My favorite image from this afternoon’s Piney Woods Church Road walk is this dried and curled bit of water oak leaf.
Jun 132014
Mar 042014
With overcast skies and below-seasonal temperatures anticipated for several days yet, I am hungry for bright colors, which are all too scarce on my daily Piney Woods Church Road walks. Today I glimpsed a flash of brilliant red, when a cardinal alighted in a loblolly pine tree at the intersection with Hutcheson Ferry Road. Alas, my +10 macro lens was on at the time, and by the time I had unscrewed it and pointed the camera toward the pine branches, the bird was gone. Fortunately, though, water oak leaves this time of year are quite obliging (and far less ambulatory). I don’t think I could ever be sated by all the possibilities these leaves furnish for photographs evocative of stained glass windows.
Feb 282014
I am continuing to explore the geometries of leaf and background. Water oak leaves this time of year make such entrancing subjects. Only, with this photograph, I find myself drawn, instead, to the light beyond the leaf.
Feb 272014
After a marvelous day-long composition workshop with Kathryn Kolb last weekend, I have been thinking a great deal about geometry and nature. I have begun exploring the diverse colors and forms all around me on my Piney Woods Church Road walk. Water oak leaves in winter, with their vibrant splotches of green, orange, red, and brown, make fascinating subjects for the camera lens. Until today, I have always concentrated on entire leaves and clusters of leaves. This time, I zoomed the lens a bit further; The result is this image.
Feb 172014
A single red water oak leaf in the morning sunlight, viewed against the forest background along Piney Woods Church Road: the image resolves itself into three spaces, like three lines of haiku.
Feb 052014
I set out late this afternoon, on the 5th of February, with a specific goal: to locate a certain water oak tree branch with a solitary leaf at the tip which I had photographed yesterday. It had rained heavily overnight, and the air had turned colder, with a raw edge to it. The wind was blowing considerably, at speeds up to fifteen miles per hour. Needless to say, the leaf was long gone — probably pulled off the branch by a passing gust and carried off. What was it Bobby Burns said? “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” So I am posting yesterday’s shot here instead, as an extra blog post by way of a prologue to today’s photo (which I will post later this evening).
Feb 012014
I set out mid-morning today under cloudy skies, the temperature already over the freezing line and headed into the 50s. I was in search of what vestiges of snow I might find, knowing that this could be the last day in 2014 when a snowy photograph would be possible. I made a few discoveries, including a previously unknown patch of lichens (Cladonia leporina) which will almost certainly appear in this blog within the next few days. Meanwhile, I offer one parting photograph with snow, a roadside still life with a still-green water oak leaf and dried grasses. Tomorrow this same spot will turn into a fairly nondescript patch of winter weeds, but while the snow lingers, I find the image beautiful.
