Now, here comes the embarrassing confession part of this post. I have been on a lot of workshops with my good friend David Middleton. He is, in fact, well known to be a jinx on sunsets. The last time I was teaching with David and there was a really great sunset – he wasn’t there! Sadly for him, he was in the hospital, happily for the participants, the sunset was glorious. The more typical situation for a Brenda- David workshop, or a Jeff – David workshop, or a Rod – David workshop, or a David- David workshop, is that it looks promising and then suddenly the heavy marine layers arrives, or the off shore cloud bank swallows the sun and it is an official dud.

Yes, I realize as I type that this is a lame excuse, but the past has proven the trend, and it is the only excuse I have. Therefore, this past week, during a wonderful workshop in Tofino, up on Vancouver Island, I made a fatal mistake. I A S S U M E D the very dark sky, wind, rain and drear (not to mention David’s presence) meant no sunset.

In fact, this unbridled pessimism, generally unlike me, took over my brain, and even worse, my mouth – and I spoke aloud to a participant (you know who you are!) the following sentence:

” ..it’s going to stink.” (Ok, ok, I even mighta said “suck”.  I told you, this was not my finest hour)….” you might as well leave now and go have diner and a nice glass of wine…”

The part about the diner and wine was ok, but the “leave now it’s going to suck part was not”. Major photo lesson, not to mention major life lesson. You just gotta show up and see what happens. You never know. Really. The future is unwritten and if you decide ahead of time what the future holds, particularly if you decide, “it’s going to suck”, you may miss out on something spectacular.

Thank god Walt didn’t listen to me, David didn’t listen to me, I didn’t listen to me, and we all were treated to a spectacular sunset – and a very good life lesson. Mea culpa. Lesson learned, and ….ok, fine David, here is your pound of flesh, and your favorite sentence in the English language, “you were right”.

However, breast cancer has been in the news a lot lately and the New York Times did a big feature on the topic a week or two ago. This got several friends asking me how I was dealing with it all, and what I thought about my experience relative to the article. I’ve decide to post an essay I wrote as a way to answer my friends and perhaps to share my personal journey in the hopes that it may help someone else out there in the world. Read it if you like. If you are suffering from breast cancer story fatigue, skip it and I promise I’ll be back to photography or some other topic soon!

Sincerely, Brenda

More than a Lump

A lump would have been nice – something to feel – something tangible, some evidence of a biological process gone awry.  Even the word, “lump” is misleading. Lump reminds me of oatmeal or poorly mixed paint, not something life altering, not something demanding attention or evoking fear. In my mind, the word “lump” was more likely to call up the image of an old boyfriend sprawled on the sofa than it was to create anxiety. All these associations notwithstanding, a lump was what I did not find. Nevertheless, I lost my right breast.

I felt no lump.  All I felt this June was fit, and strong, and completely healthy. What I felt was excitement for the coming year professionally and personally. What I felt was happiness to have put some personal demons of the past year to rest. What I felt was a renewed enjoyment of my still vital body. What I felt was proud that I could climb a 10-foot wall and run a 12-mile trail. What I did not feel was sick. What I did not feel was vulnerable. What I felt was completely dumb-founded as I listened to, but did not grasp the meaning of the words,“ the biopsy was positive.” What I felt and still feel was a stupid sort of disbelief.

A dear friend, or maybe two, has suggested that I am in denial about “the whole breast cancer thing”.  I have to say that is in essence true. How can it be otherwise? How was I to feel properly threatened when I felt nothing? You feel no chest pain, no illness, you feel no different than you have on any other day – and perhaps like me you feel even better than you have on other days, being in the best physical condition you have been in for decades. Perhaps, like me you felt no tickle of apprehension during mammograms.  If you are anything like me, having no risk factors, no family history, having done all the right things – exercised, nursed babies for years, menstruated late in life – you might even have felt that yearly mammograms were a bit unnecessary, but you’d go if it would make your best friend feel better.

