Bird stalks fish. Falmouth bike path August 11, 2019
Bird lunges for fish.
Bird eats fish.
Had to get outside today because it was just too beautiful not to. Took my camera(s) with me hoping to see some birds. This is the only one I found. Checking my bird guide for birds common to Cape Cod, I think this is a Green-Backed Heron.
Monte
At the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, 19,341 feet above sea level. 1994.
Telling Stories
In my photography project, “Rigged-up,” I’m collecting stories from the Kite-boarders I’ve been photographing for several years.
There is an insidious feeling of irrelevance associated with getting older. Our children grow up and leave home and slowly we recognize we are not central figures in their lives anymore. The frustrating question of purpose sneaks back into our minds, even though we thought we’d answered it when we were young, and it is easy to believe that age is taking it away from us.
But the accumulation of years is not only about loss. There is a steady stockpiling of stories that happen to us with time, and these make a treasure trove of life-lessons waiting to be shared with others.
I can still tell my grown-up kids what it felt like to watch the sunrise from on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. I can still tell them the story of being confronted by a man and his child in a hospital tent at a time in my life when I was a doctor wearing a military uniform. The man, with tears in his eyes, held his young son tightly in his arms. They were “collateral damage” in a war they did not ask for. The boy, who was badly injured, looked right through me with a vacant stare. Their quiet presence before me spoke loudly about the pain and sadness that had been thrust upon them, and left me forever aware that war is mostly about innocent victims.
Stories inform about the moments of beauty and brutality that string together to make a life. Stories, as my friend Kyle Banks says, want to be told. And stories need to be told so that each new generation can learn from the experiences and mistakes of previous generations.
The remedy for the despair about getting old is to recognize that aging is less about loss and more about transitioning to the role of story-teller: a job that will always be relevant to any society wanting to survive.
Monte
Timothy Flynn at the Village Cafe in West Falmouth, June 25, 2019
Injustice
This story, as told to me by Timothy Flynn, is posted on Facebook with the permission of Timothy Flynn.
My friend, Tim, met me at the Village Café in West Falmouth to talk about the history of the Chappy Kiters, but the conversation was wide-ranging.
Somehow, we veered on to the topic of injustice in society, and Tim told me the story of his brother, Terry. Terry was two years older than Tim, but Tim played the role of "big brother" in their relationship because Terry was mentally challenged and oddly large for his age. As such, Terry was the constant victim of bullying by other kids with the destructive human proclivity to mock those who are weak because they are different. Tim was a good-looking, smart boy who excelled at sports and was popular at school. He recalled the pain he felt when everybody wanted him to be on their team when picking sides for basketball or football, but nobody wanted Terry on their side. Tim, early in his childhood, was confronted with the cruelty of discrimination directed at someone he loved. This, Tim explained, gave him empathy for underdogs and a sense of responsibility to stand up to mobs in defense of those who cannot do so for themselves. It gave him an abiding awareness of the injustice that permeates popular culture. Before Tim was a teenager, he was a protector for his brother. The stress was immense for both of them.
As Tim and Terry got older, Terry began inexplicably wandering off, sometimes for days at a time. Tim and his parents would scour their town and nearby towns looking for him. When Tim was fourteen years old, Terry disappeared for an extended period. Tim's parents drove out to look for him, leaving Tim at home to answer the phone in case anybody called with information about Terry. They found him, but while they were driving home a drunk driver on the wrong side of the road hit their car head-on, killing Tim's mother and severely injuring Terry and Tim's father. Tim struggled with the feeling that Terry was responsible for his mother's death, and it took years before he could recognize that it was not Terry’s fault. To this day, Tim feels guilt for having blamed Terry in the first place.
We gain a whole new perspective on the world when we listen to the stories from peoples lives. Imagine what it must have felt like to be Terry. Imagine what it must have felt like to be Tim. Imagine what it would feel like to be an immigrant in a new country, or how it would feel if your skin was a different color from the majority of people where you live, or how it would feel to be different in any of the random ways we've concocted to regard people as unlike us.
John Lennon asked us to imagine a better world. Can you imagine a world in which we see ourselves in each other?
Monte
Chapoquoit, June 15, 2019
The Moment
Heraclitus, A Greek philosopher from around 500 BCE, famously observed that no man can step in the same river twice, which was to emphasize his perspective that life is all about constant change. Whether we accept change as a good thing, or long for the day when change will no longer disrupt our lives (tip: that day will come; it’s called dying) we are always looking for ways to face its reality.
