janet st. john

Inspired by Kim Manley Ort's Adventures in Seeing 2: Focus Habit 5: Get Curious Kim’s exercises got me asking a lot of questions in August, including a recurring one, What if? I found myself wondering, What if I look at this ____ really close up? What if I seek a new perspective about ______, like looking from the ground upward? What if I imagine a statue as a real person? What if I try to capture a hummingbird in flight? My various attempts—a super close-up of a Moroccan rug

Inspired by Kim Manley Ort's Adventures in Seeing 2: Focus Habit 4: Pay Attention This month, again with inspiration from Kim Manley Ort’s book, Adventures in Seeing, I sought and found beauty and wonder in both the simple and extraordinary. My senses seemed more multi-engaged, as the notion of listening, an exercise in the chapter, really lodged in my mind while I viewed the world. The overarching theme this month was reflections. I noticed reflections all around my environm

Inspired by Adventures in Seeing (Kim Manley Ort). 1: Pause Habit 3: Acceptance This month, Kim Manley Ort’s contemplative habit focused on acceptance and the various ways we can respond to that concept through photography. I found this habit both relieving and challenging. What was challenging? Empathy toward, and acceptance of, outward self. Taking selfies and trying to view and treat the image as if I am a loving friend considering the me in that photograph, as Kim suggest

Inspired by Adventures in Seeing (Kim Manley Ort). 1: Pause Habit 2: Be Humble I spent the past month considering the ideas in, and experimenting taking photographs based upon, Kim Manley Ort’s next section in Adventures in Seeing. Surprisingly, reflecting on Habit 2: Be Humble often left me NOT wanting to take photographs. I definitely was pausing to notice simplicity and elements of essence all around, but then I would feel the impulse to release those single moments of not

In an attempt to expand my ways of seeing and being in the world, I have been working with Kim Manley Ort's Adventures in Seeing. Following the exercises she outlines in the book, I began my first photographic-life adventure with Habit #1: Pause. Some of my efforts are shown above. This first habit was quite challenging, largely because the past month was booked solid with work and personal obligations. However, on my morning dog walks, I glanced around a lot, forced myself t

Pixabay.com. Public Domain Image. Waiting for Rain White vapor, turns grey, builds over the mountains. Invisible hand stirs the atmospheric pot. Air, water particles swirl. Everything coagulates, coming together toward one desire. Rain. The land so parched, years of thirst in the air for more living, more moisture in the soil, more greenery, more sprouting, more food from seeds, berries, flowers. More rabbits to feed raucous parties of coyotes. More bears from quiet mountain

South of Moab, Utah. July 2017. There is a hole in the stone where the sky leaks through. Forward window. Vista chance. How the rock wall submitted. Let the elements have their way. Beige, pink, red-brown striations mark time like tree rings. Show wrinkled wear like faces weathered by sun and wind, worn down by age. Green relief of shrubs, wildflowers, scrub grasses. Cool tones for scorching desert. Cool blue above to bring us all down a degree or two, just by looking, just b

Image ID: con00006, NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS) Collection Location: New Mexico, Socorro area Photo Date: 2014 September 24 Photographer: Martha Cather Credit: NOAA Weather in Focus Photo Contest 2015 White-orange, grey shadow emerging, lava-gold inside. Against the blue of the world, we rise, sometimes after lightning has ignited our forests, us. Wind squalls and sends whatever isn’t firmly fixed flying. Or monsoon rains spill from broken-bottom sky-buckets. It all

Vern Edwards. Black and white photograph. “Solstice.” Sun Shower The women got wise in the sweltering weeks since school let out. Their sons and daughters, wilted like garden violas in high noon heat, kept setting off pre-July 4th flares and fireworks. Not the literal kind. Just temper tantrums and petty arguments over princess gear, PlayStation, and swimsuits. The children wanted what they wanted. So did the women. Those who worked away from home wanted education- or activit

Lesley Howard. Sidewalk After the Storm. http://artofpractice.com Collage It was early autumn. Not every tree had relinquished its green adornment for a yellow or brittle- brown coat. There was little red or orange to punctuate the iron-weighted clouds. You said it felt smothering. That was the afternoon we left the restaurant I loved and walked to your apartment. I talked about the food, the atmosphere, how it felt like a real London pub. You said, “It’s lame. This is Portla

Kim Manley Ort. Photograph. https://www.kimmanleyort.com/blog/ Rainbow Scrim Through color-stitched-sight, I see fields outside the airplane window, farmland stretching toward some indefinite conclusion. Here, a rectangle. There, line-roads. Land crisscrossed with crops and rows, the farmer’s fabric, woven with a little plot of earth. Sky its usual blue, clouds yellowing through my special lens, my way of seeing the abstraction to which all can be reduced: pattern, color, lin

Town square called Place aux herbes in Uzès France.Photo.SilverWainhouse. http://womanistics.blogspot.com/p/about-sassy.html Beneath a star-less sky, the square sparkles. In France, everything sparkles. Champagne. Perfume. A meal pops, wine glistens on one’s tongue. Words’ song-cadence, even ricochet-fast, still melodic. The winter-dead trees in the square have manmade sparkle. Wrapped in mini-lights, they draw a woman closer. She is wide awake, stomach full with rich French

Peggy Acott. Brooklyn Bridge. https://www.instagram.com/pmacott/ Suspension There is a line that divides us. Some keep walking, guided by signs and symbols to keep moving forward. We catch up to others. We fall behind. We are on a bridge that unites city to city, gives us bird’s eye view of river, makes us both aerial and tower-weighted with caissons sunken to bedrock. Isn’t there always such motion? The reaching and grounding. Counter forces. Suspension. A woman stops on a b

Henry Peach Robinson. British, 1830 – 1901. She Never Told her Love 1857. Albumen print from a wet collodion negative. Photograph. 17.8 x 21.8 cm (7 x 8 9/16 in.) Paul Mellon Fund. Open Access. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington She Never Told Her Love She held it inside like the pit of some fruit, no chance to ripen. At a lunch party, Helen met Miranda. While they spoke of the fine day, the hostess’s lovely home, Helen sensed disinterest in the delicate woman, tire

Blessed Art Thou Among Women Gertrude Käsebier. American, 1852 - 1934 c.1900 Medium photogravure 23.5 x 14.3 cm (9 1/4 x 5 5/8 in.) sheet: 28.5 x 17.2 cm (11 1/4 x 6 3/4 in.) Credit: Robert Menschel and the Vital Projects Fund Open Access. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington Blessed art thou among women, she who whispers secret wisdom in a daughter’s ear. Blessed she, bold child, face-forward, poised to exit light-belly room, poised to enter dim hallway, dark world.