In defense of my state of denial, I have to say that my diagnosis, (DCIS – MI) is in itself full of grey areas and open medical debate. Ok, as it turns out my exact diagnosis wasn’t quite as grey as that, but there are many people who make convincing arguments for leaving DCIS alone and watching and waiting. Given my family history I was busy watching and waiting for colon cancer. While I wasn’t paying attention a few of my breast cells went rogue. “ Multi loci, intermediate grade, cell necrosis,” these are all words that somehow became attached to me. Words that meant I couldn’t simply choose to do nothing. To do nothing with three children and people in the world who love me would have been too selfish a choice. I had to do something.

The something I did, the something I freely chose, was to give up my right breast.  With no symptoms, no pain, no lump, and only faith that this was the best course for me to take to better insure my long-term health.  Well meaning friends and family say I need to accept this, to make it real, to take it to heart. I accept that I need to accept, that I need to make it real. Ok, someone please just tell me how. Tell me how to tell my heart.

Obviously, I am only one of many thousands of women this year in the US alone that will face this diagnosis. It is a sorority that no one wants to join. There is lots of “support” out there – pink ribbons and well wishes abound. The wishes are truly well meaning and sincere, the proliferation of pink ribbons used as marketing tools is not. I will save most of my “think before you pink” thoughts for another day. Let it suffice for now to say that there is nothing special about breast cancer. It is no more special than lung, prostrate or stomach cancer. Early stage breast cancer is not a tragedy – childhood leukemia or brain cancer is a tragedy. You want to help fight cancer? Put down the yogurt and write a sizable check to the NIH so they can fund cancer research. 

I can only speak for me, but I can tell you that breasts among all body parts are unique. They are not gallbladders or bones or even lungs. Breasts are feminine, sexual, life sustaining, messy and emotionally complicated. Please, show me one woman who has an uncomplicated relationship with her breasts and I will show you a 10 year old girl. 

Breasts are something a man may lust after or adore, but they are not something he will ever understand. Breasts are the outward- and often awkward – sign that a girl is becoming mature, sexual, and ready for male attention wanted or not. Newly formed breasts are subject to very public and often harsh or cruel evaluation. Again, I challenge you to show me that one woman who has come through her teens and twenties without being told she is too big, too flat, too lopsided, too droopy, too pointy, too pendulous, nipples too big, nipples too small, just too-too-too something, too just-not-quite-good-enough, and I will show you a department store manikin.  I can tell you many tales of close friends who were large breasted at 13, still children really, and had grown men of 40 hooting and honking at them from cars. I will tell you tales from my own life of being told, more than once, that if I just had bigger breasts to match my great ass I’d have the perfect body.

This kind of public evaluation of your emerging sexual desirability is something no man encounters. He walks around with his penis – large, small, circumcised or not, misshapen or flaccid – safely tucked away into his trousers. He does not wear his penis on his chest for all to comment on. Perhaps the locker room derision takes care of instilling this sexual anxiety, however girls are not spared the locker room either, and no boy walks down the street and has women his mothers’ age laughing at or leering at his penis, either of which would be appalling to him. Imagine yourself at 13, walking home from school and some woman your mother works with drives by you and screams out the car window, “hey, nice pecker!!!” and you will have gained some understanding of women and their relationship to their breasts.

I consider myself very lucky to have come through puberty and young womanhood about as unscarred as can be expected while living in the land of Hooters. I must confess, I secretly loved my small breasts, enjoyed their great sensitivity and applauded their good sense not to impede my cherished athleticism. It was the best of both worlds. I was neither so extremely flat, nor awkwardly large as to suffer the majority of humiliations my peers experienced. I actually liked my breasts just as they were, we made peace, we made love, and we fed my babies.

The deep satisfaction of nursing of babies cannot be easily described. Describe for me in words the sensation of an oncoming sneeze; a resolving orgasm, a particular spicy taste, and you will begin to grasp the problem. Lack of appropriate words aside, nursing must be the link to the deepest part of our emotional response to a woman’s full breast. A woman’s breast is not for selling cars or beer. A breast is for nurturing and loving infants in the most intimate way possible. To an infant, supremely vulnerable, the mothers’ breast is nothing less than survival.

Even now, when I hear an infant cry I can instantly remember what it felt like to let down. Even now, even in the breast that is missing there is an ache, a primal ache that occurs with the sound of a baby crying. Some say a woman without breasts may as well be a man or a child, as only a woman will full breasts can insure the survival of her infant. Perhaps there are many eons of deep-seated emotion written on our DNA and firmly attached to this biological imperative.