This is my friend, Stephen, walking into the surf with his foil and his kite. Just yesterday, Stephen was telling me one of the best things about kiting is that it forces him to live in the moment. When he's up in the air, with the more expansive view it provides him, he can glimpse a freedom that escapes him in ordinary times. He isn't dwelling on the worries of earlier in the day, nor is he fretting the future. He's just flying over the waves with a keen awareness that life is happening to him right then, and he is fully aware of it; he is part of the process, not just an observer. I envy the experience (but not enough to tie myself to a big kite). I experience moments by freezing them with a camera, which, I’ll admit, is not as exhilarating as flying.
The point is, I think, that we all confront the ideas of moments and change in our own way because we have to. We have to because the pace of change is so disorienting, and it seems to only get faster as we age. We want to grab on to every moment, at least every good one, and not let it slip away from us like all the others did before, but we can’t, and we’re left with fading memories and dreams for the future. But I agree with Stephen, I love the times when I am aware that I am living a notable moment right then. I love those moments that confirm what I spend so much time only suspecting: I am alive!
Photographing Stephen walking into the water with his kite made me think of our conversation yesterday, and I smiled knowing that he was going out to steal another moment from the universe and make it his own. Savor each one, my friend.
Monte
Chapoquoit beach, Cape Cod, June 15, 2019
I was walking back to my car on the beach at Chapoquoit today with three camera bags and a tripod over my shoulder when one of the young men in this photograph called out to me and asked if I would take their picture. Sure, I would. And I did.
I’m always happy to meet young people. I get a feeling of hopefulness about the future when I see their energy and optimism. Of course, there is the line from Jackson Browne’s song, “The Pretender,” which goes “Say a prayer for the pretender, who started out so young and strong only to surrender.” I feel like that’s what happened to my generation, and I hope the ones behind us will do better.
Good luck guys, the future is up to you.
Monte
Ben Stadelmaier rigging up at Chapoquoit beach, May 7, 2019
Went to Chapoquoit today with high expectations, but the wind wasn't as good as we all thought it would be. A few of the kiteboarders went out anyway.
I was experimenting with doing some portraits of the kiteboarders using a flash to offset the hard backlighting from the sun. I wasn't sure how to adjust the flash and wound up overdoing it. I tried to compensate in photoshop, but the images still look a bit unnatural.
This is Ben Stadelmaier getting ready to go out. Ben was in good spirits and waxing philosophically about what a wonderful day it was and how we will only experience it now, in the present moment, and then it will be gone. I answered pragmatically: "That's why I brought a camera."
Monte
Hanumant Singh at Chapoquoit beach, April 29, 2019
Disconnected
Yesterday, April 29, 2019, I got a late afternoon email telling me that the kiteboarders were out at Chapoquoit. So, I went. A lot of them were there, including Hanumant Singh who swooped in right in front of me and tossed off his board, just to show off. It was a nice afternoon. I stayed until the light faded and then packed up and left, trudging through the deep sand with my gear strapped across my back. At several points, I turned to look back over my shoulder to see the few remaining surfers performing tricks that I wished I hadn't missed. Deciding when to leave the beach is always difficult.
Monte
Miles Manning at Chapoquoit beach, April 27, 2019.
I could say that I photograph the kiteboarders because I like the action. I like stopping, or "freezing," moments that are too short for our senses to appreciate in real time. This moment was captured at 1/1000th of a second; you'd never see it if you were just watching from the beach. I didn't see it when I pressed the shutter button. I can anticipate from the movement of the kiteboarder that he/she is about to do something. It is then that I press the shutter button and the camera begins taking shots at 10 frames per second, each one at 1/1000th of a second. The trick is to keep the subject inside the frame during this brief episode of frenetic firing.
The act of photographing the kiteboarders requires my full attention, just like they are devoting their full attention to riding the wind and the waves. And that gets more to the heart of why I photograph the kiteboarders: it's not just that I like the action. I need the distraction of focusing intensely on just one thing to help me forget, for a little while, the stress of our turbulent times. Get the picture. That's all that matters when I'm standing on a windy beach, chasing the action with a camera.
Monte
Bevo, April 17, 2019. Age 13.5 years.
Bevo is 13.5 years old. He likes to lie in the sunny spot of my office/gym when I’m working or exercising. I’ve never spent so much time for so many years with any other living thing. I’m not a “dog-person,” but the two of us get along nicely. We understand each other and share all of the same psychological quirks. A couple of old men just hanging out.
Monte
Composite image from photographs taken In December 2018.
Jenny found an old picture frame that one of our kids gave her years ago and asked me to find a picture of our kids to put in it. I went through some images I’d taken at Christmas 2018 and made this composite image, which includes Grandma and the wife of one of my sons and the fiancé of the other.
Photoshop is cool.
Monte
It moves
A relative of mine recently had a birthday and this is a version of the note I sent her.
