Blinded by the Light

I had meetings on campus on this day, and in between them, I noodled around with my camera, both indoors and out. Most of you know me as primarily an outdoors and nature photographer. I love to take pictures of birds and flowers and fancy bugs and outdoor scenes from my beloved central Pennsylvania.

However, I am also passionate about the architecture of buildings, both inside and out. One of my favorite things to do is to occasionally cleanse my photographic palate by finding an indoors spot, inside a building, and doing a study of the space, the lines and angles, and the light.

On this particular day, I wandered inside Old Main, which is Penn State's chief administrative building. Numerous renovations are occurring over summer, including a restoration of our famous Land Grant Frescoes, painted by Henry Varnum Poor.

You can see part of the frescoes in the very first blip I posted, which was a picture taken inside Old Main near Christmastime.  What you can't see in that photo are the numerous cracks in the frescoes, which are being repaired during the current restoration efforts. (More about the frescoes here. More about the restoration work here.)

A quick side-bar about my philosophy of taking pictures. When I am out and about with my camera, I try to become all eyes: to see, to really SEE things. To see every detail, every angle, every way possible. To take a different side road, to go up a different stairway. To encounter something new and unexpected in a familiar space. Now THAT is truly finding the magic.

When I come home at the end of a day when I've taken lots of pictures, I am exhausted, body and soul. Tired from the looking and the seeing and the framing. But a good, happy tired. My husband and my sister, who have both watched me taking pictures, have told me that another reason I am exhausted is that I've been doing physical as well as mental gymnastics. Crawling under things, climbing on top of things, balancing on things. Clambering through the bushes in a skirt. Kneeling down, getting dirt ground into my elbows and my knees. So it was on this day.

Anyway, back to this particular picture. I walked around inside the building and went down several hallways, and up and down a stairwell or two. The front doors were flung open to let some air in and the smells of paint and other chemicals out.  I took my own advice and I went up a stairwell I hadn't visited before. And as I rounded a corner, I was intrigued by the way the light lit up the space. It almost seemed to glow.  

And I could almost hear a sweet voice whispering . . .
Best beloved, not all the world is darkness.
Look for the light and you will find it.
Come into the light . . .
Yes, in the end, if you are a photographer, it's all about the light.

You knew the song I'd pick before you got this far, didn't you? How could it be anything other than Bruce Springsteen's Blinded by the Light.  :-) This recording is from the Dublin sessions in November 2006, and it features an awesome brass section. I'm throwing in a bonus track: a rollicking version (with brass!) of This Little Light of Mine. 

Yeah, baby. Let it shine!