On Living in High Places

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Photo #321: Chicago SnowLocation Taken: Chicago, Illinois
Time Taken: January 2008

It’s really interesting to see snow falling from above. It looks a lot like fog, but the edges of things are even more white and blurry.

Though why I’m telling you that when you can see for yourself is another question.

It was interesting living on the 17th floor of an apartment building. You get a great view since many of the surrounding buildings are shorter than yours. And it’s easy to people-watch, since you can stare all day and no one will notice. You’re far above the street noise of the city too.

But I still think I shall keep lower to the ground in future housing. For one thing, you can’t hear the rain. There’s just not enough for it to hit to make noise, unless the winds are just right to drive it into the wall. And I love the sound of rain. It calms me down, helps me sleep, and well, cleanses my soul. That’s the least schmaltzy way I can think of for describing that.

For another, if the elevator goes out, you’ve got an issue. That happened one morning. Going down 17 flights of stairs is awful on the knees, if not quite as tiring as going up 17 flights. And I both have really bad knees and was having a lot of trouble with them that year. It got to the point where they hurt with every step I took, and I had to do some serious mental pain blocking to manage a full flight of stairs. After that long hike down the stairs, just standing was painful.

My knees aren’t as bad anymore. I’ve strengthened them and rested them and all the stuff they needed. But I’m still never going to live anywhere that’s that high up.

Oh, and the wind blows the building around, especially in Chicago, which is known as the Windy City for a very good reason. Every so often a large gust would come by and the building would shudder. It was never enough to really worry about, and quite common, so we just ignored it.

Which, alas, meant I missed the first earthquake where I was in the area that could feel the shaking. It was a minor earthquake, 4.0 on the Richter scale or something small like that, but that’s actually pretty high for the midwest. And Chicago was on the edge of the perceptible shaking zone anyway. But any shaking that did hit my building wasn’t any stronger than the regular wind gusts, so I didn’t notice.

And I’ve felt another earthquake since then, a 5.8 that hit in mid-Virginia in 2011, so I’m not too bummed out about missing that one while I lived in Chicago.

Still, there’s something special about feeling an earthquake when you love studying earth science.

  

I ever tell you ’bout this dame I knew called Lenore?

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Photo #320: Yellowstone RavenLocation Taken: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Time Taken: October 2012

What are you looking at, buster? I’m a bird, deal with it.

So, ya going ta feed me now?

Well, get on with it!

Life’s been tough lately, ya know. All the gullible tourists who feed us despite the signs saying not to are gone, and it’s getting tougher to find tasty things under all this white stuff on the ground. So you gotta make up for that lack, buster. Get on it!

I mean, you pulled off on the side of the road, right in my turf. You gotta pay the price!

Yeah, that’s a mountain side roaring away and spitting steam right where you pulled off. It’s Yellowstone land here, buster, it happens! Feeding fine ravens like me is far more important!

Not listening, huh. What are you, some kinda strange tourist who actually reads the warnings on the brochure they hand you at the front gate?

Yeah, I know about the brochure. People drop them all the time, and I’ve read them.

Yeah, I can read, what’s it to ya?

Gotta do something during the summer months, aside from occasionally hitting up tourists for more food. So I read all the junk they leave around. No big deal.

What’s that flapping noise, ya say?

Just my buddy landing on the other side of your car. We’ve got you surrounded now.

Better get on that food thing asap, buster.

  

So, What do you notice first in this photo?

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Photo #319: Canyon GullyLocation Taken: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Time Taken: October 2012

One of the toughest things to capture in photography, or really any 2D artwork, is the sense of scale.

Now, tiny thins usually do pretty well. A few focus tricks go a long way for them. But for large objects, well, let’s just say you can have an entire mountain inside one focal range. Easily.

Take this photo, for instance. You look at it and see a large rock wall, with some trees on top and some snow. Not much to give you an instant sense of how big this object is, as trees come in a large variety of sizes. If you look closer at the trees AND recognize the basic species, you can start piecing together just how large this rock wall is.

There’s also the foreground rocks. They’re a brighter color, which makes them pretty obvious that they’re not connected to the far rock wall. And other clues such as the scattering of trees on this side of the canyon help give the sense that this part is close to the viewer. Although, those trees actually help diminish the apparent size of the rock wall on the far side, since the close trees are growing in a very rough spot (literally on the side of a cliff) and are stunted and shrunken compared to the pines that tower above all else on the tops of the cliffs.