This is a composite image I made from two photographs that are part of a project I've been doing for a while now. I'm tracking the apparent movement of the Sun in the sky throughout the year. These are pictures of the sunrise taken by flying my drone above my house. The most recent photo I've made was yesterday, and it is paired in this image with a similar photograph from three months ago on December 20, 2018. You can see how the Sun has tracked north since the time of the winter solstice until now.
Of course, the Sun is not moving. The Earth is moving around the Sun. Something that makes our annual trip around the Sun more interesting is that the Earth is simultaneously rotating on an axis that is tilted at 23.5 degrees relative to its orbital plane around the Sun. Our tilted axis points in the same direction at all times during Earth’s orbit, which causes any one place on the surface of Earth to have a constantly changing relationship to the position of the Sun in the sky. This effect is less at the equator and increases toward the poles. We experience seasons as a consequence of all this. When the northern hemisphere is maximally tilted toward the Sun, we have summer. When it is tilted away from the Sun, we have winter.
A phenomenon called the “Vernal equinox” occurs each year around the date of your birthday. The exact day of the equinox varies by a day or two from year-to-year. This year it is on March 20. The equinox is a moment when the plane of Earth’s equator is lined up with the center of the Sun and at this time of year the length of day and night are just about equal. The Vernal equinox marks the first day of spring.
Earth's rhythmic relationship to its star is only one of many unique physical characteristics that makes life possible here. But unlike other planets, or moons, or asteroids where there may also be simple forms of single-celled life, Earth has an astonishing coincidence of many special physical features that make intelligent life possible – the kind of creatures that can do things like play the cello.
So, happy birthday. I hope you have a great day on this fragile but beautiful planet that might be the only place in the universe where you could happen.
Monte
Texas Relays marathon April 4, 1981
Friends
This photograph was taken on April 4, 1981. I’m the runner on the left and my friend, Matt, is on the right. It’s near the end of the Texas Relays marathon, my first marathon. Matt wasn’t running in the race, he was watching me run and jumped on to the course excited to see that I was actually going to finish the race.
My time was 3-hours-3-minutes-53-seconds. I didn’t know how to run a marathon then, so I started slow. I ran the first 13.1 miles at 7.5 minutes per mile running with a stranger who told me he’d run several marathons and seemed like he knew what he was doing. He crashed at 13-miles, and I was alone, running with my own rhythm. My pace picked-up considerably to 6.5 minutes per mile for the second 13.1-miles. When Matt ran on to the course with about a mile left in the race, he shouted at me: “Do you know how many people you’ve passed?” I didn’t. I was “in the zone.”
Matt was my friend from the weight room at Gregory Gym on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, where we were students. Matt studied architecture, and I studied biology. My college job was to open the weight room, workout for four-to-six hours, and then close the weight room. Sweet. It’s where I met Matt, and we worked out together, pushing each other through tough routines.
At the time of this picture, I was in my last semester of college. I’d broken my left shoulder in a snow skiing accident and had surgery a few months earlier, in January. I couldn’t lift weights while recovering so I increased my running, running with my left arm in a sling for the first 6-weeks after the surgery. Matt had recently returned from a semester in Italy where he didn’t have access to a gym. He came home a lot skinnier.
In the gym, Matt was a beast, bench pressing over 300-pounds. He looked like Adonis, and I was occasionally embarrassed by pretty girls whistling at him when we were walking together around campus. Memories fade over time, and forty years is a long time, but I remember those days as a happy time in my life.
Matt had a trophy made for me with two small figures: a runner and a weight-lifter, and the words “World’s Finest Athlete” inscribed on the base. He gave it to me as a gift a week or two after the marathon. Nobody else I’ve ever known, outside of my immediate family, has ever given me such a thoughtful present, or one that meant so much to me.
I left Austin two months after this picture and started medical school in San Antonio, Texas. I never spoke to Matt again. He finished his Architecture degree and went on to a brilliant career in big cities like Washington, D.C. He became interested in helping inner city people. He got elected to a city council position where he could have an impact on architectural planning that affected people in poor neighborhoods. Later, he moved to California where he started two nonprofit organizations to help the homeless. He now works in Houston for an organization that does community development for people in need. Oh, and he raised two children, who sound terrific.
I know all this because I looked for him on the internet last week and found him. We arranged for a phone call today and talked for half-an-hour. He was on his way to the grocery store to buy fish for dinner. He still works out every day and pays attention to what he eats, as do I. “It’s in our blood,” he said. It’s how we both deal with the obstacles of living.
This picture has been on my desk since it was taken, wherever I’ve lived. I’ve picked it up so many times and wondered about Matt. After I hung up the phone, I had the same feeling of admiration for him that I had all those years ago when we worked out together in Gregory Gym.
