Let’s Be Candid

One of my favorite ways to photograph children is to just let them be children and to capture candid, real moments and real expressions. I will sit a child down somewhere or hand them a toy or prop—even a stick and a piece of moss works!—and just photograph whatever happens. Today’s post features a few such shots from a recent family photo session I did in a local park with a lovely family here on vacation from Kansas City.

#CandidKids

=^..^=
Private appointments available

earl harris photography
Photographing people, places, pets and ponderings
throughout Central Florida.

Another Cat Pic

#HissLessPurrMore

“Rocky”, Fujifilm X-T1, ISO640, 135mm, f/8.0, 1/60th

=^..^=
Private appointments available

earl harris photography
Photographing people, places, pets and ponderings
throughout Central Florida.

Ceiling of Prayer for Good Harvests

Stepping inside the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests at EPCOT Center’s China Pavilion, one cannot help but look up to marvel at the amazing composite of detail, beauty, color, geometry and craftsmanship that make up its ceiling. The building is a half-sized replica of the original, located at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven complex. It would certainly be deemed by Umberto Eco an exquisite example of “hyperreality*”.

Nikon D800, ISO 1250, 24mm, f/4.5, 1/100 sec

*Travels in Hyperreality, by Umberto Eco — one of my favorite books and examinations of the human condition and our need to imitate and improve that which is inimitable.

=^..^=
Private appointments available

earl harris photography
Photographing people, places, pets and ponderings
throughout Central Florida.

Cleome Pop

Last year, I found an old pack of “variety” seeds in the garage amongst my grandmother’s belongings. It was old and the packaging had turned brown but I thought, “What the heck?”, and tossed them in one of my plant beds in the back yard. I was surprised when one seed popped a fragile green sprout through the soil and steadily transformed into a large, beautiful, swirling display of flowery fireworks. I later learned this majestic beauty was called a “Cleome”. I enjoyed it and its cascading fuchsia blooms for several months.

A few weeks go, I noticed little seedlings popping up in that same bed and all along the back of the house. I recognized the leaf instantly and excitedly began to anticipate dozens of these beautiful things blessing my back yard with their beauty. One of them, the largest of the bunch, began to pop open its blooms a few days ago. #giddy

“Cleome Pop”, Fujifilm X-T1, ISO 320, f/5.6 at 1/250th sec., 104.2 mm

=^..^=
Private appointments available

earl harris photography
Photographing people, places, pets and ponderings
throughout Central Florida.

Stone Cold Gaze

I published this photo on my Facebook page several weeks back. It’s from a granite angel grave marker I seem to keep rephotographing because that cherubic face and those eyes entombed within the texture of the granite somehow draws me back again and again.

=^..^=
Private appointments available.

earl harris photography
Photographing people, places, pets and ponderings
throughout Central Florida.

Self-Portrait

For the fourth time, the holidays came and went without my beloved James. Everywhere I seemed to look, there were reminders of him and the joy we shared and the terror of our battle with the cancer that horrifically tortured him until death mercifully let him go. There amongst the distracted holiday cheer and frenzy of shoppers partied legions of demons, compelling and encouraging us to participate in the futility of escaping the evils of society by contributing to them, urging us to satisfy our lust and greed for more. Always more.

In our ceaseless struggles for more, we too often fail to acquire the one thing we need most: Love. I have come to understand that the reason we don’t receive enough love is simply that we fail to give enough of it away. When love does battle, it doesn’t do it with a sword but with service and humility. I hear the cries declaring we’re making America great again and “taking the country back for Jesus”, but Jesus isn’t and was never here. While we were wiping out indigenous peoples, honing and exhibiting our accomplishments, compelling unbelievers to accept our religious dogma and idolizing our power over others, Jesus has been tirelessly washing the feet of his enemies and showing them he loves them through service, compassion, mercy and healing.

The New Testament bears witness to the many ways Christ tore down the established norms and radically illustrated God’s love for all people equally, without regard for their nationality, family, class, wealth, social status or sin. Clearly, “his ways are not our ways” (Is. 55:8). A significant number of self-proclaimed and self-deceived “Christian Americans” want us to build more walls and create more cultural divisions and nurture extreme divisiveness both domestic and foreign. Yet if America is going to pull off its illusion (delusion?) of being a “Christian nation”, it has to look at least a little bit like Christ. That isn’t the duty of its government or its never-successful efforts to legislate morality, but is the sole duty of its people. Today. Now. It starts with me and it starts with you.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I receive no benefit. Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up. It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” —‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭13:1-8‬ ‭NET‬‬

Live love. I want more.

=^..^=
Private appointments available.

earl harris photography
Photographing people, places, pets and ponderings
throughout Central Florida.

Make America WTF Again

The much-needed hiatus is over and it’s time to get back into this blog and start writing and sharing some of the photographs I’ve been creating over these past several months. So much has transpired since my last post, most notably the holidays (“Bah, humbug!”) and the election that stunned the world. I thus think it’s fitting that my first post not be a photo post at all, but more a statement of my Weltanschauung as 2017 has come bringing with it the certainty of uncertainty and the excitement of being on an out-of-control train on a collision course with fate.

Because I’ve been asking myself “WTF?” a lot as of late, I thought this simple little creation would be perfect for hitting the ground running…

Making Magic with Enlight

This is a photo of Cinderella’s Castle at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, which I captured with my iPhone 6 Plus. I’ve been enjoying playing with Enlight’s photo editing app on my phone, so used it here to add the fairy lights and bursts of fall colored fireworks. You can find Enlight in your app store.

=^..^=
Private appointments available

earl harris photography
Photographing people, places, pets and ponderings
throughout Central Florida.

Abandoned Kitten

Betrayed, frightened, confused
She would never do this to you.

Please. Spay or neuter your pets.

=^..^=
Private appointments available

earl harris photography
Photographing people, places, pets and ponderings
throughout Central Florida.

Broken Flower

“There is no perfection, only beautiful versions of brokenness.”
—Shannon L. Alder

“Broken Flower”, Fujifilm X-T1, ISO 400, f/6.4 at 1/60th sec., 49.4 mm

=^..^=
Private appointments available

earl harris photography
Photographing people, places, pets and ponderings
throughout Central Florida.