thoughts and musings – Page 22 – LLOYD'S LENS PHOTOGRAPHY LLC

The River Awakens

Morning in the mountains of Appalachia can be spectacular. The fury of old man winter is no match for the warm southern sun. Fire bursts over the mountains and the frost shrinks back little by little until nothing is left.

The Kanawha River blazing with the light of a new day begins to shake itself free of its icy cage. The river has work to get done today. Barges must be moved and energy has to be produced. Downstream there’s hot steel to be quenched and tempered. It’s a very busy day ahead for the mighty Kanawha River.

Pretending

Color Photography

Today circumstances colluded to prevent me from participating in the corporate Monday. (I’ll try to hide my disappointment 😁) My moment of freedom allowed the opportunity to drop by Cathedral Falls and catch an image of the frozen waterfall. The winter scene awakened the child in me and soon I could imagine myself as some Paleolithic hunter tracking a woolly mammoth on the ice. Never lose your ability to pretend. Adulthood doesn’t always mean that can’t play hooky and have an adventure.

Cultivate Life

black and white photography, encouragement, Thoughts and Musing

This old barn near Summerville West Virginia always seems to have something to offer my lens. I was raised in agriculture. I look at the old barns and think about the life that was housed there. Not just grain, hay and farming supplies but the people who worked the land. I can hear the ghostly echoes of conversations about life and love, business and pleasure. I can hear the footsteps of young people who think that they’re up to mischief but really are just learning about life. People who share work are investing in each other. Work parties often ended in generations of close friends. You may not have barns where you live but odds are that you do have people. I want to encourage you to reach out to a neighbor and offer to share in some work. You’ll be surprised to see how large your family really is.

Bridge To Today.

Color Photography, encouragement, Thoughts and Musing

It’s a new day in a new year in the Three Rivers area of Gauley Bridge West Virginia. This is my first published image of 2018. We are creatures of the moment. It’s so easy to get lost in tomorrow’s plans that we miss the moment. It wasn’t until I got serious about photography that I began to appreciate the here and now. The moment you are in is more precious than gold and its so easily lost to sands of time. Once it’s gone it’s gone and looking back means you’re going to miss the next one coming. We are constantly on the edge of a moment. We can choose to stay in one place and let the moment pass or we can step on to the bridge and become a part of the moment. It’s all about observation, action and choice.

Back in the 80s I read a book that implied that seeing through the eyes of God meant that one could stop time and observe patterns in past, present and future. While actually freezing the space-time continuum and casually making notes about the nature of the universe isn’t actually within our grasp there is a way to enhance our perception.

I call it Rippling. When you drop a pebble into a calm pool of water it produces concentric rings. The waves travel outward in a even pattern. We’re very familiar with this because of the thousands and thousands of pictures on the internet. But there’s more to the event. Those ripples don’t just go out. They also interact with the edge of the pool and other ripples. Eventually they form patterns that an active observer can read like a map. It’s said that back in the day a Polynesian sailor could lay down in the floor of his boat and find land that was out of sight just from the pattern of waves.

We know that the ripples have a source and with practice we can learn what direction they come from and the size of the event that caused the ripples the moment is identified. Once we have mapped the event it becomes part of a larger map and so on. It becomes easier to predict the next event by the previous ripples and whether or not we want to step on the bridge and become a part of the moment.

OUT OF THE PIT OF FEAR ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION (guest post)

encouragement

Tonight I want to do a bonus post. Since its the first day of the New Year it’s a great time for new beginnings. The longest night of year has passed and if we watch carefully we’ll see the day lasting a little bit longer. As life returns to the Earth so to do our souls awaken with new energy. But, sometimes the day seems to be dark just for us. The crushing weight of depression effects not only ourselves but those around us. In an effort to help people find and appreciate the new dawn I’m inviting my wife Angela to take over my blog as a guest and talk about her book Out Of The Pit Of Fear, Anxiety and Depression.

Hello everyone!!! At some point in life I believe depression touches us all. Sometimes there’s a cause that we can pin point, for example: the death of a loved one, the loss of a job or some other major life change. Other times we can be taken over by depression and not know why. It’s a combination of many small things.

I went through a horrible time with depression and I describe it as being in the bottom of a pit where no light or air exist. It is a smothering darkness, that makes you want to die. It’s easy for someone on the outside to look at you and say, “Oh just snap out of it, it’ll be okay.” If it were only that easy.

Once I escaped the pit of darkness and depression, I wanted to do something to give back. It took me a long time to write my book because I wanted everything to be so precise.

I’ve often prayed, ” Lord, please don’t allow what I’ve been through to be in vain. Let me use that to help someone else escape the pit.”

I now know you have to want to escape and it is a fight. But you are worth the fight. Freedom is worth the fight.

The above link to my book will take you to Amazon where you can download it for free this week. From now through Jan 5. If you are depressed or know someone who is suffering from depression, I hope you get my book and it helps you navigate the rough waters ahead.

I will leave you with a quote that helps me keep perspective:

I CANNOT CHANGE THE PAST…I CAN ONLY MAKE THE MOST OF TODAY AND LOOK WITH HOPE TO TOMORROW.

May your days be filled with optimism, it is possible to live a happy life after depression. I am a survivor of the darkness of depression.

Thanks for reading, feel free to share with anyone you know suffering from depression. Thank you for your support and encouragement of my husband Lloyd and his new business venture.