Between Shore and Sea

April 14, 2019 Mark Roger Bailey

Outward bound Morgenster (NL) departs Roker Light by Mark Roger Bailey

A Captain’s Time Ashore

The border between land and sea is clear. The village on the rugged coast is self-sufficient, a slowly evolving geology, an oasis of rest. The sea is an urgent universe of change, of violence, sometimes calm, often a cauldron of furies.

The captain, who knows that discipline is the border between life and death at sea, is a different sort on land. He quietly abides by Sunday sermons, listens politely to small talk and cherishes his child’s passing attentions that shine like sunlight through her maturing senses.

Every day, he walks the paths that wind from rocky shore to palisades and higher through woods where he sees the distant horizon hide lands he has seen from his quarterdeck. Usually, he walks alone, accompanied by birds, rustling leaves and all manner of land life. Occasionally, a stranger falls in beside him, talking as they walk about the mysteries of nature’s ordering influences around them, the season’s fauna coming to rest in sedimentary layers that build up over time to create the hills and cliffs over which they walk. The captain listens more than he speaks. He tries to be generous and add to the conversation, but his time ashore is short. The subject of geologic time engages his mind, he sees similarities between watery canyons at sea and their counterparts on the land, and he is about to express this thought, but it is too late. The stranger senses the captain wants to be alone and parts at a fork in the path.

Eventually, at some point, the captain looks up, reads the wind and changes course, and follows the bank of the river that flows from distant mountains down into the harbor beside his village. There, his home awaits. He feels the pressure of time gathering like the weather. Farther down the shore, the tide has lifted his ship’s shining masts and spars into changing skies.

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View my Tall Ships collection and please stop by my Gallery Shop to consider a special series of signed and numbered limited-edition prints for the collector. A miniature print of a tall ship would make a wonderful gift for yourself or a thoughtful surprise for a friend.

Creativity Squared

February 22, 2019 Mark Roger Bailey

Writing + Art Photography

Writing and photography are competing and complementary pursuits for me. Until now, their competing aspects kept my workspaces separate and distinct; writing here, developing photographs and printing there. Two sides of the same creative force divided into two creative spaces. Until today.

Writing is impossibly difficult and immensely rewarding. While it costs far more in time and effort than anything I have ever done, it compensates with learning, discovery, and understanding.

Photography is also difficult, yet opens me up to the world, other lives and remarkable stories in a journey of discovery that makes me a better person and, hopefully, a better artist. Always has. Blotched and imperfect daguerreotype images from 1838 France, then England, and later from the U.S. Civil War captured my imagination during rainy afternoons among the stacks in the village public library. Large format impressed me with the mystery of glass, solution and light. Then medium format seemed to perfect the beauty and authentic documentary truth within the confined borders of a print. The spectacular advances of 35mm, Polaroid, film to digital, and DSLR photography seemed essential and worthy. If I could learn enough, I might just be able to translate my innate curiosity and empathy for certain subjects into meaningful works that support others’ interests. This is how we discover the truth, by gathering fragments, piecing together theories of reality. Evolving.

The world is large and diverse, yet most of us live within walking or commuting distance of our day jobs. Most of us grow up thinking small, grateful for a paycheck, fearful of the loss of that paycheck, amazed when we find friendship, humbled when we discover love. Decades fly by as we prepare for our life’s great aspiration. Time passes, and we find out that as we made plans our life spent itself. We were focused on job, family, house, and taxes while time focused on… time.

Today, I break through the wall that separates my writing and my visual art. Writing and Photography. A new beginning for both.

I am pleased to present a series of my images of tall ships, each of which captures a sense of story that I strive for in everything I do. And each of which inspires new stories in my imagination.

Debut: Tall Ships

I have been photographing boats for longer than Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours required to become world-class. Yet I still feel I am only beginning to understand the truths to be found at the intersection of time, skill, and insight.

Flying Jibs and Euterpe - The Star of India

Discovery is a fundamental quality of the sailing experience. No two moments afloat are alike. Every ocean, season, and transit is a one-off. Each tack, reach and run is unique. And the human skills that developed over thousands of hours learning and eventually mastering the ability to navigate all this newness are fragile and fleeting, for we are here for only a blink of an eye in the scheme of time. Yet the more one discovers, learns and masters, the more opportunities present themselves to challenge us. In this way, we find out the soul of nature, weather, seas and the vessels we build to walk on water and take flight on ever-changing winds.

Whether writing or shooting, telling a story about the history in a 2,000-year-old tibia or documenting time’s stresses in a 178-year-old whaling ship’s arthritic rib, my goal is the same: to capture meaning itself, inspire the viewer’s imagination and touch the timeless in everyone who looks upon them.

I invite you to visit my gallery and view my new Tall Ships collection at www.markrogerbaileyphotography.com, and while you’re there, please view my Maritime Miniature Limited Editions.

Until next time,

Mark