Seeing Nichols Arboretum in black and white
Nichols Arboretum's stark contrasts evoke familiar feelings.
Dennis Sparks/Contributor
“You see things in black and white,” is not usually meant as a compliment. But sometimes I do see the world that way, like during a walk I took in late November through Nichols Arboretum. Nature’s palette at the hinge of fall and winter can be both stunningly colorful and stark in its contrasts of light and shadow. It was the contrasting tones that drew my attention on this crisp Saturday morning, evoking familiar feelings that I hoped to convey in these photographs.
Later that day that I reflected on the source of those feelings, which drew me to Ansel Adams: An Autobiography. Adams, a master of black-and-white photography wrote, “I constantly return to the elements of nature that surrounded me in childhood, to both the vision and the mood. More than seventy years later I can visualize certain photographs I might make today as equivalents of those early experiences.”
Growing up in a small town in western Michigan in the 1950s, I was just a short walk or bike ride away from the woods and water that surrounded my community and were part of daily life. These days when I am absent from “the vision and the mood” of my childhood I experience the “nature deprivation disorder” to which Nichols Arboretum and other area parks are an antidote. And it was that childhood feeling I was seeking to capture in these black-and-white images I brought home that day.
Dennis Sparks’ “Things Observed” photos and essays encourage readers to slow down to deepen their appreciation of aspects of daily life that may sometimes elude awareness and to see familiar things in fresh ways. You can contact him at dennis.sparks@comcast.net.
Comments
MIKE
Sun, Dec 6, 2009 : 7:59 a.m.
I too worry about "nature deficit disorder," and wonder where it leads our children. As a teacher, I took a class of children to Proud Lake where a forest ranger took us into a swamp. As we stood around him there on a woodsy bank, he gestured to the trees, the water, the grass and said,"Without all of this there would be no civilization." He let that sink in, then showed us what he meant. He dug a string of nut-like roots out of the ground and handed a "nut" to each of us. "Here in this swamp is all the food you need to sustain you," he said as we nibbled on the "nut." He stripped the fuzz off a cattail and mixed it with water. "Pancake batter," he said. "And in that water is all the protein you can eat. Without places like this there can be no places like New York or Chicago." Beauty is important and these pictures show. But the water and woods also sustain us as a civilization. We must protect them. I hope my students were as awed by the forest ranger's presentation as I was. Mike