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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday, May 22, 2000 Volume II Number 21
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FOCUS - The Color of Spring
This week, a long time friend took us on a memorable journey.
It was billed as “The Photography of Walter Robie.” A forty-minute sojourn – a gentle nature walk – with a view through the camera lens aimed and operated by my good friend of twenty years.
Walter is an outdoorsman. He is a Renaissance man – he loves both the arts and the sciences. He is an adventurer. A mountain climber. A conservationist. Give him the backcountry. The high trails. The big vistas. A running brook. A kayak. A river raft. Or the glassy reflection of a mountain lake, framing the mirror image of fluffy clouds against a deep blue sky.
And then hand him a Nikon. Some lenses. A few filters. Let him frame. Let him shoot. Let him play with f-stops and aperture settings and focal length and depth of field. And he’s a happy man.
He comes home with little metal thirty-five millimeter cartridges rattling around in plastic containers ready to be processed. And the results are stunning.
Walter is a combination John Muir and Ansel Adams. He’s also a retired Presbyterian minister.
He told us about the power of the photograph. A picture captures a moment frozen in time. A good one tells a story to the generations. It can become timeless. Like the unforgettable photograph of a Vietcong general, point blank, aiming a pistol squarely at the head of a captured Vietnamese man, the victim squeezing his eyes shut, prepared for the moment of truth – which followed just after. The camera’s shutter was triggered just a moment before the hammer of the gun. The photographer could not have anticipated how that momentary snap of his camera randomly capturing the shot in a remote Southeast Asian village would impact global public opinion. The image of a cold-blooded public execution hit the front page of newspapers around the world. Newsmagazines gave it a high profile. It made the top of the evening news. A little black and white photograph impacted the course of history.
There are many examples, Walter said. Photographs illicit emotion. Passion. A sense of caring. Pictures tell a story.
“I want my pictures to tell a story, too,” he continued. “I’ve developed several programs, each of them years in the making. I want my pictures to tell the simple but profound story of the miracle of Creation. Tonight, you will experience the Color of Spring – wildflowers in bloom. Wildflowers from the California coastline, the Redwoods, and then the Highways of Arizona, the Rockies of Western Colorado and the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in eastern Tennessee.”
The lights went dim, and Walter takes his place behind two Kodak Carousel projectors, each linked to a timing device. The music starts. Kenny G’s mellow saxophone sets the mood. And the first slide fades into view – a landscape. A wide expanse of California coastal hills and valleys, carpeted green, painted with broad stokes of yellow here and lavender there, old oak trees dotting the slopes to one side. And the title overlaps the scene, “The Color of Spring.”
There’s a clicking sound as the two projectors, synchronized to the sound track and to each other, take turns back and forth, casting Walter’s photographs on the wall sized screen. The silver canvas comes alive with color, as one image dissolves into the next.
For forty minutes, we follow Walter through the meadows and woods and back roads and hills and mountains and valleys in springtime. There are no billboards. No fences. No automobiles or airplanes or asphalt. No telephone poles or strings of wire or cable cutting across the scenes. No skyline of tall buildings. No urban concrete. No streetlights or traffic lights or crosswalks. No rows of identical houses lined up around cul-de-sacs. Not even manicured lawns or gardens.
It is forty minutes of natural wonder. Lilacs. Poppies. Leafy floral spectacles. Wide angle expanses, painted yellow, orange, and purple. A gaggle of buds and blossoms all leaning towards the sunlight together, eagerly gathering up whatever it is the Sun gives them. It is a sampling of the two hundred fifty thousand known species of wildflowers.
Close ups.
Walter controls his depth of field.
His subject in crisp focus and his background a soft
velvet blur.
Flowers opening up pedals filling the frame with rich gradients of
yellow to red, pure white to sky blue. At
the center, tiny stems and filament and stigma, reaching out from the center in
a burst of energy as if beckoning the bees to come and pollinate so that this
delicate wonder might be multiplied and fill the fields with even more of its
beauty. This year and next.
There are scenes of running water through the rocks. Setting his camera still on the tripod, and opening his shutter for a second or so, and closing down the aperture for just the right amount of light to pass through the lens and onto his film, the running water blurs into a milky white, down the waterfall, over the rocks and through the brook. The wildflowers remain in sharp focus. The Blue Ridge Mountains in Spring. Then he dissolves to tall redwoods surrounded in the shady damp floor of the forest by colorful tiny blue blossoms, dancing breezily in the shelter of the ancient giant trees along the California coast. Then a stand of birch trees, marred white bark, with tall grass and stems at the base, spotted with brilliant orange blooms. Then to the desert cactus. Giant saguaro and thorns and thistles and bright pedals flowering against the succulent tough green skin of the Arizona cacti.
Kenny G plays on.
There are only two diversions in this pastoral nature walk. The first - a man made structure, the only one to appear in the program - an aging, abandoned barn. Red paint lost to years of exposure. Wood siding peeling and curling with age. Roofline sagging. Tall grass in the foreground. Green hills painted brightly with wildflowers and dotted with oaks provide the backdrop.
As the second diversion appears, the sounded track switches to Louie Armstrong who hits the piano keys and sings, “There are skies of blue…” Walter’s preschool age granddaughters, the only humans to appear in the forty-minute program, wearing frilly bright dresses holding stringed balloons play in the meadow among the wildflowers of springtime.
The final shot. A sunset. Synchronized with the finish of Armstrong’s classic tune, the second and final text is superimposed on the yellows and reds bursting over the hills against the clouds as the sun disappears over the horizon… “The End.” It's the only disappointing slide in the show.
Walter steps to the microphone. He repeats the last Louie Armstrong line. “And I say to myself, what a wonderful world.”
