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5 Books That Will Change Your Understanding Of Our World

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Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life Of Trees
What’s it about? The forest is a social network. Groundbreaking scientific discoveries describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers.
The author is Peter Wohlleben who spent over twenty years working for the forestry commission in Germany before leaving to put his ideas of ecology into practice. He now runs an environmentally friendly woodland in Germany, where he is working for the return of primeval forests.
The big take away? Plants are more like us than you ever would have dreamed.
Find the book here.
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Rob Knight’s Follow Your Gut
What’s it about? It’s a detailed tour of the ‘micro-biome’ in our guts and it’s influences on our mind, plus an exploration of the known effects of antibiotics, probiotics, diet choices, birth method, and access to livestock on our children’s lifelong health.
The authors are computational biochemist Dr. Rob Knight and award winning science writer Brendan Buhler.
The big take away? Our bodies are hosts to vast webs of life that influence our health and consciousness.
Find the book here.
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Lyall Watson’s Heaven’s Breath
What’s it about? Heaven’s Breath looks at the ways in which the winds profoundly affect the earth’s surface and influence plant and animal behavior. First, the author shows how the winds bring the world to life, providing the circulatory and nervous systems of the planet, disseminating energy and information, distributing warmth and bringing rain, making soil and air-conditioning the globe. Then he discusses the way the wind disperses plants and animals, shapes natural communities and gives rise to an aerial ecology of creatures and aero-plankton, which rise and fall over every square mile of land. There are chapters on wind sensitivity, including the creation of a new Beaufort Scale of wind forces, and a look at how the mistral, sirocco, Santa Ana and other winds alter human physiology and psychology to a degree that can lead to disease, suicide and even murder. In the historical section the author describes how the trade winds have influenced human migrations and in war have determined the outcome of battles and shaped empires. In the chapters on wind myth and folklore he shows how experience of the mystery of wind has been directly responsible for the origins of consciousness and the growth and development of religious belief, and he discusses its manifestations in art, music and literature.
The author is Lyall Watson who holds doctorates in anthropology and ethology (animal behavior) and additional degrees in botany, chemistry, geology, geography, marine biology, and ecology. Watson logically investigates illogical events.
The big take away? Our atmosphere is complex, dynamic, mysterious, and filled with life.
Find the book here.
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James Lovelock’s Gaia : A New Look At Life On Earth
What’s it about? The Earth functions as a single organism and living matter influences air, ocean, and rock to form a complex, self-regulating system that has the capacity to keep the Earth a fit place for life.
The author is James Lovelock is the multi-award winning chromatographer and originator of the Gaia Theory.
The big take away? The earth is alive.
Find the book here.
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Ervin Lazlo’s Science And Akashic Field Theory
What’s it about? Mystics and sages have long maintained that there exists an interconnecting cosmic field at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic record. Recent discoveries in vacuum physics show that this Akashic Field is real and has its equivalent in science’s zero-point field that underlies space itself. This field consists of a subtle sea of fluctuating energies from which all things arise: atoms and galaxies, stars and planets, living beings, and even consciousness. This zero-point Akashic Field is the constant and enduring memory of the universe. It holds the record of all that has happened on Earth and in the cosmos and relates it to all that is yet to happen. From the world of science he confirms our deepest intuitions of the oneness of creation in the Integral Theory of Everything.
The author is Ervin Laszlo, twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, author of 83 books translated into 21 languages, and the founder and president of the international think tanks the Club of Budapest and the General Evolution Research Group.
The big take away? Everything is connected. As time passes the universe becomes more information rich.
Find the book here.
Find more Recommended Reading here.

