Day: August 15, 2016

The good thing about social media is that sooner or later, you are compelled to justify or defend everything you do. The bad thing about social media is that sooner or later  you are compelled to justify or defend everything you do.

Tonight, I got a message from Anne saying simply that Maria’s fund-raising campaign for India “was cyber-begging by any other name.”  Anne, a  reliably nasty messager who claims to be a psychologist, has written me before, mostly to suggest I am not too bright. For some reason, I always remember her.

I got another message soon after from a couple complaining about my IR photographs: “we don’t want to discourage your creativity, but we don’t like the green’ish ones, or all those black and white photos, we just want color photographs of the animals and the farm.”

In the interests of my Civility campaign, I did answer Anne L, I said she should use any name she likes, it is not business of mine. I didn’t reply to the couple, I chose to spare them what I was thinking. I might have unintentionally hurt their feelings.

The response to the IR photographs have been interesting. Many people do not care for them, they prefer color photographs of the animals and the farm. Some people get irritated by any photographs that are not of the dogs or donkeys or cats. Some people love them, are fascinated by them. Others just find them strange.

Some people – thoughtful people, I appreciate their comments – do not care for the unusual representations of Infrared photography. I have very mixed feelings about IR photos myself, I haven’t quite landed yet. I love some of them, I don’t care for many.

I haven’t quite figured IR out, I’m struggling with the settings and the exposure issues of a camera that can see things I can’t see. It’s a work in progress for me. I love the way IR captures big skies.

Also this morning, I got a helpful, even inspiring message about IR photography from Karen McRitchie, a teacher of students with disabilities.  She said she found the IR photos interesting, she had no idea what they were at first. Her first thoughts, she said, were “how wondrous a gift it is to be able to see the world’s colors” in ways human beings can’t see them.

IR photography is called the photography of the unseen, the camera sees light beyond the spectrum available to people.

As someone who works with people with disabilities, the IR photos reminded her of the photos transformed to show what it is like for someone to be colorblind.

“The absence of rich colors makes me more appreciative of the colors of life,” she wrote. “Also, the photos sometimes show things we might not notice in a regular photograph.”

The IR photos, she wrote, offer a new perspective, and “perspective can be enlightening. Your photos provide a new perspective of everyday things and although the photos are unusual – it’s good to step away from comfort zones; to look at the world from a different perspective. Have a great week and thanks.”

This is the kind of thoughtful message that helps me to understand my own feelings better than I could by myself. I’d like to meet Karen, I wish I had a teacher like her.

She helped me to see what I love about IR photography, it gives me a new way to see the world, and sees things my own eyes cannot see. It is, in fact, good to step away from my comfort zones about photography and see things from a different perspective. At the same time, the absence of color is a challenge for me I love the clarity of color and also of black and white.

In a sense, as Karen suggests,  the absence of color helps me to see color more clearly than ever. Sometimes, when you are forced to imagine something rather than see it,  you see it more clearly than ever.

I take a lot of colorful photos of animals, and I love doing that, it is one of the core things that drew me to photography. I will not stop doing that. But I also want more than that for myself and my work, and people will, of course, have to make up their own minds about what they wish to see and what they wish to not see.

There are many places online to see good animal photography.

I think IR photography is a good thing to talk about, and I welcome feedback about it.  It is not easy to take a good photograph, but digital photography makes it easier than ever before, and IR photography makes it difficult. You really have to earn a good photograph.

That kind of challenge is essential to growth.

The blog is not just about cute animals and pretty landscapes, it never was and never will be only that. It’s about a life, and a life comes in many different hues and shades.

Creativity is about experimentation, about mistakes just as much as successes.

I have always taken the Beavis & Butthead approach to photography: because I don’t know what i am supposed to think, I am free to think. We’ll see where it was, and I am grateful to Karen McRitchie for helping me see just where I am with it.

When the sheep graze, they often bunch together, leaning on each other with their heads down. I got close and took this shot of their wool, which is growing rapidly after their June shearing. The curls at the top belong to Rosemary, our white Romney and the carrier of some very beautiful wool. We are going to see the remaining ewe in the sheep taken from a farm after the owner was evicted. The remaining ewe, a gray Romney, needs rescuing, she is supposed to be a jumper (fence jumper) so we want to go take a look at her.

I think Red and I can handle her, but I want to make sure. We are fond of Izzy and Rosemary.

Fate was engaged in her conscientious racing around the sheep in the pasture today, it was hot and humid. Suddenly, she vanished, and I looked around and discovered she had retreated deep into the marshy wet part of the pasture where brushhogger Ted Emerson gets stuck every year.

Turns out there was some water there from the rains this week and Fate plopped down in a cool, wet mess, then got up and resumed her mad circling around the sheep. They did not seem to notice. Fate believes the universe is her personal territory, she respects no boundaries.