* * * * * * * * *
The opening cinematic scene puzzles the audience.
In surreal colors, the camera follows a man dream-like through a field of ripened grain. You can hear the rustle and swishing of the stalks in surround sound against the man’s legs as he goes forward. A steady breeze makes the wheat field look like a body of water, waves of grain swaying back and forth. The wind whistles. The camera focuses on the man’s hand as he walks. The hand is weathered. Rough. Calloused. This is a working hand. The field looks ready for harvest… the camera skims along the tops of the stalks. Healthy and ready wheat, backlit against the evening sun. The man’s hand opens. The tops of the stalks, each with hairy seeds pointing toward the sky, brush against the man’s palm…
The feeling of this healthy crop under his open hand gives him a sense of satisfaction and pride.
What, pray tell, does this surreal cinematic hand brushing along amber waves of grain have to do with the exploits of the greatest Gladiator ever to appear on the ancient floor of Rome’s Wonder of the World – The Colosseum?
Everything. Everything.
Roman General Maximus (the Gladiator) won the heart of
the elderly Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius when he and his army defeated
Germanic invaders in AD 180. The
beloved philosopher Emperor frequently risked his own life by visiting the
battlefields of his troops, to observe first hand as his armies fought.
As he watched Maximus, he was not only impressed by his enormous
personal skill in combat, but perhaps even more important, he was taken by
Maximus’ command of his troops. His
men clearly loved him. They would
fight for him to the ends of the earth. They
fought bloody, hard won battles. But
they were victorious. Time and
again. The camaraderie was real.
General Maximus lived by the motto “strength and honor.”
When he signaled “attack,” there was no hesitation.
So in a private moment, knowing the end was near, Emperor Marcus Aurelius calls Maximus into his personal quarters. He commends Maximus for his victory. The aging royal also notes that Maximus has mastered four virtues he believes are the most critical qualities of leadership: the virtues of wisdom, justice, fortitude, and moderation.
Maximus senses that the Emperor has an agenda for this private meeting. He is right.
“What do you want from your life, Maximus?” Marcus Aurelius asks.
“I want to return to my home. My wife. My son. My fields. We fight to protect them. I want to be with them. I want my men to do the same – return to their homes.”
“That’s what I expected from you, Maximus.” The Emperor went on, “We fight for Rome. It is the greatest civilization on the face of the earth. Soon I will be gone. Rome needs a leader like you. You do not ask for power, or wealth, or influence, or fame. You understand the ideal. The idea that is Rome. Where you lead, the people will follow.”
There was a long pause. Maximus was stunned. Like most contemporary Romans, Maximus assumed that Marcus would anoint his son, Commodus the heir apparent to the Emperor’s throne.
“My own son,” he confided, “has proven himself unworthy. I love him as my son, but he is incapable. He cannot lead the people of Rome. You must.” He looked directly into the eyes of the warrior. “Take some time, but I must know your answer very soon.”
In a strange twist, that same night, the Emperor informs his son Commodus of his decision to leave his throne to the warrior Maximus. “Your failure as a son is my failure as a father,” he confesses through his tears.
In response, the bitter, angry, ambitious, resentful son smothers his own frail father that same night in his contemptuous arms. The deed is done in secret chambers. The murder goes undetected - before the royal succession can be announced. Commodus short-circuits the transfer of power to the General with a cold-blooded murder. The Emperor is dead. Of natural cause, or so the Empire is told.
Commodus snatches his father’s throne. And then orders the execution of his rival Maximus.
Thus begins the epic tale of the Roman Empire at the peak of her global power. It is the most popular movie of the summer. Gladiator. Maximus escapes the sword, and becomes the greatest Gladiator of all time. Commodus, incompetent, ambitious, clumsy, ineffective, inept, unsuited to the position of power he grabbed by means of a cowardly crime, is unable to win the people’s allegiance. Later, learning that the order to eliminate Maximus failed, he becomes obsessed with the determination to eliminate the General.
The Gladiator ultimately prevails. At a heavy cost. One dream drives him to victory. One dream motivates his will to survive. One dream gives him courage to face the foe… and charge into the fight.
It’s the dream of home.
The four virtues.
The sight of the wife of his youth smiling at the doorway. And his son running with abandon to welcome him home. The Gladiator. And the feel of ripened grain brushing against the palm of his open hand as he celebrates the nourishing fruit of the fields, and the warm embrace of the family he loves. And the wildflowers of his homeland in springtime.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Walter Robie continued his closing remarks. It was a forty-minute tour of the color of Spring. He said simply, “Take time. Take time to see what is all around you. Mediate on the beauty of it all. Contemplate the enormous, intricate power of our Creator.”
* * * * * * * * * * *
As a leader, you face political intrigue. Power struggles. Territoriality. Positioning. Saber rattling.
Sometimes it feels as though you are on the floor of the mighty Colosseum. Chariots behind charging steeds are released from behind the gate… the crowd roars as an enemy warrior lunges from behind the armor, right at you, head on, with murderous intent. The hatch opens from below, tigers roar, and pounce, flashing long sharp teeth and menacing claws. You feel surrounded.
You are the Gladiator.
What drives you to not only unsheathe your sword and raise your shield in defense, but to prevail? To overcome?
It will not be sheer selfish ambition. It will not be a deceptive grab for power. It will not be a role-play at being something or someone you are not.
It will be the feel of fertile grain against your open hand. The fields you cultivated. You planted. You watered. You fed. The fruit of your own labors will energize you.
And the sight of the family you love. They will beckon you on to victory.
And as you prepare yourself for that dramatic moment of truth, take in the color of spring. Take a long look at your Creator’s handiwork.
The God of the wildflowers will give you everything you need.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2000
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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