Summer Love

• As Labor Day looms, I ruminate on summer ‘09: Volleyball in the pool, great road trips, good films, and oh yeah…falling in love. (Again!) Bet you didn’t expect that…so I’ll ease you into the story.

Ignoring that I am “relationship impaired,” out of practice and other important facts, I forged ahead regardless, treading into very unfamiliar territory. What followed was frantic and frequent text messaging, the emailing of mushy love songs, feeling my heart beat faster every time I saw his number come up on my cell phone screen.

Like every experience in life, each of us feels love in his or her own way. For me, love expressed itself in a play of opposites; I felt supported, yet free. Connected, yet autonomous. Unsteady, but balanced. All these feelings came at once.

In his best-selling book “The Path to Love,” author Deepak Chopra explains, “The mystery is not whether you will begin to transcend your old reality, for that is a given. What is mysterious is that being engulfed in your beloved is also divine. But the visitation of the spirit is a subtle phenomenon, and a very impatient one. Either the spirit takes you with or quickly departs.”

In my case, the spirit literally got up and ran for cover, completely abandoning the scene. Sigh. But here’s the good news: It stuck around long enough to shed some light on a few seriously old patterns of thinking that were taking up space in my subconscious. The experience has helped me let go of some useless old baggage. It helped me heal, leaving me better and stronger. Who knows when the next love spirit will come along and cast its spell, luring me to ‘fall’ yet again.

As fall flowers re-appear in the local nurseries, I’m back on familiar ground with a few sweet memories added. And I realize that yes, I’m in need of a little practice in the field of love. Yet if and when the opportunity arises, my heart will be a little more open, and I will proceed with a little less hesitation, and a little less fear. I have been down this path before.

• Balance in My Life
I enjoyed photographing the talented instructors from Karma Yoga this past month for the website . I derive so much from the practice of yoga, for my body, my soul, my state of mind.

Naturally, it was truly a pleasure to give back to the wonderful people who guide me through a continual deepening of this ancient practice. To all of you whose inner lights shine so brightly, thank you for smiling in front of my lens! Go to the website to see more images: (www.karma-yoga.net).

Photographer’s Dilemma
• Lately I’ve been contemplating the psychological dynamic that underlies the process of shooting someone’s picture. What individuals see when looking at themselves in a photograph depends so much on how they feel about themselves. In short, it boils down to self-image.

This month I had the opportunity to study this concept in the laboratory of life when I photographed two women, each with very different reactions to the completed photographs. The first proclaimed, “Wow, I look good, I had no idea that my legs were so long or that I appeared so thin, what a nice smile I have…Thank you, you did a wonderful thing!

Now for Woman Number Two: After emailing the photos and hearing nothing, I finally approached her. “What did you think of the photos?” I asked. “Well,” she said with a long face, “I’m so critical of myself, I just don’t know.”

Being ready to take the blame for almost anything that went wrong, I quickly felt miserable. I started thinking that I must be a terrible photographer for making someone feel so badly. Then I took a step back and thought about the blazing compliments I had just gotten from Woman Number One. That’s when the light bulb went off. I realized that my skills as a photographer could only go so far. I can control the light, location, even choose certain angles, and expressions, but I am not able to fill someone with self-love.

Please remember this the next time you are on either side of the camera. Sure, we all take a “bad” picture now and then. And yes, many of us (myself included) do not always like being in front of a camera. But never forget, the camera does not always tell the truth!  In fact, thanks to Photoshop and other photo-fixing software, these days it rarely tells the truth. A portrait is a single moment frozen in time within our multi-faceted lives.  So why is it so easy to forget all that when the image is our own face gazing back at us, asking, as if it were the mirror, “Well, how do I look?”

Dale Sparage is an educator, professional artist and commercial photographer. www.dalesparage.com