i’m working with a graphic design student right now, and we’re figuring out our relationship. she’s a paid intern of sorts, but overqualified for the job. today, we created a pine needle alphabet, and what i liked best was that she didn’t sit around and try to noodle the design into perfection. she got her hands dirty, did good work quickly, and finished. there are lots of good ideas around. there are very few finishers.

alphabet of red pine needles

saint paul, minnesota

today i noticed these curled up leaves on the rhododendron plant at my mom’s back door. last year’s dried and curled leaves are about to fall, just as this year’s buds prepare to burst open. the whole thing reminds me of the japanese sumi-e ink painting style that i have loved for years, and have recently started to pay attention to. i don’t want to say STILL blog needs to go in a new direction, exactly. but i like the idea of absorbing some new influences. sumi-STILL . . . STILL-sumi . . . Hmmm…

rhododendron buds with last year’s leaves

saint paul, minnesota

just this morning i posted on instagram a snarky complaint about how it’s time for winter to move along now. it’s been real. buh bye. and then this afternoon when i finally got out for a walk with the dog, this plant, which i believe is pagoda dogwood, was bursting its buds everywhere. either the universe responded to my griping, or i have insta-egg on my face.

unidentified bud that is always the first to bloom each march

saint paul, minnesota

i was cleaning up today, and came across these dried kermes oak leaves from southern france.  i mention this not because finding oak leaves from southern france while you are sitting out the last snow fall of the winter in minneapolis isn’t interesting in and of itself, but because here i was once again tidying up. it will come as no surprise to any of you who have read this blog regularly or who follow me me on instagram, that i am a minimalist at heart. i need outer simplicity in order to feel inner calm. if i am faced with a big project, my first step is always to “clear the deck”. i clean the house, do the laundry, pay the bills, fill the fridge with several days of meals. i top off the gas tank and wash the car.   sometimes, i’ll even make a run to goodwill or salvation army. then i start working, so i’m all ready now. there must be a project i’m preparing for. i just don’t know what it is yet.

dried kermes oak leaves

autignac, france

arriving at this simple picture of two mallard feathers required a bunch of judgment calls and some hard earned, if now familiar, scraps of knowledge. here’s what i thought about as i took the photo and then post-processed it. i think it’s a great example of how “simple” is often not simple at all. first, it has taken two years of  daily STILL images to realize that feathers don’t want to be photographed in ultra high resolution. if the individual barbs are too clear and crisp, then the whole image is compromised by a distractingly moire optical effect. the answer? shallow depth of field, with focus on on the shaft, not the the barbs.  secondly, those white tips are impossible to photograph on a white background. so, for the first time ever, i intentionally dirtied them up with a little ash so they wouldn’t get lost on the white background. i chose not to do that with the tips of the shafts, and now i am wondering if that was a mistake. thirdly, it took me at least a year of STILL to learn that a damaged feather is almost always more interesting than a perfect feather. this pairing, one perfect one imperfect, was very intentional. finally, that white background is a bear. it is the signature that holds the STILL blog collection together. but to get it, i often have to lighten/brighten an image so much that i lose the very details that caught my attention in the first place. after three years, i have no automatic tricks up my sleeve to solve this problem. every day is a new compromise. so there you have it: one “simple” picture of two mallard feathers.

mallard feathers

vadnais lake, saint paul, minnesota