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<p>After my last e-mail “blast,” Anita Buzzy-Prentiss, a photographer friend that I haven’t seen in years, responded in an e-mail. We corresponded, and the conversation went far and wide: big families; the inner need to keep moving; Pilates and yoga; heat, and cold, and in-between (Anita, it turns out, doesn’t like the extremes); the fleeting character of photography and the desire for permanence.</p>
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<p>Writing Anita got me thinking about art, and what we seek to accomplish with it. It strikes me that the artist (and the photographer) seek to <em>capture</em> beauty, to make it one’s own, to make it somehow timeless. As I wrote her, “I don’t like the thought that hundreds of thousands of images will disappear when I die, so I’m posting many on my website for peoples’ quick glances.”</p>
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<p>“But even if no one sees them,<strong> I still like the <em>capture</em>.</strong> [Photographers speak of the “digital capture."] It’s a kind of&nbsp;<em>eros,</em>&nbsp;which Socrates defined as the desire to hold the other in one’s arms. I sometimes wish my eyes were cameras, because I see things when I don’t have a camera, or don’t have it up to my eye, things that just cry out to be caught. ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever,’ said Keats [in his poem “Endymion,”&nbsp;published in 1818]. A photograph freezes that moment of delight.” A piece of art, or a photograph, can point to what does not pass away.</p>
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<p>I went on to observe that video, in contrast, does not capture a moment. Instead, it reminds you that everything changes; one moment, one frame, is not as beautiful as the last, or perhaps as the next. The beautiful appears, yes, but then is gone. Beauty is fleeting. This is why I much prefer photography.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/L8A6352-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-13044" style="width:370px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">My granddaughter, Naomi</figcaption></figure>
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<p>There is more to this idea of <em>permanence</em>. I wondered if my quotation of Socrates had over-simplified him from something I had read, so I read some more: an <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-friendship/#LovAscBea">article about Socrates and love</a>. It’s quite involved (and my summary of Socrates on <em>eros</em>, above, is hopelessly reductive) but I liked this observation in the article’s conclusion: “The best kind of life, a life that comes as close as possible to the divine – [is] one in which we achieve happiness by having good things be ours forever.” (Not bad, for a philosopher.)</p>
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<p>At one point I was a pastor of a very dysfunctional, evangelical Protestant church. Sometime after leaving the pastorate, I rode my bike through the Rocky Mountains in Canada for about 24 days. It was a great long-distance cycling trip.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Chris-on-bike-673x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-13033" style="width:431px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">On the highway in Alberta or British Columbia, Canada (in 2001?)</figcaption></figure>
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<p>Many times, I was in awe of the mountains. It struck me that, while people change, are unreliable, and sometimes fail you, <strong>the mountains are just <em>there.</em></strong><em> </em>You can hate them, you can love them – but they are indifferent; they don’t change. While they are not in fact eternal, they transcend us; they are a symbol of permanence, or unchangeableness.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Mountain-with-snow-and-road-Copy-680x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-13036" style="width:567px;height:auto"/></figure>
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<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img src="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/mtn-and-snow-9.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-13037"/></figure>
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<p>People sometimes say about someone in a crisis, <strong>“He (or she) was <em>a rock.</em>”</strong> It is no surprise that, for the people of Israel, God is even greater than a rock: “There is none holy like the&nbsp;Lord, there is none besides thee; there is no&nbsp;<em>rock</em>&nbsp;like our God” (1 Samuel 2:2). The Psalmist uses the same term: “The&nbsp;Lord&nbsp;is my&nbsp;<em>rock,</em> and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God” (Psalm 18:2). The analogy is frequent in the Bible, as you can find from any Bible search engine.</p>
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<p>I love photographing two things in particular: pretty women (it’s hard to find anything prettier :-), and <em>mountains</em>. My wife and I are planning a trip to Switzerland and Paris. I am taking my camera to <strong>shoot every mountain I can find in the Jungfrau area of Switzerland</strong>, from every angle possible. I have already planned <strong>to hike to <a href="https://www.travelcaffeine.com/hike-swiss-alps-bachalpsee-lake/">Bachalpsee</a></strong>, which is not far from Wengen, where we will be staying, God willing.</p>
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<p>Something came to me about Bachalpsee in the middle of last night. After the cycling trip I mentioned above, I created several stained glass panels of mountain scenes, using other peoples' photographs, and sold them. Here's one from British Columbia, entitled "BC Blue." (It was impossible to get the lighting and color right; these are scanned images of photos, as I recall.)</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img src="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/BC_BLU1A.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-13039"/></figure>
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<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/BC-Blue-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-13040"/></figure>
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<p><strong>One of these, below, was entitled “Bachalpsee,” </strong>which I had thought then was a mountain in Germany.</p>
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<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped"><!-- wp:image {"id":13030,"width":"474px","height":"auto","sizeSlug":"large","linkDestination":"none"} -->
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img src="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_6305-661x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-13030" style="width:474px;height:auto"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><sub>"Bachalpsee," stained glass panel</sub></figcaption></figure>
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<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img src="https://christopherhumphreyphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_6298-Ken-with-Bachalpsee-piece-installed.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-13031"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><sub>Ken, with the piece backlit and installed over his fireplace</sub></figcaption></figure>
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<p>I had forgotten entirely about this panel when we planned our trip. So now I will see in person the mountain that I have rendered in stained glass. One of the reasons I am back to creating stained glass panels is that they likely will last. Most of my photos will not be seen by anyone besides me. Many will be seen once by a few, and then be gone. The glass panels, however, are likely to be passed on, and delight some people for some time, I hope, long after I am gone from this world.</p>
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<p>As I said, beautiful things can point to what is enduring. Their beauty is only a pointer, but that doesn't diminish them. "For now we see in a mirror (or, as one translation puts it, "a glass") dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.&nbsp;So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."</p>
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