The Daily Photograph™

There are bold hunks of wood, and old hunks of wood

There are no old, bold hunks of wood

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Even in the sunshine, this wood is mellow and sleepy. It’s bit of redwood, perhaps 40 years old, and once was part of the backyard fence. No longer. It is destined to end its days as an occasional prop and general lay-about.

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I have again broken what I am told is a cardinal rule in photography: I put the foreground out of focus.

The foreground, in this instance, should be unfocused, because a human eye would be unfocused in more or less the same way.

Your own eye skipped right over the foreground and landed on the leaf about half-way down the board, didn’t it?

So much for cardinal rules.

No need to mop the floor

The light has turned harsh, again

As the air dries out, the sun is less filtered and we get the deep blue, high sky that hurts the eye. And the shadows are sharp and deep. Not good photography weather. So, I’m indoors, working still on still life.

I’ll get better at it.

Not a lick of thunder

This sky made no noise

Even though it looked fierce. And only a few drops of rain fell.

Hot Day, Hot Sky

The sky has been kind

The last few days, after a week of not much. The temperature has been very high, and that means more clouds as the moisture is ripped from the soil. Very few thunderstorms have erupted, but lots of grand sunset action.

I have the finest front porch in all the West

A very brief shower came through

Right at sundown. I was alerted by the smell of rain on hot asphalt, and looked out the window in idle curiosity. And then was able to make this photograph before the wonder disappeared. The shower lasted, perhaps, 20 seconds. The rainbows persisted for a minute or two.

I don’t know the legends around double rainbows, but they have to be good news, right?

Amid the clouds, a light

The moon has a dark side

And it will never be known, no matter how often we walk its surface. The moon keeps its secrets, even in the light. Gaze not so long.

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Sadly, this photograph is not technically good enough to work into full artfulness. I forgot the need to lock the camera viewing mirror in place. You can’t see it here, but the resulting shake at a slow shutter speed caused a slight blurring that won’t take much enlargement.

No matter how often, it's always new, again

I am blessed to live here

Near a mountain that lifts me up, two thousand feet above the horizon, so I can see and show this kind of magnificence.

It is a common failing among photographers to be ensnared by the spectacular. Much is amazing in this world, but again, more is mundane, and that in itself is amazing. I have always tried to present the ordinary in an extra-ordinary way.

Here, we have an ordinary sunset. Not at all an item of spectacle. That’s what I tell myself. And I almost believe it.

Never the same two seconds running

I never could leave well-enough alone

Even when the first thing seems as good as it’s going to get. This photograph was made about a half-minute after the one I posted yesterday. Shooting directly into the sun is not advised. It’s hard on the eyes and hard on the very delicate sensor. I had the lens stopped down as far as it would go (1/500s f32) and still the sun ‘blew out’ the open area in the clouds. And, we see some interesting solorization effects on the edge of the opening.

If I work this one up to a finished piece, I will bring up the foreground. It was not as dark as it appears either here or in yesterday’s post.

Something unexpected, something grand

This is not what I drove out to find

I had expected to photograph the light on the red bluffs on the other side of Jackson Canyon, the ones you can’t see because they are behind me. These clouds spoiled the piece I had hoped to make, by interfering and blocking the light I needed to complete my plan. They paid me back, I think.

Even messes have beauty

It’s a scientific fact that chaos is symmetrical

And a lot of people were surprised when Felix Mandelbrot showed that many forms in nature repeat recursively down to the submicroscopic level.

Here we have the chaos of a small construction project — a picnic shelter in a park — and the beauty of its design. Nobody planned for symmetry and order, but still it shows its face. The fine sunset light was a bonus I didn’t expect. The light has been harsh during the last few days, but tonight, the Western horizon had just enough mist (and maybe dust) to give us the ‘golden hour,’ which lasts perhaps 15-20 minutes most days.