"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Category: photography

Eight Days to Christmas: Red and Green

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From Old Christmas by Washington Irving:

“The old halls of castles and manor — houses resounded with the harp and the Christmas carol, and their ample boards groaned under the weight of hospitality. Even the poorest cottage welcomed the festive season with green decorations of bay and holly — the cheerful fire glanced its rays through the lattice, inviting the passenger to raise the latch, and join the gossip knot huddled round the hearth, beguiling the long evening with legendary jokes and oft-told Christmas tales.”

From The Victorian Christmas by Anna Selby:

“[If] the Victorians could not be said to have invented Christmas itself, they certainly invented many of its most popular trappings. The Christmas pudding, the Christmas card, the Christmas pantomime, Christmas crackers, most of our famous Christmas carols (along with the earlier traditional ones they embellished and generally improved) and Father Christmas himself in the form we know him today. It was Prince Albert who brought the Christmas tree to England from his native Germany and, after a picture showing the royal family crowding around it in wonder, the Christmas tree became, within a very short time — along with the red-coated Father Christmas and the red-breasted robin — symbolic of the English Christmas. Prince Albert also made gingerbread and other German confectionary an essential part of the English Christmas and he is often regarded as one of the men who invented the Victorian Christmas. The other is, without doubt, Charles Dickens. So, draw up a chair to the roaring fire and let Dickens introduce you in the Victorian idea of Christmas.”

From “A Christmas Tree” in A Christmas Carol and Other Writings by Charles Dickens:

“Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own childhood. I begin to consider, what do we all remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our own young Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life.

“Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top…. I look into my youngest Christmas recollections!”

Nine Days to Christmas: Silver and Gold

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From “The Mouse and the Moonbeam” by Eugene Field in The Ultimate Christmas Collection:

“Then all at once sweet music filled the air, and light, greater than the light of day, illumined the sky and fell upon all that hillside. The heavens opened, and angels, singing joyous songs, walked to the earth. More wondrous still, the stars, falling from their places in the sky, clustered upon the old olive-tree, and swung hither and thither like colored lanterns. The flowers of the hillside all awakened, and they, too, danced and sang. The angels, coming hither, hung gold and silver and jewels and precious stones upon the old olive, where swung the stars; so that the glory of that sight, though I might live forever, I shall never see again.”

From “Sery” by Richard Watson Gilder in The Ultimate Christmas Collection:

With wild surprise
Four great eyes
In two small heads,
From neighboring beds
Looked out — and winked —
And glittered and blinked
At a very queer sight
In the dim starlight.
As plain as can be

A fairy tree Flashes and glimmers
And shakes and shimmers.
Red, green and blue
Meet their view;
Silver and gold
Their sharp eyes behold….

From “At Home with Elves” in The Old Magic of Christmas by Linda Raedisch:

“Because the world of the elves is closely bound up with our own, it is in our own best interests to stay on the good side of these mysterious creatures. In the old days, this might mean the pouring of milk, blood, and even gifts of gold and silver into their earthen houses. Nowadays, it can be as simple as showing kindness and respect to a stranger, because you just never know…. They have always been a part of Christmas, even if their feast was originally held in October.”

Ten Days to Christmas: Peace! and Birds and Beasts!

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From “A Christmas Inspiration” by Lucy Maud Montgomery in A Vintage Christmas: A Collection of Classic Stories and Poems:

“And over all the beautiful city was wafted the grand old message of peace on earth and good will to all the world.”

From “The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton” in A Christmas Carol and Other Writings by Charles Dickens:

“[The] cloud was again dispelled, and a rich and beautiful landscape was disclosed to view…. The sun shone from out the clear blue sky, the water sparkled beneath his rays, and the trees looked greener, and the flowers more gay, beneath his cheering influence. The water rippled on, with a pleasant sound, the trees rustled in the light wind that murmured among their leaves, the birds sang upon the boughs, and the lark carolled on high, her welcome to the morning. Yes, it was morning; the minutest leaf, the smallest blade of grass, was instinct with life.”

From “Who Stole the Tarts?” in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, edited by Donald J. Gray:

“The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them all sorts of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards: the Knave was standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side to guard him, and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other. In the very middle of the court was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it: they looked so good, that it made Alice quite hungry to look at them….”