Matt and I are two people whose paths crossed briefly in a gym for just a few years a long time ago. I haven’t maintained friendships with anyone I knew in high school, college or medical school (except for Jenny, the girl I married thirty-six years ago in medical school). I’m somewhat of a loner, and definitely not a guy who has ever had a lot of friends, but I’ve always thought of Matt as a really good friend. We agreed to stay in touch. I hope we will. Neither one of us has enough time to wait another forty years before our next phone call.
Monte
West Falmouth Harbor, February 16, 2019
I’ve been collecting images of the sunset at Chapoquoit beach throughout the year to track the sun’s changing position as the Earth orbits around it. My standard shot is to fly my drone up to 120 meters and then back 220 meters to capture all of West Falmouth Harbor and the sunset just as the sun kisses the horizon at Chapoquoit beach. That is not what I did for this image. This evening, after taking the described standard shot, I flew the drone over to the harbor to get a closer shot of the dock and the sunset beyond. The calm water and the reflections make the scene feel so quiet, don’t you think?
Monte
Tommy at Chapoquoit beach January 4, 2019
The weather on January 1 and 4 of the new year, 2019, were unusually warm — over 50 degrees fahrenheit on January 1, 2019. This, of course, meant that the surfers would be out in the water.
They work diligently on perfecting their “tricks,” which means they have a lot of spectacular wipe-outs, like this one.
Monte
Paul at Chapoquoit Beach, December 3, 2018
Paul again
Tom with a flock of geese at Chapoquoit Beach
Yesterday the forecast for today looked very promising for a great day to be kiting. Low tide was just before noon and the wind was supposed to be blowing 21 mph WSW. But today it remained densely foggy until just after 1200 hours and when the fog finally lifted the wind was only about 16 mph. But there were still a lot of surfers at the beach, including a new surfer named Paul who just recently moved here. He’s in the top two images.
The third image, which is not perfectly focused, is Tom. I saw the geese coming and rushed to swing my camera around in time to capture them flying behind him. I got a couple shots, but they aren’t “tack sharp.”
Overall, it was a pretty fun afternoon. The temperature was unusually warm - well into the 50’s. I took this portrait of a different Paul, Paul Miskovsky, in the parking lot as we were leaving. He is holding my other camera while I take his photo.
Paul Miskovsky at Chapoquoit Beach, December 3, 2018
Monte
Little Island Beach shortly after sunrise on December 1, 2018
Waiting for Great Blue Herons at Little Island Beach. The drone shot was a little after sunrise on December 1. No herons flew in that morning. I’ll keep trying. It’s still a lot of fun just being out there.
I talked to a shell fisherman and he was telling me about the places where he sees a lot of birds while he’s fishing. Seemed like a good guy.
Monte
Homemade sign hanging on a snow fence at Chapoquoit
It's such obvious advice. No reasonable person would disagree with the message. Why, then, does it so often feel like the world is unkind?
Monte
Miles Manning at Chapoquoit Beach on November 27, 2018
Miles again
Yesterday, I went to Chapoquoit Beach because it was windy and I thought I might find some surfers. Miles was the only one in the water. There were two other surfers there, Ryan and Hanu, but they decided it was too cold to go in.
I’ve been more interested in trying to photograph Great Blue Herons for the past few weeks. Not too much luck with that yet. I can’t get close enough to get a really good shot. I did capture this Heron a few days ago while out at Little Island Beach. I was using an Olympus EM1 MK2 with an Olympus 300 mm prime lens, which is the equivalent of a 600 mm lens. The shot was handheld.
I’d been out at Little Island for about two hours and decided there wouldn’t be any Herons that day. I walked back to my car and loaded my camera gear into the back. As I was closing the door the bird flew into the pond. He stayed just long enough for me to get my camera out and snap a few shots.
A Great Blue Heron in the pond at Little Island Beach November 24, 2018
Monte
West Falmouth Harbor - November 5, 2018
I needed a break this afternoon from all the vitriol ripping our country apart in the lead-up to tomorrow’s election. Down at West Falmouth Harbor the rhythms of nature seemed, on the surface, unperturbed by the bellicose ranting of political rhetoric that is landing on all our ears like a blow from a hammer.
Being at the harbor made me feel better.
Monte
The Burger Shack at Old Silver Beach on October 21, 2018
I went to Chapoquoit today believing it was a perfect day for kite-boarders, but there were none there. Maybe they’re at Old Silver Beach, I thought. So, I went to Old Silver but still found no kite-boarders. I did notice The Burger Shack, now closed after the summer season ended. It looked like an image that said something about Autumn on Cape Cod, so I took a picture.
Monte