by Steve Tanham
(-790 words, a five minute read) There’s nothing like having a good rest from blogging to make you think about what your blogging life should be like. I’ve been musing for the past three weeks – between Christmas family warmth and New Year’s ‘Auld Lang Syne’ – about the nature of blogging and why we do it. Reading others’ similar reflections has been instructive. … Read More Nothing like blogging
by Steve Tanham
There was something of the celebrated children’s story ‘The Ice Queen’ about the beauty of the white formation of swans gliding towards me across the mercurial waters of the upper pond in Roundhay Park, Leeds. Saturday, and we were making a delayed New Year visit to our young grandson. Always a challenging journey at this time of the year – along the frozen A65 … Read More The swans of Roundhay
by Steve Tanham
With this post I’ll be signing off for the rest of 2023 and the first week in 2024. I’m sure we all need a recharge, and I find the festive season a good time to switch off and lie fallow for a while… The image above is a montage of two of my recent photos. I liked the way the warm bits reveal themselves … Read More Signing off for 2023 – Happy Christmas!
+ #iphonephotography, #Phoetry, #Poetry, #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, nature, Photography, Spirituality
by Steve Tanham
Sodden, like a soldier’s backpack hauled across the final freezing mile. The face of one determined To outlive, within an icy smile. A green chord, stroked arpeggio Denied its solemn tone But knowing minor E contains The fire in flint and spark in stone. The forest, bright with inner flame Disguised in mud and weeping bark Waits, silent, dripping, lost in time A holding … Read More Sodden
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by Steve Tanham
This Sunday (17th December) sees the last of our Silent Eye Explorations zoom meetings for 2023. It’s been a fascinating year, and we mean to end it with a special event which will combine a guided mediation on the subject of ‘metanoia’ with a visualised, mental and emotional odyssey to two sacred places on the mystical and ancient Orkney islands. We’re going to supplement … Read More Metanoia and Light from Darkness
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by Steve Tanham
There comes a time when even the most creative use of ‘pale colour’ results in a lesser image than its equivalent in black and white. When we get a shot for which no amount of digital rescue or fine-tuning will deliver success, it’s time to let the powers of monochrome have a go… Good results can often be achieved by taking the original to … Read More Beyond the edge of colour
by Steve Tanham
The fading light in December is a challenge. There is a temptation to ‘settle’ for a monochrome approach to taking shots; looking only for high-contrast situations. But there are opportunities for compositions that lend themselves to a limited spread of subtle colours. As a second stage, modern editing tools can be applied to bring out a small selection of colours as highlights – such … Read More Pale December Light
+ #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, I Ching, Inquiry techniques, meditation, Mindfulness, Photography, Silent Eye School
by Steve Tanham
When we find that the process of inner inquiry described in the last two posts actually works, and we see that ‘finding out’ things about our inner lives is both simple and replicable, we might wonder why and how this mysterious technique works so well? What mechanism makes this seeming conversation with our experience and its storehouse of memory so powerful? Hang on tight, … Read More Shells from an Inner Sea (3 of 3): the inner flow
by Steve Tanham
Sometimes, the moment just is … in all its beauty. The leaves, their work done, let go the link to their sustenance and fall through space to an unknown place, where their form blazes briefly amidst their kin, before losing its cohesion in the harshness of winter, returning everything they have been, but not this memory, to the good earth. ©Stephen Tanham 2023 Stephen … Read More The surrender of final beauty
+ #Silenti, Consciousness, esoteric psychology, I Ching, Inquiry techniques, meditation, Mindfulness, Photography, Silent Eye School
by Steve Tanham
We are urged by spiritual writers to ‘live in the now’. We might reasonably ask how we might live anywhen else, but that would go against the spirit of such good advice. Some clarity might be needed, though. As far as a reasonable self-inquiry goes, we – our composite consciousness – lives pressed up against signals from our senses that are very much of … Read More Shells from an Inner Sea (2) A fresh look at the ‘now’
+ #Phoetry, #Silenti, Ancient Landscapes, Consciousness, Lake District, landscapes, Photographic techniques, Photography, Places and Prose
by Steve Tanham
It’s like a Dutch canal system in miniature. It’s usually freezing cold, and seems to go dark quicker, there, than anywhere else we visit. Welcome to the hidden gem of the shore at Bolton-le-Sands, Lancashire. There’s a main channel that divides the long shoreline in two. The collie loves it, as she can vault over the narrow waters in pursuit of the frisbee; then … Read More The waterways of Bolton-le-Sands
by Steve Tanham
I’ve often thought what a testimonial to the speed of the modern mind a motorway is. As our principal driver (though my wife is just as competent), I seldom get chance to take photographs. But when this deluge hit the M6, just south of Kendal, she was driving us to meet with her sister in Morecambe. I already had the phone camera in my … Read More Silver Fast Thread
Sun in Gemini 
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