and photographs
The process of taking photographs is more about what is not in the photograph than what makes it into the frame. This is true in the compositional sense - often exclusion of extraneous elements and isolation of subject is the key to a successful photograph (a lesson I must constantly learn and a tree that is continually refreshed by the "manure" of deleting photographs poorly executed). This statement is also true in the figurative sense. These photographs are about more than their subject. They are about an amazing light show as dessert to a full meal of hiking and camping, they are about sitting at what seems like the top of Eden and enjoying a simple cup of hot soup as the blood-crimson of sunset gives way to steel-blue of twilight and finally to soot-black of night. They are about the fan-blade whoosh of ravens' wings over the Pines campground and the long light of drawing winter skies in the high country of the Tuolumne Meadows - sundogs and all. The act of photographing is an act of personal education and change.
What I've learned in my time as photographer hobbyist is that you cannot collect or consume nature images. This is where I think most of us who aspire to wonderful amateur photography fail. There is an oft-considered difference amongst photographers between "taking" a photograph, like a vacation snapshot or a record shot of some event, and "making" a photograph through careful composition, consideration, patience and thought. So too there is a difference between remembering things and making memories. Stopping at a roadside pullout and clicking away at even the most gorgeous and tumultuous light shows of our Earth, only to pop back into the car and head out along a drab ribbon of asphalt is to take a snapshot in your mind's eye and does disservice to the photograph, no matter how grand. If I could have told something to my younger self when looking to learn about how to make photographs, I would have told myself "Sit the $&#@ down and absorb the world you're trying to photograph - you can't photograph something you don't understand and you won't understand it until you let it in." I say all this because the photograph above of the valley from the famous Tunnel View pullout was populated with an enormous number of photographers, each very earnest and very serious and very talented. I counted at least two workshops going on and quite a bit of knowledge seemed to be in the offing. By the time I took the second photograph - my wife and I were alone. We had been alone for an hour by the time I took the fourth photograph on this post.
"Letting it in" is something different for everyone and I probably couldn't teach it to my younger self, let along a stranger. It's something like how Buddha can't share enlightenment, but can only share the "way." It is a balancing act between imaging, imagining and observing. Compare the difference in the quality of the light between the photograph that leads this post with the one below (taken just a moment apart). The conservationists problems would quickly end if only he or she could bring all the skeptics, miners and misers to Tunnel View for a late-fall light-show and therein lies the dichotomy.
The Dichotomy of the Valley
Tunnel View is famous because it presents the major aspects of the valley so harmoniously. Yosemite's scale seems to grow in proportion to its distance from the viewer. Half Dome is distant but towering, El Capitan is accurately represented as an impossibly sheer and impossibly beautiful slab of granite, some titanic slab table laid on its side, and nearest of all is the Bridalveil spilling fresh mountain run-off from the high country into a flower garden of amber- and ocher- and scarlet-leaved trees. The valley has just overcome the crisis of its birth, trees new and the cataclysm so near that water has not yet had time to erode its way, crashing instead from precipitous heights and providing our only clue of the impossible scale involved. I had made the pull-out having just hiked 12 miles of the valley floor trail that day and the complementary 10 miles the day before. In that hike I was struck with the out-of-place luxury of the guest resorts within the valley. To me there is something idealogical irreconcilable between a luxury hotel and a preservation of wilderness like Yosemite. I had many thoughts rattling around in my head while I took this last 16-minute exposure. I was thinking about originality, documentation, and the value of an image. The idea I wanted to convey was the dichotomy inherent to these national parks of ours. Yosemite village has a gift shop that sells purses and t-shirts and other trinkets designed to separate bused-in tourists from their money. The shop has a large plaque decrying how many plastic water bottles were consumed in Yosemite the year previous. The plaque is hung above a display selling plastic water bottles. Forever increasing pressure from the outside world to bring more visitors, to consume more wilderness, is one aim of these parks. In stark opposition is the initial, Muir-esque ideology of the parks - a preservation outside of development and the mar of humanity. So I waited for the last rays of twilight to fade and I left my shutter open for what seemed like an eternity, capturing the light pollution of a parade of cars, thundering past Tunnel View, casting their headlamps on the bows of nearby pines and then, on the valley floor, weaving through the gathering fog along the park road between the Pohono bridge and the northern park destinations; I imaged behind it all and above the valley the collected pollution casting a red pall on the sky like the representation of distant war by some Renaissance master.