Putting biological imperatives aside, I can make this reality more personal – deeply personal.  I can tell you that the first time I heard any of my children cry, the first time I put one of them to my breast and felt the surprising heat of their mouth and the strong urgent sucking coming from such a small new being, that for the first time, I truly understood unconditional love.  My breasts taught me what it meant to try and contain a new love so large and so unexpected that I thought my heart would shatter. With my baby at my breast I suddenly truly knew what it meant to say you would willingly lay down your life for another. With my new baby at my breast I knew for the first time what it meant to pray.

A breast: a single pound or two of fat, ducts, ligaments, and nodes, wrapped up in an envelope of skin. What loss is that? Not much. But my breast; that served me so well, taught me so much, nurtured me as I nurtured my children, that relished human touch, that brought me sexual satisfaction, that made me feel feminine, that is a real loss. So now and for a while longer I will mourn that loss and wish I had some way to give thanks to my body for the lessons learned and the joy freely given. 

Very soon I will address the most superficial aspects of this loss. I will undertake more surgeries. I will have a packet of silicone gel gradually but forcibly inserted under my pectoral muscle. I will move body fat from my back to my chest to cover my now exposed ribs. My clothes will hang well and to all outward appearances my femininity will not only be restored but enhanced. When I get out of the shower now and I see my chest it no longer startles me. The denial of the diagnosis and the affront of the original surgery has softened into compassion and a true appreciation for my body – to the point where I question this second, and what will be a ultimately be third, surgical assault on my own body.

It is true that by Spring I will fill a bra beautifully, possibly more beautifully than I ever have. A friend said to me by way of attempted kindness, “hey, just think, now you can have the breasts you always wanted!” You know what? I already had the only breasts I ever really wanted. I will replace the shape, the outward form, the scars will heal, my life will go on, but in all honesty I will never replace my breast – nor the pieces of my heart that went with it – all while I was looking the other way. All because of something that was less than a lump, but somehow, so very much more.

if you are interested. You will not be disappointed.

I can’t wait!

It’s past time for me to do another blog post, maybe one of those ubiquitous year-end lists, or something about photo highlights of 2012, but in light of the shootings in Connecticut it all feels silly or pointless right now. Like most of you, I am feeling gutted with sorrow and frustration. I can’t imagine a Christmas with presents wrapped and now forever waiting for a first grader who will never have the joy of opening them. A child, just barely past babyhood, shot for no reason, no reason at all.

Some say the best thing to do is to hug your own children, and certainly I will do that, but how do I hold my own without feeling the unspeakable pain of those mothers and fathers who’s children lives were cut short in the worst way possible? We shouldn’t feel lucky in our own particular good fortune, we should feel outrage that as a country we continue to allow this to occur over and over again. We should feel disbelief that a lack of political will and cowardice will ensure that mass shootings will continue to happen over and over again.

I don’t know about you, but I had a notice from my children’s school about how to talk to them about the tragedy – how to reassure them, and how to answer their inevitable questions. Really? There are no rational answers and no blanket reassurances to offer. As is often the case, our children are smarter than we are, and my own children’s questions were pointed and insightful.

My eighth grader, who is co-incidentally studying the constitution right now, wants to know how this “obvious misinterpretation of the second amendment freedom has been allowed to trump freedom of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. We talked about the term “arms”, and how 200 years ago the term meant arming a militia with single shot rifles or muskets, and how unlikely it was that the framers of our constitution meant for mentally disturbed young men to have easy access to military grade firearms.  My sixth grader wanted to know if “arms” might eventually be taken to mean hand grenades or  bombs, and if not, why not?  Would the adults in his world be smart enough to see the absurdity of allowing that, and if so, then what about assault weapons? My sixteen year old astutely observed that the same people who are so desperate to save the life of one unwanted embryo seem to care very little about what actually happens to most children once they are born.  Sure, someone tell me how to talk to my children about the complete moral failure of their parents and grandparents to set reasonable limits. Please, by all means tell me how to tell them that the reality of going to school, or the movies, or the mall, could mean death at the hands of random fate, and that is the price we pay for the so-called interpretation of the “right to bear arms”.

