Original DDE™ art: “Western Tanager” — by: rob kistner © 3/9/26
—-<§>—-
the breeze speaks first
then the birch answers
with a gentle wave of branches
suddenly
a restless Tanager lifts
taking flight
as if the sky had called its name
I remain below
feet rooted in gravity
studying the freedom
of that instinctive upward decision
<~>
rob kistner © 03/9/26
I’m just gonna live here for a little while:
“the breeze speaks first”
Yes, please. Sigh.
Be my guest De … and thank you! 🙂
Rob, you captured the magic of the moment perfectly in 44 words. The image is so alive!
Will you say more about DDE? It’s not AI is it, but you created something before AI showed up?
Thank you Lisa, very much. This link will take you back to the post on my Image and Verse website where I’ve had my DDE process outlined for quite some time — maybe three years. It will explain how I go about creating my images. >>> https://www.image-verse.com/my-ddaies-trade
Here is a bit more — Without going into too much confusing details, Lisa what I have created, over the last number of years, a compositional prompt group that I feed into a bot a rendering processor, for example, like a MidJourney, or Dal-lee, or any rendering bot. I use use this prompt languaging litany that I have created, as the core of my DDE (Directed Digital Extrapolation) to arrive at the results that I am seeking. Whereas, without the DDE discipline, you have no friggin idea what’s gonna come out. It’s all in using the DDE prep, before you start rendering. It’s all the DDE prompting, that makes the image what it is, what you want — that includes feeding a digital Wacom sketch. So anyhow, that’s already more complicated than I wanted to get — but that’s what DDE is based on. Here is a good outline of the steps tfor you.
1. Lighting
2. Nature of detailing
3. Depth of Field
4. Image Mood
5. Composition
6. Art Style (painterly / illustration / watercolor / photographic — etc.)
Soon enough, we’ll all take flight. Awesome work, Rob. Thanks
Thank you do much Ron! I’d love to be able to do it pre-expiration — and not in some flying machine… 😉
A beautiful and indeed profound poem – equalled by the gorgeous picture.
Thank you Rosemary, you are most gracious… 🙂
Lovely, Rob, that lifting off……..
I always had the fantasy of being able to fly since I was a young boy. I lay still in bed and I’d start to think and I’d run it through my head. I guess I was doing self hypnosis hypnosis I don’t know, but I’d feel myself rising above the bed, then I go through the ceiling, then I’d be up in the sky, and then into the universe. I could start to run in the sky. It would move me forward. I just love’d the sensation of that dream, that meditation I guess — and I did it for about three or four years and then about age 7 or eight if I remember that I couldn’t do it anymore, not with the same feeling, the whole body sensation — it was a completely real experience and feeling it’s hard to explain. And now that I’m having chronic illnesses, hard to walk. Hard time keeping consistent balance, I would really love to be able to just lift and be light as air — even for just a little While.
I love that brief upward decision…
🙂
Wonderfully expressed ??
Thank you Ange… 🙂
I had never heard of a tanager – now I know Rob. I love the conversation between breeze and birch, and the tanager ‘taking flight as if the sky had called its name’. Oh for the ‘freedom of that instinctive upward decision’.
Thank you Kim! I don’t know how global the Tanager id, but we are lucky to have them here in the Pacific Northwest — they are beautiful little birds. 🙂
Lovely and profound, Rob.
Thank you so much Merril… 🙂
Wonderful poem, Rob!
Yvette M Calleiro 🙂
http://yvettemcalleiro.blogspot.com
Thank you Yvett. Yvette — fast as a corvette!
Rob, your poem reminds me of a spot on the Central Coast, just north of Sydney, Australia, up on a ridge lined with eucalypts. There is a lookout point, down across the treetops below and out a couple of kilometres to the ocean.
One day, as I was standing there, admiring the views, two playful kookaburros flew just above my head and out into this expanse of space. That was a time I remembered that I wanted to fly.
Thanks for reminding me.
Thany you Sean — and you are most welcome. That sounds like a rich memory. I sm most pleased I was able to conjure it for you my friend. 🙂 BTW: I have always wanted to visit >>> OZ- “the down under”. Unfortunately, never did, and now my situation means I never will… but it always was so enticing.