Never mind photography...

I ride a road bike (not a motorcycle) sometimes it's climbing a tough hill and other times it's coasting down the other side...
I also do a bit of woodworking...so cutting into a nice piece of hardwood and feeling it as it's being cut...then smelling the wood after...
 
The sound of 8 oars catching the water at the same moment while watching the sunrise over the river and feeling the water rush by.

The smell of my babies hair. and his happy laugh when I do something he thinks is funny (which is a lot more often than I try to apparently...;)).

-Brian
 
I remember that feeling, sitting in a J3 Cup and waiting for the moment the tail-wheel lifts shortly before taking off a small grass-strip... :)
 
Pablito said:
The Pleasures of the Flesh.
Guess it does not rank high here. :D
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Why do you think I wrote, "Let's exclude the obvious" in the original post?

Most of us take that one for granted...

There are some wonderful word-paintings here. Even things I've never experienced, but always wanted to, like flying a small 'plane, are more real to me now thah they were.

Thanks everyone. This is one of the happiest threads I've ever seen.

Cheers,

R.
 
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I recently wrote to some friends about the sakura (cherry blossoms) that came and went over the last month in Japan. Expectedly, they requested some pictures, but barring a few shots, I had little interest in photographing the scene this year. I've tried before and found it just doesn't suit me to photograph this material. This is in contrast to the fall colors, which I love to shoot. More importantly, I realized that the enjoyability of the experience is to sit amid the trees and enjoy a picnic. The movement of falling blossoms. The community of others enjoying them around you. The feeling that the weather is subtly transitioning from cold to tepid. I cannot capture the experience. Moreover, I have realized that trying to do so takes time away from enjoying a very brief event.
 
You lucky guys down in Honshu already could see the beautiful Sakura while we here in the north still look at blank trees ... :bang:
 
Listening to good music on a proper hifi is one of my most-treasured pastimes. In fact, I'll just be so bold to say that if you do it right, it is at least as good as sex. But of course, that's debatable.
 
back alley said:
one thing i enjoy as much as photography is listening to music on a good stereo.

joe
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I could say that too. I "preserve old technology" that way, too. Marantz 7, Audio Research D76, Marantz 8b. Tschaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, etc.

But what what I meant to say was, working in my rose garden. Or sitting in it.
 
I'm jealous of the open-cockpit flyboys here! ;)

I'll settle for taking a long drive with my friend in our 1943 Willys MB Jeep on a warm spring Sunday, after spending a day or two fixing the carburetor, oil pump, water pump and putting on the new windshield frame. Cold beers and a fine lunch somewhere in a picturesque village are optional.
 
Almost the same

Almost the same

Trius said:
Paddling my canoe -- there is a Zen quality for me that is unmatched by any other activity other than meditation itself. Then coming back to campsite for a meal from an open fire and some gorgeous cab franc, and/or single malt, and a Cuban. Cigar, that is.

I can do without the last bits, but give me the canoe.
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Late afternoon on a quit north sea and that seal keeps following you.

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And paddling with my wife

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Yes, the road bike thing, I've loved the ride for decades. Once, while I still lived in Manhattan, it was the 60-mile round-trip to Nyack, NY on a Saturday or Sunday morning, with 9W's serious climbs and wide-awake descents, followed by a hearty breakfast once I hit Nyack, often chatting with other cyclists (some having arrived from farther North), then taking a more-leisurely ride back to the city. Now, as a Brooklyn expat, the big ride is out to Fort Tilden in the Rockaways, through Gateway National Park (and past Floyd Bennett Field...had to put in an aviation reference, since so many others here have :)), and over the Gil Hodges Bridge. Tilden is a real beach with dunes, sparse crowds, and stories. I've been alone with my thoughts there, and close to galfriend there. The ride's the thing, but the destination resonates in a different way altogether. There is both invigoration and deep calming in the entire experience.

Then the ride home, the delicious feel of a deep stretch, an enveloping hot shower, that first sip of wine (or, failing that, a good craft brew), and the sound of a solo instrument working its way through the 'fi: Rachel Podger digging into Bach, Christina Ortiz tackling Villa-Lobos, Keith Jarrett stretching himself via his own compositions (quite literally: I'm thinking of his works for clavichord specifically), among many others. Staying away from the computers just long enough to get through a few old New Yorker pieces I've meant to read. Or, if it's just the right kind of quiet, keeping everything turned off and being deliciously still, alone or together.

It's all really about being in the moment, and relishing it.


- Barrett
 
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Gee, I love threads like this. I've been a keen hiker for more than 35 years and these days spend my annual break each Christmas tramping in the mountain areas of New Zealand, where possible in remoter areas without or with few tracks....... So for me it's crawling into my little tent just as the sun sets, camped high up in the mountains by a little alpine lake. I've finished dinner, the cold is setting in, my M6 has been put to bed and my down sleeping bag beckons.
 
Standing on my front steps Tuesday: a gentle rain falling, a vernal pool full of wood frogs and peepers singing away, the most beautiful glow of light over everything. We've still not got any leaves out, and the grass is just beginning to green- so the light on all the bare dark wet branches was something else.
 
For me it would be a recent experience:

Taking an easy drive with all the windows down on a cool evening after a very pleasant and cloudless day, meandering down to the beach with my 2 dogs and my partner to let the dogs off the lead and watch the sun go down.

Socializing with the other dog walkers and soaking in the ever carefree atmosphere compounded by the soft lapping noises of the shore while the smell of brine and beer from the local pub fills the nostrils; accompanied every now and again by a waft of charcoal smouldering on makeshift barbeques.

Everyone is together in the experience but the beach at low tide so vast that only on approaching those around you can you converse. Lovers walk the shoreline arm in arm, families play cricket in the sand, children laugh and sift the rock pools for little fish and crustaceans, the fellow dog walkers circle as the dogs play chase with their newest friends.

The feeling of the sand below the feet along with the subdued and low-angle sunlight and an overwhelming feeling that here above everywhere else you can exist free from the responsibilities and burdens of life and entirely separately from your surroundings therein making no lasting impact on them, despite the overwhelming impact they leave on you.
 
football (soccer over here in N.A.)

it just seems a ballet of exquisite beauty when i watch top notch clubs play. all that power and talent held (barely) in check by patience.

ELEPHANT by gus van sandt... especially the opening sequence. good cinema (of course a matter of ones opinion) has always proven to be a source of immense pleasure and inspiration for me.
 
Sitting in the square of a new city, sun shining, with the good lady wife and a couple of old friends and a glass of the local red in the hand - just watching the world go by.
Murray

Salamanca
 

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Riding a short distance time trial.......10 miles preferably, on my Italian Viner road bike, on fixed.....96inches with my Campag disc wheel with a bit of a tail wind......haven't been fit enough for two years but am determined to get fit enough next summer.
 
Watching the sea - it doesn't matter where (although I have my favourite places) but the sea has to be 'active' - no flat calm peaceful moments for me, the stormier the better with the wind and spray in my face .....
 
Several things come to mind:

The soft roar of bicycle tires on a smooth road.

Warm sun and silence on a mountaintop.

First tracks in newly fallen snow (on skis or on foot).

Bare feet on cool grass.

Gazing out to sea.
 
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