Have I ever personally shot a gun? As it turns out, yes I have. I enjoy skeet shooting, and sport shooting at clay and paper targets. I appreciate that sometimes hunting is a means to an end. I feel that with the proper training and safety procedures there can be a legitimate place for private ownership of guns.  However, I do not see why a weapon made for wartime – and the wholesale slaughter of human beings – should be easily available to the public. I will never understand the vocal NRA crowd for whom all weapons are sacrosanct, and the “right” to own them trumps the right to life, education, healthcare and public safety. Don’t give me the bullshit line, “guns don’t kill people, people do” – and if that is your stance, then fine, then let’s make it a little harder for the insane and violent people among us to get ahold of these weapons. And here is a really radical idea, let’s take care of the mentally ill and distraught people in our communities, those “people” most likely to use these weapons to take innocent lives as well as their own. It should be at least as difficult to acquire a fire arm as it is to adopt a dog.

My fear? My fear is that we will all once again be very very sad for a very short period of time. That good people will shake their heads in sorrow and disbelief and finally when they can’t stand the pain anymore will turn off the TV, turn the page in the paper, and begin the active process of forgetting. We Americans have short memories, and our sense of futility overwhelms us. We are far beyond needing meaningful dialogue.  What we need are leaders who actually lead, and we desperately need President Obama to step up and become the leader we hoped for. Tears of compassion are fine, action is better.  Perhaps Elie Wiesel said it best, “ all that is needed for evil to flourish is that good people do nothing”. Let us not be those people.

When your children and grandchildren ask you why – why did you allow this to happen – and somewhere, once again, a mother screams in unbearable agony, “why… why…. why….”

in your heart, you should also ask yourself,

why, indeed.

I feel we are losing touch with the world around us, spending more time chatting and less time really listening to each other in any meaningful way. Call me an anachronistic throwback, and maybe I am, but I miss the days when if you were not home and the phone rang you couldn’t be reached.  I can even remember a time before answering machines, so if you were not home you…gasp….didn’t even get a message. Did the world fall apart? No, and a lot more people had dinner together and actually talked to each other, rather than listening with half of their mind while the other half paid attention to a smart phone.

Ok, what prompted this nostalgic rant? I just got back from 2 days spent all alone in a cabin in the Methow Valley. No internet, no TV, and no cell phone service. (I can feel my friend Jeff (Jeff Wendorff)breaking out in a cold sweat just thinking about this!). At first, disconnecting can be a bit unnerving, as we have all gotten a bit too used to our electronic tethers. There is a bit of panic when you realize that you can’t answer that urgent email, or download the latest greatest Youtube video, but then you adjust, you relax, and you begin to feel an odd tickling sensation. You know what that sensation is? It’s freedom. And damn that freedom feels good! Suddenly your time, your mind and your attention are your own.

You know what I did, all alone with my dog, on a wet November afternoon? I walked in a meadow. Just walked. Left my phone behind, left behind all anticipation of a call or text message.  I went for a wander with no time frame and no destination in mind.  I simply let my heart beat – let my lungs breathe fresh air. I was able to smell the wet grass and the impending snow storm. I  followed my dog’s happy nose as we tracked deer prints in the mud. I stopped a while in a grove of quaking aspen and listened as the wind and rain rustled through the last remaining of the now grey leaves. I wondered silently if perhaps as the phones get smarter do we get dumber; are we trading away something precious and elemental, our animal natures, our connection to the wild, to the seasons, to our senses?

Unplugged at last, I was able to remember why I pursued nature photography in the first place – not for the love of LightRoom,  but for love of nature! To go outside and use my camera to see more clearly, to be more present and more connected. Lately, I have been suffering from pixel and digital overload. I have also been suffering from constant connection ADD. If I am writing, I am interrupted with little dings of text or email. If I am reading, my phone talks to me to remind me to pick up my son from soccer (this, I must confess I really need, as I have left him alone and cold on many a field).  Taking a walk, my husband texts me when dinner is ready. So much for quiet contemplation. So much for reading Tolstoy, it’s all LOL, Bcuz, C ya, and 10/4  24/7.

