The Ones I Like List of 2006 – A Countdown [#2]
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A nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty.
The ancient Greeks called the world {kosmos}, beauty. Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. This seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye is the best of artists.
Excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Beauty” from Vol. 1 – Nature, Addresses and Lectures
Picnics and Frisbees – Houston is a beautiful city! There might be many who take issue with my declaration, but I proffer that those who do take issue haven’t spent enough time here, haven’t donned the hat of urban explorer, and/or haven’t yet discovered that, as Emerson stated so well, the eye is the best of artists.
Picnics and Frisbees is an accurate representation of the way I saw Hermann Park on one February morning earlier this year. Sure, the original photo was not as richly colored, but I didn’t see what was shown on the photo in its original form — I saw this. Beauty never introduces itself, even in its most adulterated, citi-fied presentations, as dull, as invisible, as ubiquitous; it always enchants as character-filled, as magical, as unique. Picnics and Frisbees captures beauty as presented by nature, as seen through my eyes. I’m happy that I see it this way. It makes being a photographer all the more fun, being a human all the more rewarding.
