I always find it easier to work on my series of images in December. Because December with its shorter days is a harder time of year for me I push to find the beauty in the moment. In June the lush greens of Virginia, the long days, the heat, and the abundance lull me into a slow dance. I weave between the lists of things to be done, the exhaustion woven into the humid heat of the day, and a love of lingering in twilight.
At the end of the afternoon I raced to take a photo while I still had light before the brewing thunderstorm arrived. I chose the pot and the backdrop then set off to the garden for the perfect object to perch. Just then the rain pelted down. I reached in my pocket to find a red onion I had pulled by mistake while weeding. It was the perfect token to balance in my pot.
“There is a particular madness at both of the year’s extremes. Each point carries its own depths of longing. Each point moves us on. Between them, we find a kind of unsteady balance. Over the course of a lifetime, we will live out long cycles of high and low, and we rehearse that in the cycle of each year. Such is the tough love we are given by the world. It shows us exactly what it means by living, over and over again, until we remember it.”
–Katherine May from her newsletter Stray Attention