Japanese aesthetics: 'mono no aware'

The Littoral Zone  project has been on hold in  2023.  The previous  Ephemeral post was in May 2023 after a 5 months hiatus. Then there is nothing until September -- a 4 month gap. So that is  one post in 9 months. What's more there were large gaps between posts before that. 

The two pictures in this post, which  were made in May 2023, pick up where I left off through reconnecting with the Japanese aesthetic concept of mono no aware. It's a return to familiar ground. 

The basic reason for the hiatus in 2023 is that I lost my way - or ran out of puff. The initial motivation was  a blog of photos and text linked to poodlewalks as a supplement.  Over time  it slowly evolved from a blog to a project that  connected the photos of the littoral zone that I made whilst on my daily poodlewalks to Japanese aesthetics.  The blog  became  a way or means for  me to work out  how to do this. 

What appealed about Japanese aesthetics was that it was based on the world of flux that presents itself to our senses being the only reality: there is no conception of some stable Platonic realm above or behind it.This  appealed because the littoral zone was a world of flux and it connected with  the process metaphysics in western philosophy  -- eg., Nietzsche's rejection of Platonism's two worlds  and his idea of the will to power  that sees the world as comprised of dynamic active and reactive forces in tension. 

pink seaweed, quartz, salt pond

I've been going the archives of what I call  my macro photographs. 

The picture below was made  about the same time (circa 2019) as the images on this post on Thoughtfactory's photo blog and with the same macro camera equipment. It was the colours of the quartz that initially caught my eye. Then I saw the seaweed strand lying across the quartz vein. 

 I thought that this moment wouldn't last very long, as the coastal wind would quickly move the shape and the  line of the seaweed strand, then eventually  blow it off the quartz.  So I quickly made a photo. 

I was on a poodlewalk at the time,  and I was looking for some dried salt ponds among the granite rocks to photograph.  We would have   been walking in the  late afternoon.

quartz

This macro study of quartz was made on an afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko during the Xmas break:

It was slightly overcast that afternoon in mid-January and the usual high contrast light around 6pm  was softened.

granite and quartz

This granite and quartz study was  made whilst I was on an afternoon walk in Waitpinga with Maleko. We walked  along Kings Beach, over, Kings Head, past the wilderness lodge, and down  to the rocky outcrop close to the  foot of  the Newland Head cliffs. 

We walked around the rocky outcrop so that I could try out my  new digital camera--the Sony A7r111   in low light situations