It doesn’t help that the rock has the odd quality of having dark patterns that look very similar both in the smaller scale of the close rocks and the larger scale of the far rocks. Usually rocks have noticeably different appearances when looking at a boulder versus a mountain face, but not here.

And if you look very closely, following the point of the V-shaped gully right in front of the viewer all the way down, there is a river. It’s just a dash of blue and white, but it’s another clue as to scale. And again, it’s one that is tough to judge, as it could be a tiny stream or a monstrous rapid.

So how big is this canyon?

Well, let’s just say they call it the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone for a reason. That river is at least 800 feet down, at a very steep angle, and is in the ballpark of 50 feet wide. That far cliff face is a quarter mile away. It is, in other words massive.

And when you’re actually there, that scale just asserts itself every time you look at it. You look down and start calculating just how much it would hurt to fall down there, followed by a small step further away from the cliff edge. This is a quintessential giant gouge in the surface of the Earth.

That’s why I took this photo, actually. I was standing next to the guardrail looking downwards, my mind still boggling at the scale, when I noticed I could actually see the river from this angle. And between the scale and the distant river, I figured it was worth the moment of time and the 1.8 MB on my memory card to grab a photo.

Now mind you, when you’re actually at this spot looking down, it’s not the far cliff wall that catches the eye most. Nor is it the river, the trees, or even the rocks on this side.

It’s that small trickle of darker sand marking the lowpoint of the gully. And the ever-present thought that if you tripped over the rock fence and started sliding down the side of the cliff, it would be a long time before you hit anything.

Well, perhaps not too long. It is actually rather steep so you would gain a lot of speed. Which admittedly doesn’t make the landing any easier…

  

What’s Green and Rhymes with Beeeeeeeessss?

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Photo #318: TreeeesLocation Taken: Ontario, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010

Trees. Treeees. Treeeeeeeessss….

Ok, so I’m in an odd mood. This is a fabulous photo but I chose it merely to say treeeeeeeessss….

It’s got more than treeeees! There is a magnificent waterfall! And the rocks the water is falling down! And more treeeeeeesssss!

…

My brain seems to be stuck on saying treeeeeessss.

Really, say it out loud, with an elongated “eeeeeee” sound. Fun, isn’t it?

Now repeat after me.

Treeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssss.

  

Just some simple vegetables. Well, botanically, three of them are fruits, but still…

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Photo #317: JalapenoTime Drawn: February 2013

One of the side effects of having to replace my computer and install everything anew is that I lost Photoshop.

Now mind you, I was using Photoshop 7, which came out in 2002. It was the last one of the basic “Photoshop” line, before they swapped over to “Photoshop Creative Suite”. And even at 11 years old, it was still a good program. It just lacked all the nifty things they added after Adobe outright admitted that people were using it for more than photos.

But, alas, I was using a version that a friend with a spare license for the program had installed on my computer five or more years ago. And even then, the reason he didn’t install a newer version was that Photoshop 7 was also the last one before they got really picky about the licensing. But he lives several states away, and he may not even have access to the install files anymore, so I doubt I shall ever manage to get Photoshop 7 on this computer.

And I certainly can’t afford the $700 it costs to buy the new version of Photoshop.

So, since I’m not the type to go a pirating, I’ve been checking out Open Source graphics programs.

I’ve used Gimp every so often, when I need to do graphics manipulation on a computer that doesn’t have Photoshop. It’s a good manipulation program, if slow, but it’s not that great for creating digital art.

So I decided to try out MyPaint, which focuses on the digital art.

Of course, to test the abilities of the program, I had to make art!

My first thought for a simple object to draw was an apple. It’s traditional, after all. A lot of beginning artists learn off of apples. They don’t go bad partway through using them in a still life, they’ve got a simple shape and strong colors, and hey, you can even eat it afterwards.

Alas, I don’t really care for apples. So I drew a jalapeno instead.

Half an hour later, I had a really good looking jalapeno. And unlike a lot of graphics programs I’ve tried, I didn’t feel like I was struggling against the program! The colors went down nice and easy, in a logical fashion that just worked with how my brain approaches a piece.

So I drew a red onion. And then an avocado. And an heirloom tomato just like the one I have in the fridge. And a simple background for them to sit on.

I think I shall continue using this program. It suits me. And while it’s not the best for image manipulation tasks like rotating individual layers, it saves in a format compatible with Gimp, which IS good at those tasks.

Now to start planning my next project.

After I grab something to eat, though. For some reason I’m really craving tacos…