Another day, another rehearsal. More study, more practicing. And for all but the most independent and reclusive researchers or out-and-out hermits, this means work done in company. We need each other. The best progress is usually possible only with the support and aid of collaborators and fellow workers in all kinds of related tasks. We build on the work of our predecessors and colleagues; we stand on the shoulders of others.
Nowhere is the necessity of such mutuality, of working very literally in concert, truer than in choirs and orchestras. I have written here plenty of times about the privileges and joys of my life in being able to attend not only so many wonderful concerts but the rehearsals where they are prepared. Beyond that, though, I feel fortunate to have the example and reminder constantly before me of an approach that can be tremendously beneficial in all kinds of life’s activities: surrounding myself with all of the resources that smart and able and collegial, supportive fellow laborers can bring to the task.
Time alone is valuable. It offers all sorts of useful room for quiet reasoning and planning, uninterrupted cogitation and problem-solving, and the mental and emotional space to put all of those aspects to work for me. But there would be little in the way of material with which I can do any of that if it weren’t for the rich stores of fact and imagination prepared by all of those who have preceded me in any task I choose, and there can be only the kind of progress that my own limited stores of wisdom and experience, skill and talent and imagination can cobble together if I don’t work in tandem with others. So I am happy to enlist all of the company I can, and aim for working in harmony toward whatever purposes we can dream and achieve. Then, perhaps, my projects will have a chance of culminating in choruses of satisfied approbation.
Art-Colored Glasses 
I love the way you processed these images!
Thanks! This set was straight-up Photoshop, though I did do plenty of layers of stuff just to have fun with it. You can see through all of that stuff that I started with a pair of motion-blurred shots anyhow, but I liked how that gave life to the images from the start.
oh cool! i thought perhaps you had taken some people images and used the Sum-e filter in photoshop. It’s even better than you created it from scratch.
Oh, I *did* use the photos as the base for the manipulations. No point in reinventing the wheel. The main filter you see is the Stylize one I call “neon,” with a few others layered over and under it, and lots of fiddling around with contrast and colors and suchlike.
oh ok…I thought it looked like an original photo but then thought, wow, that’s a lot of work from scratch. it’s very artistic!
Absolutely love these images. Brilliant!
Thank you, Lail! I had fun making them, and even more fun listening to the rehearsal where I shot the starting images.
“We stand on the shoulders of others” one of many lines I loved from this post, Kathryn, and your images are awesome! xx
I believe there’s a story titled ‘On the Shoulders of Giants’ that beat me to the punch! But I like the idea that it’s not merely the ‘greats’ who lead and lift us but every person offering us the wisdom of experience, the hope of support and the comfort of love. Like you, for example, though I would say you’re no small person at all, yourself.
xoxo
❤