The Human Spirit: Meant to Move, Meant to be Moved
My go-to quote time and again: “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” **
Although lately I’ve become challenged in the pursuit of finding beauty. Oh you’re wondering why? Well, earlier this year I spent two weeks touring and photographing Iceland - my first trip there (and certainly not my last) and honestly I will never be the same.
So you can imagine my dismay upon returning home to CT. Yeap, I lost all inspiration to pick up my camera and create. There are no glaciers here, no 800+ year-old ice-caves, no 200 foot majestic waterfalls, no volcanoes or lava-tunnels, no glacier lagoons or iceberg beaches, and no Aurora Borealis phenomena to name a few.
“If you truly love nature,” …
I know, I know, but it’s not the same, not even close in comparison to the land of Fire of Ice. Pssst, A faint whisper in my head, but Mark …
… “you will find beauty everywhere.”
What will it take for me to get out and shoot? I’m normally full of zeal and out and about with my camera.
This rut and failure to create actually brought me to a spiritual place. I found myself asking… what moves us to connect with nature and with each other? For example, why are we so attracted to a sunset anyway, or a dramatic sky, or any event in nature? I mean it's like a social gathering of sorts. Doesn’t matter where you are or who you’re with, once nature begins the show and that sky turn’s red with all sorts of colors, we humans become gravitated to its beauty and in those short moments everything is perfect in the world. So much so that we’re willing to sacrifice a few moments of the experience so that we can grab our phones and take a picture forever capturing but a slice in time.
Even the forces of nature hold beauty in a peculiar way. A volcanic eruption with its massive smoke and toxic fumes holds us in awe with its raw beauty. The calmness of the ocean and the rhythm of its tide can bring us to a state of peace, yet those very waters can, and often devastate us with their raging power and massive force. Either way, we are naturally drawn to it, we respect it, we want to experience it, we are… connected to it. I mean after all, from a scientific approach, we are made from the same 92 elements that everything on earth is made from! If that’s not a direct connection with our world, then I don’t know what is?
So where am I going with this? I needed inspiration, something to get me moving. The problem though was here I am some 3 months later and my heart is still in Iceland. I had to re-connect with my homeland and look inward. I began by seeking words and discovered this quote:
“The human spirit needs places where nature has not been re-arranged by the hand of man” ~ Author Unknown
Clearly the author had a connection with nature to write with this insight. I wonder what she experienced that brought these words to life. For the first time since leaving Iceland I began to feel that passion we humans thrive on, you know what I mean right? It’s as if passion itself is the fuel that moves us to create, and just like nature, we humans were meant to move and to be moved. It wasn’t till after digesting these words that I realized I “needed” (as the author stresses) to find beauty in intimate places and where better to find that then right here in New England, my homeland. Bigger isn’t always better.
In this short video, you’ll discover intimate scenery of a New England Waterfall. We’ll take a deeper look with rather unusual perspectives. This waterfall’s highlight is a 55 foot horsetail drop adorned with hemlocks and plenty of greenery, but I found myself spending more time shooting upstream and discovering this gem with its intimate pools, cascades and narrow chutes. Vivid ferns decorate the bold rock-formations along brookside, while wild flowers enhance the beauty of this forest space not re-arranged by the hand of man. ***
So please enjoy this short visual story. I hope you’ll be “moved as I was”.
~ Photographer’s Daybook
The entire video was shot by drone. Up-close snippets hovering cautiously close over the falls crest’s and drop’s made these organic views possible. Some of the footage portray’s what a bird may feel flying freely through the forest. Honestly, I have never flown my aircraft in these tight spaces before and yet I found the experience to be very rewarding.
Footnotes
** “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh
*** Remember to leave no trace as you enjoy these places “not re-arranged by the hand of man”
