Bow Before Spring

Yes, it's another picture of flowers. You know why? Because flowers are beautiful, even at twilight when the light is failing. These tulips were bending before a cold breeze that belies the season. We aren't yet at a time of reliable warmth. But it's coming, the tulips say so, and they are never wrong.

Ancestor Dwelling

Before I was born, my family drove across country multiple times, camping at scenic spots in the West. This sort of rock formation inspired several of my father's bas relief sculptures.

Newness of Life

The language of Easter is a dialect of Spring.

A Strange Aesthetic

I'm not sure how to account for my fondness for such widely divergent images. What is it that tickles my aesthetic imagination about the view of the Flamingo's brassy glory from this dimly lit, beige elevator lobby at Harrah's? And what could it possibly have in common with my appreciation of this tumble of striped rock at Valley of Fire?

Purple

I don't think of heather as usually being an early spring bloomer. But here it is.

Green

It's been unseasonably hot here in DC for the last few days, all the way up into the 80s. Spring is being forced along at a preposterous pace. Finally, today, a break in the heat and some rain. Maybe now we'll have a chance to pause and appreciate the new green flourishing everywhere.

Carved by Water

Most deserts were once watery places, but very few photographs make them seem that way. In this one, I can see the sway and swirl of the current against the rocks, and the sandy path remains to show the way to the ocean.

Roots x 2

This much is elemental: water, rocks, roots.

You Want Flowers...?

I got flowers! I gotchyer magnolias right here.

Spring Red

Yes, that's a maple, a Japanese Fire maple. And no, it's not Fall, it's Spring. Don't worry, I'm confused too.

Tattooed

Just as with tattooes inked into the skin, declarations marked into trees sometimes seem to occasion second thoughts or regrets.

Fallen Camellias

I had a lovely late-afternoon walk with Deb at Green Spring Gardens Park. There was a veritable orgy of blooming underway, much of it just beginning, some in full flower. But most of the camellias were already past their prime. Spring goes just this quickly, for some.

Fire Canyon

I couldn't even muster up an April Fool's joke today... too busy wrangling years and years worth of files and correspondence and images.

Monumental

It was a day of dentistry and the unpacking of new technology. So no new pictures, but another from Valley of Fire. I like this one because it has an ambiguous sense of scale: how big are those trees/bushes, that bunch of rocks, the mountains in the distance?

Valley of Fire

I spent a wonderful couple of hours wandering around this state park with Bob. These images are a small sample of the wonders to be seen. This location will surely reward multiple visits.



This barrier was intended only for motor vehicles.



We stayed until sunset. A nearly full moon was rising in the East.

Autumn Leaves Before Spring

Glorious weather today almost made me believe that winter is done and Spring is waiting next door for permission to enter. Looking at this picture, you might imagine that somehow we skipped winter altogether.

If only.

Melt

Only the presence of 60+ degree sunshine could make this scene beautiful.

Nature v. Nurture

Another image from the grounds of the Katzen Art Center.

After The Flood

I like to think this shows the aftermath of high water as Dürer might have portrayed it. If he'd had a camera. Okay, and a computer. WHATEVER.

Please make sure to look at the larger version of this, because it's all about the details.

A Natural Mess

Sometimes a walk in the woods doesn't reveal any pattern of orderliness. Nature is frequently just plain messy, disorganized, and chaotic. My footfalls through the forrest caused large, extremely healthy-looking deer to bolt springily away through the underbrush. There was little classically photogenic to be found in the grey and brown trees of winter.

Yet this patch of water, with its tangle of downed branches and dead leaves floating, brought me to a standstill. This too is beautiful. We are meant to spend time in environments like these: our senses are tuned to the patterns of light and dark made by tree trunks in afternoon light, and mirror reflections sooth our minds.

In Memoriam

Shattered

Life leaves scars.

Some Photographic Challenges

It wasn't all blue skies in New Mexico, alas. Heavy overcast and ultra-flat lighting made it hard to do justice to the magnificent landscape at Tent Rock. These two pictures barely hint at the sheer presence of this landscape.

Standing in the Gap



Tent Rock 'Village'

What Winter Should Look Like

If we must have winter, it should look like this: sunny blue skies, bright white snow, large vistas. If I lived in Albuquerque, I would take up skiing again (or snowboarding, maybe). I haven't thrown myself down a mountain since I was teenager, but the chance to do it in weather like this would tempt me mightily. I don't mind a little nip in the air if the sun is shining. Of course, the bonus here at Sandia is that the temperature improves by 15 degrees at the bottom of the hill, and there are no snowdrifts to dig your car out of.

This image is a single exposure tone-mapped HDR. You might find it interesting to compare it to the version in the previous post.

Ancestor, Waiting

Suddenly, in the negative space of this image, I saw a standing figure wrapped in desert-striped weavings, patient and watchful. And, once seen, it became impossible to not see.

Heart of Stone

It is hard to make a photograph that really captures what it was I saw in this constellation of rocks. The bigger version (click on photo) does a better job of it than the small one.

Monumental

Despite overcast skies, we spent a wonderful hour and a half exploring Tent Rock park, located either inside or just adjacent to Cochiti Pueblo, not far from Los Alamos. If you're in the neighborhood, I highly recommend a visit. I hope to go back one day, when conditions are more favorable. It offers one fabulous photographic opportunity after another.