7 Great Quotes By Photographer Pete Turner

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Enjoy this collection of quotes by photographer Pete Turner.
“If photography has developed a special language it should be welcomed as an extension of our senses and seen for what it is – the first faulting steps of an infant medium towards maturity.” – Pete Turner
“It has been said a thousand times that photography is a universal language. To accept this notion is to ignore the fact that its meanings cannot be translated in anything other than a woolly and imprecise manner.” – Pete Turner
“What have I done wrong?” -he said later.” Nothing, I think. I am steadily surprised that there are so many photographers that reject manipulating reality, as if that was wrong. Change reality! If you don’t find it, invent it!” – Pete Turner
“Looking at photographs, like taking them, can be joyful, sensuous pleasure. Looking at photographs of quality can only increase that pleasure.” – Pete Turner
“Color takes my work into another dimension. It’s the way I see. I’ve always been drawn to the colors of nature, and nature is a wonderful teacher.” – Pete Turner
“Ultimately, simplicity is the goal – in every art, and achieving simplicity is one of the hardest things to do. Yet it’s easily the most essential.” – Pete Turner
“A photographers work is given shape and style by his personal vision. It is not simply technique, but the way he looks at life and the world around him.” – Pete Turner
Find out more about Pete Turner here.
Explore 12 Great Photographs By Great Photographers
Explore The Essential Collection Of Quotes By Photographers.
Explore The Essential Collection Of Documentaries On Photographers.

The Story Of The Photograph – Alignment XXXVI

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Alignment XXXVI

Alignment XXXVI

In all of my work, there’s a strong sense of abstraction. I want the foundations of my images to be suggestive and expressive. I want to create images that give us an opportunity to simultaneously look out into the world and into ourselves. By never losing sight of the fact that we are looking at a flat image of a deep world, the illusions it creates, and the suspension of disbelief we enter into, we are reminded to look at ourselves looking. The psychic space created for greater awareness is the heart of my images.

I’m obsessed with the horizon and a majority of my images contain one, but not these images. In my virtual petroglyphs, I want to be drawn into an even more intimate space, physically and emotionally.

In this image, Alignment XXXVI, there’s a strong correspondence between two kinds of flow: the flowing forms of the stone and the flowing lines of the petroglyph of subatomic particles scattering. Two qualities of space and time collide. One is a physical form that takes on abstract qualities when seen in a particular way; the other is an abstract image made by a particular way of seeing that takes on physical dimensions. These primordial patterns suggest an order of reality that we’re unaccustomed to but which is essential to our understanding of the nature of the universe and ourselves.

Like the photograph rendered by the camera, the pattern this petroglyph renders is made with another special device made for looking more deeply into the universe. Bubble chambers work by filling a device with liquid heated to just below its boiling point. The entire chamber is subject to a constant magnetic field that causes charged particles entering it to travel in helical paths (whose radius is determined by their velocities and mass), around which the liquid vaporizes, forming microscopic bubbles. Bubble densities around tracks are proportional to a particle’s energy loss. Bubbles grow in size as the chamber expands until they are large enough to be seen or photographed. The resolution of bubble chambers goes down to a few micrometers. Several cameras are mounted around it, allowing a three-dimensional image of an event to be captured. Invented in 1952, bubble chambers are outdated, but the images produced with them still shape our understanding of the structure of matter and the nature of the universe. In one sense, this is a photograph of a photograph. The marriage of two kinds of looking in one image highlights opportunities for looking in another way – inward with the mind’s eye.

This is the only petroglyph rendered from a photograph. Other petroglyphs in this series extend our ways of seeing by reproducing diagrams of reality rendered from theory, patterns that we are currently incapable of capturing mechanically (the orbits of our solar system’s planets, the shape of our Milky Way galaxy, the arrangement of starry super-clusters, etc.) but which we extrapolate from our composite understanding of the universe. The series zooms through our understanding of the universe, from the subatomic to the whole of the known universe, never losing sight of the fact that our understanding continually changes, expanding, and evolving, never more rapidly than today.

We create tools to extend our perception, like the camera. Each tool offers us one window into the universe. Of course, it’s limited. It sees in one way. So what’s been left out? And what are we missing? But it’s still able to produce at least one piece of the puzzle. It’s hard enough to use existing tools to learn to see in new ways. It’s even harder to use existing tools (or create new tools) to see things you can’t yet conceive of. But it’s worth a try. I can assure you it’s a rewarding process.

View the video on Alignment XXXVI here.
View the video on the series Alignment here.
Read more of The Stories Behind The Images here.