I think flowers die more beautifully and with more character than almost any living things I know. Around this time of summer, the light begins to change, the leaves begin to tatter, the flowers start to die. This is a wrench for me, because color and light means so much to me. I consider flowers to be holy sparks from the sublime holy world, and their fading is a window into the nature of life. We all fade, I hope to see our own fading as being as beautiful as the fading of flowers.

They tell me autumn is coming, the season of rebirth and change, the gateway to winter, the most beautiful time of year in many ways, These garden flowers reveal the narrative of life and time, one in full flower, one in change, one gone. What more touching parable of life itself.

We estimate that Maria will need a minimum of $6,000 to go to India to help the victims of the sex trafficking trade, for food, lodging, materials, air travel, registration and visa and vaccination fees and other expenses.

Those of you who are eager and impatient to contribute ASAP – we have already heard from many of you and thanks – can do so simply and right now by sending checks to Maria Wulf/India Trip, c/o Post Office box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. We realized last night that we need to get started right away, even though there will be a number of ways to contribute.

For those who missed it, Maria has been invited to  travel to Calcutta,  – re-named Kolkata, India – next February to help formerly enslaved sex workers and victims of sex trade trafficking learn to make potholders and also learn some fiber arts to help them find ways of taking care of themselves and earning a living.

The organizers of the program, the Village Experience, believe that Maria’s potholders can help these women – many of whom have been kidnapped from distant countries and enslaved in India – learn how to make something they can sell and help them provide for their children.

I don’t know of a better cause that I have ever been lucky enough to be associated with. Maria is touched beyond words by the invitation. We figure the trip will cost at least $6,000, possibly a bit more. We are looking at every possible way to keep expenses down.

Maria has the greatest heart and most generous spirit of anyone I have known in my life. Kolkata is the home of Mother Teresa and her great work. We have a lot of money to raise in a short time, and we need to get going.

It will be a challenging trip for her, India is an amazing, very different place. She is awestruck and humbled by the invitation and we have been talking and calculating to figure out what it will cost and what she will need. She is exploring some possible grant programs and matching grants to see if she can raise some funds,  and she will be launching a crowdsourcing page to raise money beyond our blog communities within the week.

I felt we should offer our readers here a chance to contribute first, if they wish.

I got a dozen messages in the last day or so asking how people can help right now. Some options: You can wait for the crowdsourcing, of course, or send a check to our P.O. Box  (Maria Wulf, India Journey, Post Office Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.)

Maria’s potholders have a rich history, she started making them when she re-started her work as an artist after we met in 2007. They were inexpensive, a way of earning some money as she went through the very frightening experience of deciding to make her work a full-time job. Her potholders made this possible, they have evolved along with her, she has sold thousands of them, kept them inexpensive so that people could afford them.

The potholders hold a special place in our lives together and in her art, and now they will take her even further, to India. Life is amazing.

Once in awhile, people suggest she should abandon the low-profit potholders in favor of her bigger pieces, she will never do that, they are the heart and soul of her emergence as an artist, they have been sold all over the world.

In a sense, those potholders have been the symbol and mainstay of her art, enabling her to make quilts, hanging pieces, tote bags, scarves and other fiber works, all from discarded clothing, just like the people who inspired her work, the Gee’s Bend quilters of Alabama.

People who wish to contribute via Paypal can do so anytime by using  her Paypal account and  ID there – [email protected] (please indicate the money is for India) or by waiting a few days and contributing through her crowdsourcing page. I will be posting regular updates about the trip and so will she. And checks to the Post Office Box will always be acceptable.

We need to have most, if not all of the money raised by November.

I will be contributing whatever I can and several local businesses have already contacted us and asked if they could help. Heather at Over The Moon has offered to contribute $2 for every pair of socks sold at her store (518 677-3005). I will contribute all of the proceeds from any of my photographs sold at my Portrait Show in September at the Round House Cafe, and some other local businesses have their own ideas and are figuring them out.

Our community is already rallying to Maria, a neighbor brought over $100 in cash this morning.

Maria has already received some contributions in the mail, and we haven’t even asked yet. This is wonderful, an important cause. The plight of the sex workers, some slaves, has touched people all over the world.

People have asked if I am going, and I am not. This is her trip, not mine, her thing. It wouldn’t be right for me to go, although I’d love to see India one day. I think it could change her life in so many important ways, and it is a wonderful vindication of her art and her spirit. Those women in India will love her, as I do, and so many other people do.  She is a wondrous teacher.

This journey, this passage to India,  is what her heart and soul is about.

So if you wish to help right away, we are eager to get started. the P.O. Box is a good way to do it, we will post the other options as they become available, I believe this must happen and will happen and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the good wishes and support already shown.

It will be a wonderful journey, and she will share it with all of us in many ways – blogging, photographs, quilts and potholders, and just think of the fabrics she will bring home. We need $6,000. This is the official launch, blog readers first. Maria Wulf/India Trip, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.