Encouraged by animalartist, who has semi-publicly admitted to liking my glass dragonfly yard art series, I’m posting one (or two) more. This one veers even more to the abstract.
August 31, 2012
363: A green to make you smile
I don’t know what this little guy was thinking when he got dressed this morning. But I like it.
August 30, 2012
360: Big fat upside down porch
This is about as big as a raindrop can get before actually dropping.
359: How do I refract thee? Let me count the ways
We acquired a new lawn ornament just in time for eight inches of rain last Saturday night. It’s a small glass dragonfly, wound about with copper wire in what I hope will be quantities inadequate to stir the attention of the people who are stealing air conditioning plumbing around these parts. The rain had eased enough by early morning that my own attention could be stirred by the thought of droplets refracting the sunrise. I had to use a tripod to get the depth of field to show both the copper windings and the refracting drops in focus (105mm f32 at 1/2 second and 400 ISO), and then hold an umbrella overhead until the moment of releasing the shutter, first keeping the rain off and then letting the light in.
That’s our front porch post, railing, and screen door refracting innumerably.
August 29, 2012
358: Home Pond, early morning
Home Pond, a short mile from our house, is the source of drinking water for our town. The birds and bats drink there, too, and I like to sit at a picnic table and watch in the evening as they swoop and plink the water. There was a silent heron at the spillway when I last walked Mabel to the pond. On a walk I have to choose either my camera or my dog–neither is patient enough for the other–and this evening it was my dog. I wouldn’t have tried for the heron with my camera, anyway–with such a short lens as a 100mm, I would have had to point into the photo and say, “See, there’s a heron right there!”
So Mabel and I stood 70 feet away and watched the heron stand, watching the water in perfect patience. I knew if I took two or three steps toward her she would tip her head forward and hoist her heavy body by one solid thrust of her wings and curve away over the water, slowly gaining altitude in one long goodbye, and I would thrill to see her do exactly that, what I knew she would do, and I wanted to remember that curving slow lift away from me, as if it was about me, I wanted to remember it by seeing it again, and I stood still, my dog beside me, knowing what it would cost the heron in simple calories expended to give me that delight.
357: Dawn through clouds framed by pine
The last photo I posted, of a house I used to live in, lit by early light, was in fact lit by this light. I was only a few steps further on toward the pond and turned back to check the sunrise. That framing device of pine needles or leaves coming into the frame from a corner is of course used by everyone everywhere in every time, and for a reason: it works.
356: On the way to Home Pond
Walking down the gravel road to Home Pond in the morning, I saw the early light finding the house I lived in first, after we moved from southern Canada to southern Iowa. I was a baby, we lived there only a few months, and I remember the place only from my visits with my grandparents, aunts, and uncles, as a single-digit human being. Now I do not remember that it was ever home, except when the light finds it.
August 28, 2012
355: I dream of chicory
Looks like a bizarro double exposure in front of cactus/sunrise/cloudy blue sky, really just out-of-focus ditch chicory in front of asphalt and cross-lit dewdrops.
rpdpod 