Creative Image Sharpening With HDR Software

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Unsharpened / Hybrid / Strong HDR

HDR software is most typically used to render shadow and highlight detail, but it can also be used to enhance tonal separation and detail in any range of tones, even in images with extremely low contrast. The very same tools that are used to compensate for HDR side effects can be used to sharpen any image.

When multiple bracketed exposures are merged into a single processed file, shadows and highlights that exceed the dynamic range of a camera’s sensor are compressed into the dynamic range of a digital file, taking the mid-tones with them. Depending on the HDR software used, a variety of tools are available to restore contrast and separation in mid-tones. If used aggressively, these tools produce the telltale signs of contemporary or grunge HDR artifacts – halos and texture accentuation. These are the very same artifacts that digital sharpening routines use more conservatively to make images appear sharper - only they look different.

Unlike the hard halo and line produced by the filter Unsharp Mask and more like the soft line produced by the filter High Pass, HDR sliders can give you still more points of control over line and texture, each with a slightly different flavor.


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29 Great Quotes On Appreciation

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Enjoy this collection of quotes on Appreciation.
“Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot.” Hansa Proverb
“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” – Dalai Lama
“By taking the time to stop and appreciate who you are and what you’ve achieved – and perhaps learned through a few mistakes, stumbles and losses – you actually can enhance everything about you. Self-acknowledgment and appreciation are what give you the insights and awareness to move forward toward higher goals and accomplishments.” – Jack Canfield
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” ― Voltaire
“The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.” ― Dale Carnegie
“The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement.” – Charles M. Schwab
“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nature’s beauty is a gift that cultivates appreciation and gratitude.” – Louie Schwartzberg
“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” ― Marcus Aurelius
“I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.” ― Elbert Hubbard
“To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.” ― Mark Twain
“Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.” – William Safire
“Indeed, I would feel that an appreciation of the arts in a conscious, disciplined way might help one to do science better.” – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
“But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.” – Richard Dawkins
“The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.” – Igor Stravinsky
“Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn’t hurt your appreciation of the painting.” – Jodie Foster
“I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years.” – David Rockefeller
“Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, lend us hope, usher in calm, stretch our sympathies, reignite our senses, and reawaken appreciation.” – Alain de Botton
“The essence of all beautiful art is gratitude.” – Friedrich Nietzche
“I’ve learned that universal acceptance and appreciation is just an unrealistic goal.” – Dan Brown
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” – John F. Kennedy
“The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.” – Amelia Earhart
“To be more childlike, you don’t have to give up being an adult. The fully integrated person is capable of being both an adult and a child simultaneously. Recapture the childlike feelings of wide-eyed excitement, spontaneous appreciation, cutting loose, and being full of awe and wonder at this magnificent universe.” – Wayne Dyer
“If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you’ll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors. When you walk into it, then you see it in a completely different way. You discover it in a much slower, more majestic sort of way.” – Bill Bryson
“Workaholics typically have a lot of achievement with very little appreciation of what they have, whether it’s cars or friendships or otherwise. That is a shallow victory. Then you have people with a lot of appreciation and no achievement, which is fine, but it doesn’t create a lot of good in the world.” – Timothy Ferriss
“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.” ― Paulo Coelho
“The achievement is appreciation. Your ability to be surprised and awed by beauty!” – William Hurt
“I do not equate productivity to happiness. For most people, happiness in life is a massive amount of achievement plus a massive amount of appreciation. And you need both of those things.” – Timothy Ferriss
“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!” ― Mae West
Explore The Essential Collection Of Creativity Quotes here.
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David DuChemin's New Mentor Class The Compelling Frame

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David DuChemin recommends, “If you want sharper photographs, buy a new lens. If you want more compelling photographs, start here.” So do I. If you love David’s books (including Within The Frame and The Soul Of The Camera), like I do – his new online class The Compelling Frame is for you.

Haven’t been able to take one of his Mentor Series Workshops? The Compelling Frame is a great way to get started while you’re waiting.