Autumn Dreams of Christmas (2 of 2)

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From Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau:

“We heard the sigh of the first autumnal wind, and even the water had acquired a grayer hue. The sumach, grape, and maple were already changed, and the milkweed had turned to a deep rich yellow. In all woods the leaves were fast ripening for their fall; for their full veins and lively gloss mark the ripe leaf, and not the sered one of the poets; and we knew that the maples, stripped of their leaves among the earliest, would soon stand like a wreath of smoke along the edge of the meadow. Already the cattle were heard to low wildly in the pastures and along the highways, restlessly running to and fro, as if in apprehension of the withering of the grass and of the approach of winter. Our thoughts too began to rustle.”

From “Christmas Tide” by Eliza Cook in A Vintage Christmas: A Collection of Classic Stories and Poems:

Let the autumn days produce
Yellow corn and purple juice,
And Nature’s feast be spread
In the fruitage ripe and red;
‘Tis grateful to behold
Gushing grapes and fields of gold,
When cheeks are brown’d and red lips deeper dyed:
But give, oh! give to me
The winter night of glee,
The mirth and plenty seen at Christmas tide.

Hello!

This is the second of two posts with photographs showing how nature gets ready for Christmas. The first post is Autumn Dreams of Christmas (1 of 2). Here we have some shades of red — deeply red maples and oaks filling the frame — followed by variations on yellow, orange, and gold. Someone, somewhere, once upon a time surely looked at sights like this and thought: hey, I should put these brilliant colors on a tree inside my house!

Thanks for taking a look!

Autumn Dreams of Christmas (1 of 2)

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From “Autumn Woods” in Poems by William Cullen Bryant:

Ere, in the northern gale,
The summer tresses of the trees are gone,
The woods of Autumn, all around our vale,
Have put their glory on.

The mountains that infold,
In their wide sweep, the coloured landscape round,
Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold,
That guard the enchanted ground.

From “The First Christmas of New England” by Harriet Beecher Stowe in The Ultimate Christmas Collection:

“Such are the woody shores of Cape Cod as we look back upon them in that distant November day, and the harbor lies like a great crystal gem on the bosom of a virgin wilderness. The fir trees, the pine trees, and the bay, rejoice together in freedom, for as yet the axe has spared them; in the noble bay no shipping has found shelter; no voice or sound of civilized man has broken the sweet calm of the forest.

“The oak leaves, now turned to crimson and maroon by the autumn frosts, reflect themselves in flushes of color on the still waters. The golden leaves of the sassafras yet cling to the branches… and every brushing wind bears showers of them down to the water. Here and there the dark spires of the cedar and the green leaves and red berries of the holly contrast with these lighter tints. The forest foliage grows down to the water’s edge, so that the dash of the rising and falling tide washes into the shaggy cedar boughs which here and there lean over and dip in the waves.”

Hello!

One of the neat things about the change from summer to fall here in Georgia is that it often continues late into November — so autumn color hangs around until mid-December and a lot is still visible as people sling up their trees and festoon their houses with Christmas lights. It makes for an extended seasonal color show — especially delightful to people like me who like to explore color in nature then transition quickly to photographing the lights and colors of things around the house for a set of Christmas decoration posts. For the past three years, I’ve assembled a series that I call “Days to Christmas” — which starts ten days out from the big day and continues until December 25th. If you would like to see those from the previous year you can use these links…

Days to Christmas 2021

Days to Christmas 2020

Days to Christmas 2019

… or just wait until December 15 when I start over again.

There’s always a bit of repetition (let’s just call it a “tradition”) among the photographs for these series — I mean, one only has so many trinkets and baubles, doesn’t one? — so each year I try out new whatnot arrangements or background setups or color and light experiments to keep it interesting (at least for me!), and learn a little more about photography techniques in the process.

Last year, for example, I bought a rolling cart I could use to stage objects in front of different backgrounds (like the Christmas tree) instead of using my dining room chairs, and the cart doubles as a camera and lens storage cabinet off-season. I roll the cart around to see how different camera settings affect depth of field and bokeh. I also added a lightstand to my home photography “studio” (also known as: my foyer) so that I could hang wrapping paper in midair and use it as a backdrop instead of tacking the paper to my walls. This year, I ordered a lighting kit for the alleged studio — and though I haven’t received it yet, I’m hoping it will eliminate the need to position flashlights and random lamps to produce lighting variations, and, perhaps, pose more formal portraits of The Dog. Assuming I can get him to sit still, that is….

The photographs in this post (and the next one) were taken in late November and early December, when the Japanese Maple varieties were especially colorful. The first seven are Japanese Maple trees; and the group of five are photos of a gigantic Japanese maple shrub that hangs over one of the old stone walls in Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. The last three show droppings from a regular — as in not-Japanese — maple that I’ve seen before produces a lot of different leaf colors, mixed with some leaves that floated in from oak trees nearby.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!