Windfall

I guess I kind of like the "lone gold leaf" theme. This time I found a single leaf stuck to the hood of a gray car.Other gold leaves:Aspen LeafFrozen In TimeBefore the Fall

Tangle

Frosty Colony

I talk from time to time about chaos and patterns in nature. When you move the camera lens in close to something, it's hard not to see things that you would otherwise miss.As I was preparing this photo I was wondering about the "why" and "where" of the formation of frost crystals. And why not wonder "why?", too?

An Abandoned World

This piece of coral was lying on a beach in Mexico that was covered with pieces of coral. I'm not sure what causes coral to wash up, or even what coral like this looked like when it was thriving in it's undersea world. But I do know that the many small structure make for good macro subjects - especially in low, angular light.

The Other Half

One half ended up diced for our clam chowder soup. The other half ended up on the blog. I hadn't planned on taking a food photo but the symmetrical design struck me as worth of a closer look.This was shot with a 100mm macro lens in light that filtered in through our patio doors. I put the onion on a dark red cushion from a nearby bench and I think it provides a pretty good backdrop.

Pretty? Yes. Creative? Probably Not.

So the assignment I gave my students last week was to capture South Dakota winter but to be "creative" in doing so. Of course, what complicates this assignment is what is meant by creative, though to me being creative as a photographer is partly being able to frame and capture something in ways no one else has. What has been submitted has been fun to see, though one of my favorites so far is a manhole cover photographed by a first year student named Tiffany. It doesn't show the beauty of our winters but that's what I like about it. (You should check out Tiffany's photo blog, by the way.)Anyway, I went out to see if I could do my own assignment. While there were amazing photo opportunities yesterday morning because of the frost, I'm afraid that creativity didn't abound. So today I present a pretty photo. But there's not much that is creative here. In fact, I just Googled "pine cones with frost" and I got 1.02 million results, some of which look a lot like my photo. I got 93,000 results when I searched for photos of "manhole covers with slush," but very few actually have slush. Can Google results be a partial measure of creativity?So ends my little discourse on creativity.

Chaos?

I had been out in our back yard shooting photos of things covered in thick frost, when I encountered this jumble of pine needles growing out of a small, bushy tree. There was something about the exuberant randomness of the needles that caught my attention.Of course the crystals of frost and the way pine needles develop and grow are probably anything but chaotic. But to my photographic eye they seem to be and I like it.

Summer Blue

For the last two days it has been foggy and because of the snow cover, it has been mostly white.So I went looking for pictures of summer and this is what I found.I suspect that this is one of those photos that has more meaning to me than anyone else. (Translation: it's not a great photo but I like it.) But you do have to appreciate the pure blues of the sky and water in this photo.And you should have been with me the morning I took this. It was one of those quiet mornings on Lake Oahe that I dream about. It was cool but there was promise of warmth. The only sound was that of birds calling and of distant cattle lowing. You would think that a sailor would yearn for wind but as I'm sure I've said before, there is something pure and spiritual in floating quietly on a body of water in a place that is anything but empty.

A Study In Green

I was wandering through the French Quarter and I bumped in to the Louisiana Supreme Court Building. I took several photos but this is one I liked the most.This is an iPhone photo and I'll admit that this photo is heavily doctored. I started in an app called Filter Mania and finished in Instagram. Like it or not, doctored photos are all the rage these days.

Dark Symmetry

This palm left caught my eye as I walked along the narrow path that took to the little beach a mile down from our resort in Mexico last week. I have photographed palm leaves before but I wanted to try again, this time concentrating on the radial pattern and also trying to manipulate depth of field.I'll have to admit that there is a little Photoshop manipulation in the final product, including the application of a couple of my favorite filters in Color Efex Pro 4 and in the OnOne Photo Suite. But I'm not telling which ones. :-)Other Palm posts:December 25, 2009More Natural SymmetryGod's Ruler?More GreenStringy Palm Leaf - CorfuPalm LeafCanon 5DII 1/60s f/4.0 ISO500 40mm

Same Old Sun, Different Day

Well, I liked the quality of light so much in the photo I posted yesterday that I went back to the same spot 6 mornings in a row to see if I could get something better. In particular, I wanted more shoreline water to show. And this is my next best effort. The casual observer may see little difference between this photo and yesterday's post. And, in fact, there probably isn't - except that I liked the clouds in the previous post better. But I like the dark, wet shoreline in this one.

01-01-12 The Wine-Dark Sea

"The wine-dark sea" is an epithet that Homer used to describe the Aegean Sea. I doubt that Homer's Odysseus ever sailed the waters off of the Yucatan Peninsula, but if he had, would he have heard the sirens' song as I have? Or the mermaids singing?And now, because I can't stop the chain of consciousness that wells up from my distant college past from time to time, I am compelled to quote "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock" by TS Eliot:

"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.I do not think that they will sing to me.I have seen them riding seaward on the wavesCombing the white hair of the waves blown backWhen the wind blows the water white and black.We have lingered in the chambers of the seaBy sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brownTill human voices wake us, and we drown."

But I am not Prufrock, nor was meant to be. . . .