Yesterday I led worship in A Cappella, then preached both services, and went home and crashed, as wiped out as I’ve been in a long time. Sick for most of the week, I propped up on the coach and through one lazy eye managed to watch a few more episodes of the first season of Friday Night Lights, and then slept a bit. Then Anjie and I watched a romantic comedy starring Amy Adams called Leap Year. A silly little movie with a terribly clunky screenplay, but all I really saw was the lighting. Shot mostly in Ireland, the lighting was dramatic, perhaps overly so, but shot after shot painted beautiful, romantic images, and in the end, I didn’t care for the movie much, but I loved the shots.
But I know what the deal is: the deal is that I’ve been lugging my camera around with for the past month or so, capturing images and light, and whenever I really focus on what’s in the lens, my sense of visual life changes.
I see compositions everywhere. I catch myself staring at layers of reflections in windows, the transparency of leaves, the tumbling unfolding of clouds, the yellows that season the landscapes along the roads I travel each day. I watch the expressions of the people I’m with, wishing I could capture the various nuances. Textures of dying things intrigue me, the curves of graceful yielding to time and gravity.
It’s all about light. The age of the digital camera makes it possible to experiment endlessly with apertures and shutter speeds, and I find myself wandering the neighborhood (when I should be writing) looking for possibilities. And what I capture I like, but what’s the point? What to do with all these images cluttering up my computer?
I don’t know, but I know enough about the creative life to trust that these little windows of visual flurry add something to what’s going on in my hopper about projects that have yet to be created, written, and performed.
In the meantime, I’ll put a few here, a few on Facebook, a few on Flickr, and maybe someone will catch a glimpse of something that will make them smile. At least it’s in the Hopper.
Enjoy…
JEFF BERRYMAN 
It’s an interesting process, this creativity thing. You never know what the Lord will place in front of you to contribute to whatever you’re working on. I particularly like white-bark-1 which invites me into the play of light on every tree trunk, and the variations of living green from the lawn to the leaves. Greenlake looks somehow painterly in the trees above the meandering crowd. Everything here exudes life.
I’ll take a wild guess that what you think you should be writing about is life as well. That’s what Leaving Ruin was about.
Thanks for sharing your view through the lens.
Love these photos, Jeff. Thanks for posting them.
I like the images. I agree with you, it is all about the light (and not just for pictures)!