[Photography] Interview with Mandy Ramsey

[KELP JOURNAL] At first, Mandy, I thought that these were regular photographs but they are not. It looks like you’ve softened the edges and intensified the colors. I can’t stop staring at them. They are captivating. What are these enticing pictures and how did you achieve their mesmerizing effect?

[MANDY RAMSEY] I've been taking pictures since I was a little girl with my first Polaroid camera that then graduated to a Pentax camera. And I had always also wanted to be a painter, but I could never seem to create what vision I had in my mind's eye. So, recently I started putting that desire to paint into my passion for photography and enhance and what I call amplify my pictures  after  they've been taken in the traditional way. And it's a trade secret, so I'm not going to tell you how I've amplified them, but  I do add some effects to  enhance some of the  details and boost some of the colors, but it's from the original snapshot of these beautiful moments in nature. 

[KJ] They are so dreamy, I honestly get lost in the swirls and colors. The effect reminds me of somewhere between Van Gough’s “Starry Night” and Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”. I was wondering if you had a preference for the impressionist or the expressionists yourself?

[MR] I definitely would lean more towards an impressionist, although I love all types of art. As for impressionists, I love Van Gogh and I love Monet, the fluidity of that medium and the way it brings out freedom in the strokes and just mirroring like the waves of the water. 

[KJ] Speaking of you, you are also the author of Grow Where You’re Planted, a book that blends photography, poetry, and yoga. Can you talk about how you fit all of those things together?

[MR] Well, I think they all blend together naturally. My yoga practice tends to be inspired by nature. My practice changes with the different seasons of the year. For instance, in the heart of winter when I'm in Alaska, I would do more warming poses and in the summer time I would bring my practice outside and do poses to celebrate all this expansiveness of light, but also cool  any heat in my body. Also by bringing myself in alignment with my yoga practice and the seasons, I observe nature and then that inspires my art and then that also inspires poems. So, they're all connected, they're not separate. They're all basically parts of who I am and parts of the natural rhythms of the year. 

[KJ] As a multi-faceted creator, I am always so curious how projects come about for you. When tackling a project, I’m so curious about your process, if for example you pick the form or does the form pick you? Do you know if something is going to be a poem, a photo, a hybrid piece?

[MR] I get inspiration two ways. It usually just starts by, as writers say, put your butt in the chair, and it's when pen gets to page, but it also starts for me with movement. I find some of my best ideas when I'm walking, especially if I'm walking barefoot outside in nature, and that's when I get in a  moment and I usually jot it down or put it in my notes, and then when I do sit to put pen to page, I start building that idea. The book that I wrote in 2019 had been building in my mind for many years, but I was a new mom so the project began to build during many stroller walks, and then  once I committed to that project I was on the hunt for specific images to match some of the themes that I was writing about and that I was also feeling as I moved my body. For instance, in spring, when I rise up to a standing pose, I was admiring the fiddlehead ferns slowly unfurling, so I allowed my spine and body to enhance, or a line to reflect that movement of the elements of nature outside, or being slow and still like a calm pond or big open blue sky and find more spaciousness in my mind and more presence in my mindfulness, so it seems like the projects find me. I just need to be the story catcher, to be willing to get quiet and still enough to listen and quiet my mind, and that's where meditation comes in, and then you still the mind. and whether it's by being still sitting in the chair pen to page or walking and moving, then those downloads come from that creative source. Thank you.

[KJ] I know that you have a Master’s in Yoga, which is so cool. I have never met anyone with that degree. Movement is widely known to be an important part of the artistic process. I know that walking is widely recommended to help with writer’s block. I have always found yoga to do a similar thing for me;shift perspectives, release stuck energies. Since I have you (and since you have a Masters in Yoga!), do you have any yoga pose recommendations that can help us creatives keep on creating?

[MR] That's a great question. Well, as I answered in the question above how walking is definitely a huge part of my process,  I believe it's a consistent practice that's most important, sometimes playing inspirational music while moving through the yoga practice and having a notebook nearby to jot down little notes that you can return to when you're done with the practice. It all depends on the individuals. Some people get some really good ideas in a more fluid flowing vinyasa-type practice. Some people  release more stuck tension doing a hot yoga practice. Some people get “aha moments” by really getting quiet and doing a more receptive, restorative pose and practice. So really it all depends on the individual, the time of year, the stage of life, and the circumstance. But movement sure helps move the flow of energy and the prana and the flow of ideas and clear stuck channels like freeing a kink in a  hose. Twists are always very good to release stuck stagnation, as well as any kind of heating postures or breathing practices. Forward bends really help you go inward and listen. Chest openers really lift your heart and your joys. You may reconnect to that inspiration - it’s hard to be depressed if  your heart is lifted open and flying with your superhero cape behind you. So I think it's a combination and  it will be unique to each individual. That's  the yoga doing you, right? And you just flowing through the yoga. So yes, but I do find a huge connection because that's  shakti , that creative life force. And when we roll out the mat and we practice every day, we can still those fluctuations of our mind and then just start letting that prana and that life force flow through. And it becomes like lightning in a bottle. 

Mandy Ramsey is an artist, mother, photographer, yoga teacher of 25 years, gardener, and writer. She self -published her first book, Grow Where You’re Planted in 2019, which blends her poetry, photography and her love of yoga through the seasons in the Alaskan landscape. Her writing and artwork have been published in Tidal Echoes, Alaskan Women Speak, Cirque, Tiny Seed Journal, Elephant Journal, Young Ravens Literary Journal, Poets Choice, Alchemy & Miracles Anthology & Still Point Quarterly, and Mocking Owls Roost. She has been living off the grid in Haines, Alaska since 2000 in the timber frame home she built with her husband. She holds a M.A in Yoga Studies and Mindfulness Education, and believes that movement, water, flowers, and the natural world can heal, connect, inspire and sprout friendships. Find out more on mandyramsey.com