So what to do if you can not run away to a little cabin in the woods? Give yourself a mini- break. Turn off the alert on your phone, or turn the darn thing completely off – especially when talking to someone – and listen to them, really listen, with your whole self. That basketball score can wait. Close the laptop, putdown the iPad, and take a walk. Look at a tree or bird, or just do nothing, watch the clouds go by, listen to the wind.  I found it to be wonderful and restorative, and a great thing to do before the onslaught of the “Holiday Season”. So wanting to share my joy, I encourage you to disconnect a bit more from your devices, and connect a bit more with the natural world and people around you. Your life will be richer for it. So in that spirit I bid you adeiu, it’s time for dinner and unfortunately I just received a text that tonight I am expected to cook it!!!

LOL.

Some photographers are ruthless and diligent. They shoot, they go back to the hotel, upload all their shots, and toss the drek – all in the same day! Really, swear to god they do this!!! They do not equivocate over 3 essentially similar images. No lie, I have personally known photographers like this. Some I even call friends.

In fact, when doing the Lobstering Life book I worked with one such as this. We would both go out on a boat for a day. In that time we would take somewhere between 600 – 1200 images. I would come back to shore very tired, kinda queasy, and absolutely reeking of dead fish. All I could think about was finding a hot shower and a warm bed. The images? “I’ll do them tomorrow”, I told myself. However, tomorrow came before dawn and I repeated the whole process. And the day after that – same process, same self-deception.

Now, I am not a mathematical genius, but I can tell you that in a week of shooting the shots pile up in a big ole hurry. Then, at the end of the week, your editor, or your partner says, “show me your best dozen.” The disciplined photographer has a handle on that request as he is edited down to maybe 20-30 keepers and 12 favorites. On the other hand, I have 400 that,”might be useful at some point”. The diligent ruthless photographer (i.e., my friend) is more prepared and knows he will never need the hundreds of other shots he took that are almost good enough. The equivocater (i.e, me) is left with stress and panic.

The other thing about the disciplined photographer – which I really hope to become some day – is that she/he is no longer burdened by all the drek. Me? A full two years after turning in the final images for the Lobstering Life book I am just now clearing the tossers off my laptop. I am amazed at the stuff I am finding as I purge. It feels very very freeing to hit the delete button and just let it go. Like clearing your closet of the old jeans that fit before the babies came and you will never fit into again. Get rid of what is not useful instead of burning down the house.  Breathe, you will be fine and you really won’t miss those shots, or those size 4 jeans.  If this causes you excessive anxiety, put the photos in the trash, set the jeans aside for Goodwill, have a glass of wine, and sleep on it. One night only. Next morning -” Delete from Disk”  followed by “Empty the Trash” -  you can do it!

One caveat – It is ok to keep an image or two for specific reasons. For example: it tells you something about the place and you are over 1000 miles from home, it’s a teaching shot, it had fat Elvis AND Big Foot in it. Make sure that there is a justifiable reason for every shot in your Photographers catalogue. My own system is to label those odd keepers with one star. Image labeling is a topic for another day. For now I will inspire you to do your own cull by coming clean and showing you some of the drek that was lurking on my computer…

May the force be with you!

The dory shot I wanted and used in book.

The dory shot that is going away today!

The bear pose I wanted

The black blob that was living in my laptop from 2009

The team roping shot I wanted.

The awful roping shot I kept? WHY???

Harsh light, dark trap. Toss it.

This is the keeper of the set.

Don’t need this one anymore, I still have it, why?

This is the keeper!

To create the final image of the dory on the floating dock, I shot with my camera set on matrix metering with no auto exposure compensation.  Then, using Lightroom I went back and lightened the fog on the boats in the background using the split neutral density tool. I didn’t lighten the entire image as I wanted the wood on the floating dock to remain dark in contrast to the light dory. At the same time I decreased the clarity a bit – as fog is by nature soft and mysterioso. The nice thing about the split neutral density slider in LR is that you can adjust both the exposure level and the clarity during the same edit.

Unedited fog, too dark

edited in LR post production

When shooting the image of traps on the dock I took a different approach. I shot with the auto compensation in my camera set at +1 stop. This kept the entire image from going too dark. I knew if I shot at 0 using matrix or evaluative metering the entire scene would be too dreary.  You can see the difference in the two images, shot with and without the auto compensation. Whether you are shooting fog, snow, or sand, you need to keep in mind the fact that your camera strives to make the whole world middle grey. It will move white toward black, black towards white, republican towards democrat…well, maybe not that…not even a nikon D4 can do that, but perhaps now I digress to far…..