“The Compelling Frame is a mentor class about making more compelling photographs by being more intentional about your compositions.” (David DuChemin) As with everything David does, it’s vision driven. There are no rules here. David deftly points out that the elements of composition and the forces they set in motion are nothing without purpose – and in your photographs that purpose is yours to choose. Put another way, without knowing what you want to do, you’re unlikely to know how to do it. David puts heart and soul into everything he does; that’s what makes him so great. And he encourages you to do the same because that’s what will make you great.

In the videos you spend less time watching David demonstrate and more time listening to him talk and ask you questions – about really important things. It’s like having a fireside chat with David; the fire is a monitor and the warmth you feel is David. The Compelling Frame is not just a series of videos to be watched passively, this is a class, and to get the most out of it you’ll want to do the exercises that accompany each lesson. It’s well thought out. This is the good work we all need to do. This includes looking carefully at other photographers images, looking carefully at your own, and making new ones. Do this work and you can’t help but make better photographs.

What do you get when you purchase The Compelling Frame? 19 Video Lessons, 31 Creative Exercises, 4 About The Image videos, 2 Craft & Creativity Videos, 2 eBooks, 3 Ask Me Anything Sessions, a one-year membership to Vision Driven a private Facebook community, and 10% off future MentorClasses.

The Compelling Frame is available for one week only – until Sep 20, 2017.

Preview The Compelling Frame here now.

Find out more about David DuChemin here.

17 Great Quotes By Photographer David DuChemin

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Enjoy this collection of quotes by photographer David DuChemin.

“The cliché comes not in what you shoot but in how you shoot it.”  – David DuChemin

“Learning to see is not about having open eyes; it’s about having an open mind.” – David DuChemin

“The more curious we are the more creative we become.” – David DuChemin

“Creativity is about two things; the way we think, and the way we turn those thoughts into reality.” – David DuChemin

“It is we show put the humanity, the vision, and the poetry into our photographs.” – David DuChemin

“When we look at our photographs and find not the slightest reflection of ourselves, it is a good sign that our images have lost their souls.” – David DuChemin

“The idea of authenticity carries such value because we know how difficult it is to be fully ourselves.” – David DuChemin

“Anyone can take a picture of poverty; it’s easy to focus on the dirt and hurt of the poor. It’s much harder—and much more needful—to pry under that dirt and reveal the beauty and dignity of people that, but for their birth into a place and circumstance different from our own, are just like ourselves. I want my images to tell the story of those people and to move us beyond pity to justice and mercy.”  – David DuChemin

“A representational photograph says, ‘This is what Vienna looked like.’ An interpretational photograph goes one better and says, ‘This is what Vienna was like. This is how I felt about it.”  – David DuChemin

“‘What is it about?’ is not the same as ‘What happened?’” – David DuChemin

“It’s the difference between your wife’s passport photograph and the portraits you took when you got engaged. Both may have been created with similar technology, but what stands in that great gulf between them are the passion you have for your wife, the knowledge you have of her personality, and your willingness to use your craft, time, and energy to express that. One says, “She looks like this.” The other says, “This is who she is to me. It’s how I feel about her. See how amazing she is.” – David DuChemin

“Perfection is overrate, and not to be confused with mastery.” – David DuChemin

“Photographers, like few other kinds of artists I can imagine, have an insanely personal relationship with their gear.”  – David DuChemin

“Knowing failure is part of our process, and leads to new ideas, stronger work, and more honest questions, liberates us to peer, a little less frightened, into the unknown.”  – David DuChemin

“You yourself are unique–you have ways of seeing your world that are unlike those of anyone else–so find ways to more faithfully express that, and your style will emerge.” – David DuChemin 

“The real failure is to rob this world of the contribution only you can make, and to fail to make work that truly gives you that ‘this is what I was created to do’ feeling that has no equal.” – David DuChemin

“I  will never reach the end of this journey. I’ll never arrive at a point where others have nothing to teach me.” – David DuChemin

Find out more about David DuChemin here.

Read David DuChemin’s Q&A here.

Read David DuChemin’s Favorite Quotes here.

Preview his new online course The Compelling Frame now.