Originality
To take a step back, and to put an end to my ramblings, it is hard not to take a good photograph from Tunnel View, or for that matter, of the valley. In two trips, I have been able to produce what I think are two rather unique images of the place (at least to the degree that any photographic act is one of creation or uniqueness): "The Dichotomy of the Valley" (above) and "We are Killers" (below). Far more importantly I spent two unforgettable evenings trying to absorb a bit of the grandeur in the thin and chilly mountain air. Had I to boil down the thesis here at play I would simply say that what is lacking in poor photography when compared to great photography are ideas and the successful expression of those ideas. The world is full of information easily found about how to successfully express a photographic idea, but often woefully short of fresh ideas themselves. This is why there was only one Muir, one Adams and one Rowell and why there is only one you. The reason that we need more images of nature, of Tunnel View, of the valley is that no two images are the same, they are all products of their respective creators and our thirst for brilliant creators is never quenched though the wellspring of Yosemite has provided amply. The trick isn't to represent Tunnel View, but to represent yourself through Tunnel View.
Blue like a blue sky, clear, playful on the shores and waterfalls water that brings life in rocky villages and places it's river Cetina.
Nice to remember that this valuable resource is responsible for the gift of life here on planet earth in our corner of the Milky Way Galaxy. It's certainly a too precious a resource to waste or polute.
A sculpture nearly completely out of 2x2-bricks.
See more: www.brickup.de/gallery/wellspring-of-life/
height / width / depth: 74 / 27 / 37 centimeters
weight: 2,89 kilograms
Blue like a blue sky, clear, playful on the shores and waterfalls water that brings life in rocky villages and places it's river Cetina.
Mortal Recoil: Total Recall – The Life of Meaning in the Carnal Nation ~
If you are an immortal being living through a succession of mortal lifetimes, why can’t you remember your past? If we’re all in control of our own destinies, how and why have we decided to forget?
Where do you go when you’re asleep? How do you ‘go to sleep’? Are you the same person when you wake up? Can you remember who you were yesterday? How much of your own childhood do you remember? How much of last month – last year?
Have you ever experienced anything you wanted to forget? Have you ever wished you could start your life all over – with a blank slate?
If I want to remember my previous lives, I must explore memory itself to pass through the waters of forgetfulness and reach the dawn of illumination. I must expand and refine my recollections of this life, sorting truth from accretion and memory from fantasy. I must divine for truth as a dowser divines for hidden water or minerals.
I must learn how to tell truth from falsehood, illusion and self-delusion – and continually practice this art, by being my harshest critic and taskmaster and my most compassionate mentor and friend. I must develop a very sensitive bullshit detector and an expansive sense of empathy for the blind sleepwalkers all around me.
I can’t expect the world to make much impression on me if I’m living a half-waking dream all my life – if the reality revealed by my senses is always passing me by, drowned out by the incessant commentary always running through my mind. I have to be certain I’m awake to know I’m not dreaming a vivid fantasy.
I have to be here now if I want to actually experience my life. I have to be mindful of what’s really happening inside me and all around me. To do that, I have to stop my thoughts, or alternately separate my self from the eternal chatter of the surface veneer of my identity – the acculturated monkey mind and emotions that have grown with me since I was swimming in my mother’s womb.
I have to find a deeper wellspring within, beyond the unending entertainments that distract me from life itself. I have to silence the chatter or remove myself from its internal influence, by locating my self in the centre of the eternal cyclone of thought and emotion.
I have to know who it is who goes to sleep and wakes up every night and every day.
I have to know the true meaning of the word ‘meditation’, which has nothing whatever to do with thinking. I have to find out who it is that’s doing all the thinking – or being distracted by it!
I have to open my mind to all the things that the purblind natives of this dawning New Millennium deny and exclude from their blinkered tunneled visions – the realities filtered out by hidebound neo-feudal cultures that stubbornly refuse to observe anomalies, discrepancies and outright disproof of their common beliefs and quaint ‘scientific’ notions.
If I want to have a life I have to walk away from the screen when I finish reading this and explore reality – if my memory span extends that far!
If I am not the sum of my thoughts, beliefs, habits and culture, then what am I? What is within me that survives to carry on?
Am I a projection into this four dimensional TimeSpace, a partial expression of an expanded being, who simultaneously dwells throughout many other dimensions as well? Am I part of something and someone that dwells in all the hyperspaces and parallel continua that we know exist (in implicate, interconnected conjunction with the reality we can see, hear, feel, smell and taste with our terrestrial time-bound senses), from the observations of physics and the realities implicit in geometry? And from the subtle magic of synchronicity and coincidence…
When you realise your mind isn’t yours and your consciousness isn’t confined to the cave of your skull, it’s easy to see how an apparently finite, mortal, death-bound being could in fact be a virtual extension of something else entirely. You can access all these realms and dimensions by expanding y/our consciousness. And paradoxically, this is facilitated by concentrating on the smallest things – or nothing at all.
Staying alive and aware is a continual weaning process. Potty training only ends in infancy in primitive societies full of throwaway people with short lives and attention spans, whose purpose is simply to maintain a dreaming gene-pool. Gaining complete control of your breathing, digestive system, heartbeat, brain activity, fertility and all other physical parameters is well within the capabilities of most children. It’s the way out of the matrix.