Steampunk Vines

I'm not sure whether I'll be able to post while I'm away in Albuquerque. Please enjoy the nature-artifice combo of this image in the meantime.

What February Feels Like

I'm going to Albuquerque on Thursday evening (assuming the next snowstorm doesn't shut down DCA). I'm looking foward to seeing my sister and her husband, and Bob who will be joining me from Las Vegas. I'm hoping for sunshine, too.

Thaw

I got out into the wide world, in my car even, twice in two days. I feel almost like a citizen of the universe again!

Just in time for more snow tomorrow.

A Bend in the River

It's snowing here. A lot. The first blizzard was dubbed "Snowpocalypse." I'm calling this one "Snowmaggedon."

Since I wasn't able to set foot out of my place today (and tomorrow's not looking so good either), you'll have to make do with another picture from my last visit to Great Falls.

A Little Video

While I was at Great Falls I shot a few brief clips in the camera's AVHCD Lite video format. Of course I forgot that vertical is still basically verboten in video (although I think it makes for very interesting moving pictures). Here's what they look like cobbled together hastily in iMovie.

What's interesting to me is that the water appears to be moving much more quickly in these images than I perceived it at the time. Video artifact or trick of the mind?

They Flee From Me

Most of the time, to be honest, the deer in these parts just stand around and look at you as if to say, "Yeah, and then what?" But these were gals, and a couple of them looked to be young, so they were a little less inclined to hold still and pose properly. Hence the less-than-stellar image quality (well, that, and the light was disappearing).

River Ice

I went back to Great Falls, this time on the Maryland side. The river was roaring, even higher than my last visit. There were fantastic turned-lathe banisters of icicles everywhere. I've never seen anything like them before.

One of the great things about shooting digital, is that you can take as many images as your SD card will hold.

One of the problems with shooting digital, is that you can shoot as many pictures as your SD card will hold.

I came home with over 200 images, and have barely begun the process of sorting through them and applying post-processing. But here's one that just stuns me.

Because it SNOWED today...

...we're going to have a little reader poll here at Something Beautiful.

I photographed these tree roots at Dumbarton Oaks the other day. One of these images was rendered in grayscale directly from the RAW file in Lightroom and then adjusted. The other was tweaked in Silver EFX.

Can you guess which is which?
And, in any case, which do you prefer?
(As always, please look at large versions rather than thumbnails to decide.)

A:


or

B:


I find that preferences in black & white vary tremendously, and that people are quite passionate about how they like their monochrome images structured. I await your responses with great interest!

Vine Growth Chart

This vine is ready for spring and another growth spurt.

A Winter Garden

Dumbarton Oaks garden is one of my favorite places in Washington. To be more accurate, it's one of my favorite places anywhere. For awhile, when I first moved to DC, I went there every fair-weather Sunday to sit on a bench and read the paper in beautiful surroundings.

I thought I remembered that the garden was off-limits to visitors from November to April. I either misrecalled or the policy has changed. I went waltzing in this afternoon; not only was it open, but nobody was taking admission fees either.

I intend to renew a more intimate acquaintance with this glorious spot.

An Old Love

Back in the day, all I ever shot was black and white. I developed it myself. I printed it myself. In a darkroom. With all the stinky chemicals. Yes, I dodged and burned. I toned. My darkroom had no ventilation and no running water and was at the opposite end of my apartment from the bathroom (and the tub in which I washed the prints). Big, beautiful, 16" x 20" prints they were.

I was, if I may so, a very good printer. I had mad skillz. But after a few hours in the darkroom, my pee smelled like fixer for days. It's a wonder I still have my original liver.

So I don't really miss the darkroom, except for a vague, wistful nostalgia. And now, with the advent of shooting RAW and "developing" through post-processing in Lightroom, I feel that I'm returning to my roots albeit in a modern, digital way. But I'm nowhere near having mad skillz.

Yet.

In Knots

This is not technically a great photograph. And surely no one would imagine I'm in favor of plastic pollution in trees. But still: this was beautiful, blowing in the breeze.

Great Falls

Sure, I took pictures of the rapids. I'll probably post at least a couple of them here at some point. But I wanted to show you this one as an example of how sometimes even though you do everything technically "wrong," it works out anyway. (As usual, bigger is much better.)

Blue Grass

It was l'heure bleu. I had run out, camera in hand, as the sun broke through the clouds late in the afternoon. Five minutes later it dipped below a heavy bank on the horizon and the light fell quickly. I took many blurry pictures trying to find a compromise between ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.

I don't know what imparted a lavender-blue tinge to these weedy grasses, but they practically glowed in the twilight.

Mosscape

There's a whole world of beauty at our feet. I challenge you to go for a walk this afternoon. Take a watch with you and stop every five minutes and just look at what's on the ground nearby. Even if you expect to see ugliness, look carefully. You may be surprised. (As always, kindly embiggen the image.)

Rock Creek Sunset

I continue to experiment with HDR tools. This image combines four handheld exposures. The thumbnail version does not do this image justice... please enlarge!