Raven's flight

I don't know why, this shot I captured when hiking in the snow near Estes park, Colorado, made me recall an obscure poem by Gary Snyder, enough so that I looked it up:

Range after range of mountains
year after year after year
I am still in love
-- Gary Snyder

I picked this poem to set it in opposition to the scene. To me, Snyder is saying that love transcends death. And this coal black raven winging though a chilled, dark sky can certainly lead to conjured images of the grim reaper. So to hell with that.

Favorite from Prairie Creek Redwoods

Redwood forests are often dark, the scale is overwhelming and just about impossible to capture in a two-dimensional image. Stand back to get the whole tree/forest in view and it becomes just another ho-hum image. Get up close to the trees and their immensity is lost. But what is really lost, most of all is the reverence you feel, the quiet majesty of being down close to these giant, mystical beings, the fecundity of life that develops in a relatively stable environment that stretches back 1000, 1500, 2000 thousand years.

This photo, to me, captures at least the smallest bit of what I felt standing here in a true cathedral of life's story.

Way Best viewed Big

No snappy, high contrast tones to catch your eye when browsing small, but really pops into life when viewed BIG.

New Favorite from Sony NEX 7

Shot this yesterday with the Sony NEX 7, thought I'd see how the black and whites looked out of the camera... and, DANG, I'm afraid my Hasselblad is going to setting on the shelf more and more! Kit lens, hand-held, no post-processing other than B&W conversion with some custom tweaks to gray-scale.

the Rose and Rumi

This rose makes me think of Rumi:

"Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?"
-- Rumi, (translated by Coleman Barks)

Orcs, Morlocks; H.G. Welles and Tolkien

I love machines. Why then does this photo make me think of Orc, Morlocks and the dark recesses of the earth and human mind? I didn't feel this way when making the initial image capture, but this is what emerged as I worked to finish the photo. Hmmm.

Redwood Majesty

This tree on the northern California coast was alive and thriving when Icelandic Vikings first settled in Greenland during a warm period in the Tenth century when much of the island was free of ice and glaciers.