Bass Harbor dock shot with no exposure compensation

Exposed at + 1 stop

Norm in the medium fog – poor guy

Norm in the +.7 fog – much happier!

Unidentified photographer lost in the fog…

Happy shooting!

While we were there another great old pal from years gone by showed up..and here he is…the irrepressible and wonderful Frank Serrafini. When he is not teaching children’s literature he is a damn good photographer, and very funny guy.

Our photo tip for making the fall color pop? Use your polarizer. Yep, it takes the sheen off the leaves and lets the color come thru.  Hope you can join us next year!

So this year, I’ve decided to take a bit less time to remember the towers crashing down, and a bit more time thinking about all those “ordinary” people among us who do the extraordinary every single time they go out the door to work. “Saving lives and protecting property, it’s what we do”. But what we know, is that it isn’t what most of us do. Very very few of us are willing risk our own lives to protect the lives of others. Very very few of us get a call at 3am, jump into a fire engine, heart racing and run towards danger – why? Because someone, another human, needs help. Most of the firefighters I know love their jobs,  they love the adrenaline, love the schedule and most are very self effacing about what they risk for the rest of us – even when we do dumb things, drive drunk, fall asleep smoking, or refuse to leave a home with a raging brush fire until it’s too late – they they still show up and do the job, do their best to save us from our own folly or bad luck. These men and women, when duty calls, they answer. Full stop.  It’s pretty remarkable, so every once in a while, maybe think of them, offer a thank you, drop a dollar in the boot, or stop by the station with a gallon of ice cream.

This is a portrait of my buddy Danny. To me he is a brother, best friend, and old lover all rolled into one amazing package. We’ve shared 31 years of friendship. We’ve buried friends, listened to each other through countless breakups, deaths of parents, celebrated births of children – shared everything that a life can hold. And I can tell you, that if you are in need at 3am, this is exactly the guy you want at your door. He’s seen things with those clear blue eyes that most of us will never have to contemplate. He has earned every single line on that face, and somehow retained the compassion in his heart. So this September, I can not remember any firefighter than ran into those burning towers, but I can remember a fire fighter 3000 miles away that would have done exactly the same. I can remember a guy who was busy saving your house as his own burned to the ground, a guy who would scoff at the word hero. So because he is the firefighter I know best, and someone I deeply respect and love, and because every day he goes to work he puts his life on the line, I want to say to him, Danny, thank you. Maybe you can do the same? You may not know a Danny, but believe me, drop off the ice cream at your station and just say thank you to the guys and gals, because at 3am somewhere in the world a guy is getting cut out of his mangled car, an 82 year old with a a broken hip is getting help, or the whole world seems to be burning he or she is going to get you to safety or die trying. Thank you is the least the rest of us can do, September 11 or otherwise. Thank You.

At this point in the year I have given up, given in, or both.  I let the slugs and deer eat whatever they will and it bothers me not a whit. My lettuce plants are all thigh high and gone completely to seed. Sadly, the basil is long gone – the slugs won that war when I wasn’t even looking. And even though the tomatoes never got ripe, the pumpkins show great promise for Halloween, and the zucchini are now the size of small submarines. It’s been a long hard summer in many ways and I now have no energy left over for keeping up the garden. All the frantic enthusiasm that accompanied my spring planting has now been completely replaced by the benign neglect of late summer. I only have energy for letting it all go to pot, stepping back, and enjoying the riot of color.

When photographers think of fall color we most often think of the Northeast and the brilliant colors of the changing trees. However, most of us do not live in the Northeast – nor will we get there this year. Therefore, you should go outside with your camera exactly where you are. My garden is full of volunteer sunflowers and yours is probably full of the same – or maybe black-eyed susans, or purple hydrangeas? You may not have red sugar maples but you may have golden aspen or larch trees. Simply go outside and enjoy the change of the season. Enjoy the last warm days of summer, the last blue skies, and capture the colors of the change where ever you are. The best image may be waiting, neglected and overlooked, right there in your own backyard.