Almost all those who could have taught us how to escape the prisons of our cultures by exploring our own nature were burned at the stake or stoned to death by our superstitious grandparents or forebears – but the techniques are implicit in the forms and functions of our bodies; a true seeker will always find a way, and will be helped along by the indivisible invisible hands of those who’ve preceded you, if your mind and heart are in the right place. In a universe where memory is truly ineradicable, lost techniques and memories can be recovered and resurrected.
In our primitive superstition-ridden cultures of the early New Millennium – in which people are automatically taught to be suspicious and afraid of their own bodies and sexuality – most humans don’t even know where their physical organs are located after a decade of ‘education’. How can we expect to have any idea of what we are when we’re encouraged not to look at (or touch) our selves or each other? How can we find our true nature (or even nature itself) if we allow ourselves to be continually distracted by bullshit and melodrama? Will we find ourselves in a sitcom or ‘reality’ show? Do clothes make the woman? How’s the attention span going?
If you want to be cleansed of unpleasant memories or the pitiful painful results of an unexamined life and self-destructive lifestyle, an easy way is to cut off all your sensory inputs. You can do this by staying in a sensory deprivation chamber, by taking opiates, by going to sleep or by dying. If you remain in a sensory deprivation chamber for a couple of weeks your mind will be washed clean – unless you’re particularly adept at meditation – and a womb makes an excellent sensory deprivation chamber, washing you in the warm waters of forgetfulness for months.
Some philosophers suggest that if people knew they were immortal, we’d all automatically be aware of the laws of karma and dharma and practice the Golden Rule. But immortality is no impediment to free will. We all have many of the same motivations to be creative, honourable and compassionate or cruel, uncaring and destructive, whether we have a small single life or a big multiplex one. Regardless of whether you’re immortal or not, the same ethical questions apply; and either way, you can’t leave yourself behind and wherever you go, there you are, for as long as you are you. It’s an excellent motivation for changing the things in yourself you aren’t comfortable with – and a terrible lesson for would-be suicides.
In the folklore of forgetfulness, the amnesiac is compelled to relive aspects of the events they have forgotten; he who forgets the lessons of his story is condemned to repeat them. Until full waking memory relinks the past with the future, the amnesiac is trapped in a cycle of repetition – and hell is often defined as repetition.
Yet immortality provides a wider and deeper perspective into the connectedness of all things and beings, and this does make a fundamental difference to our beliefs, motives and actions. In the absolute centre of the cyclone, I am you, and we are Divine.
Who are you again? Are you distracted yet? What’s that over there?
Your parents and grandparents were happy and satisfied to be lied to and cheated by those who still get away with stealing the wealth and knowledge of the Earth (and everywhere else) for themselves – are you?
Turn on. Tune in. Opt OUT! Find like-minded friends and work with them to free the world and free our Mind…
@ hermetic.blog.com/2008/03/4/ by R. Ayana
// The cure for indifference is curiosity // For an inquisitive mind // Shall never be vacant //
// Model // Kruti Shah //
Wellspring Well Dressed for Spring Fashion Show. Toronto, Canada. February 22, 2017. (photo: Vito Amati/Ryan Emberley Photography)
#Repost @teachforuganda ・・・ The United Nations' World Day of Social Justice is annually observed on February 20. #TeachForUganda aims at encouraging and supporting social justice through education. An education is the best way out of poverty! #socialjustice #povertyalleviation #education #Uganda #worlddayofsocialjustice
Beauty appears to gush from the center of these beautiful flowers. Does anyone know what they are called?
Wellspring Well Dressed for Spring Fashion Show. Toronto, Canada. February 22, 2017. (photo: Vito Amati/Ryan Emberley Photography)
Yesterday I asked the wonderful Tom to take my photo. It was a bit odd to be on the other side of the camera... but I like the photos he took. Thank you, Tom.
Have you read about the parent-led initiatives that are transforming Musave School yet? Thanks to our Asset Based Community Development (#ABCD) training, communities are recognizing their own assets and skills in problem solving. With this program, communities like the one surrounding Musave School can ensure the sustainability of quality education by using their own strengths to support their school.⠀ ⠀ Learn more here: ift.tt/2gIV9mG ⠀ Thanks to generous donors, donations are MATCHED until December 31st. Will you partner with us and invest in #sustainable change?⠀ ⠀ #community #communitydevelopment #education #qualityeducation #Rwanda⠀
Wellspring Well Dressed for Spring Fashion Show. Toronto, Canada. February 22, 2017. (photo: Vito Amati/Ryan Emberley Photography)
Wellspring is a small, contemporary Anglican church in a Denver suburb. This mailer is for a marriage series they are starting in January. It will go to surrounding neighborhoods. They have never done anything like this before. They want their vision statement on the mailer, but I am concerned that it comes off a little stiff and unclear. Any thoughts on content and design? I have to turn this around quickly.
Wellspring's Well Dressed for Spring Event. Toronto, ON, Canada. Feb 25, 2015. (Image: Ryan Emberley)