Location Taken: Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park
Time Taken: June 2008
Mushroom.
Shelf mushroom, to be exact. Well, more exact. It just doesn’t seem worth it to sort through fifty different species to figure out what name humans have given to this particular fungi.
The mushroom certainly doesn’t care.
Location Taken: Niagara Falls, New York
Time Taken: December 2009
The edge of a waterfall. Such a simple concept, and yet…
Where exactly is that edge?
It can’t be the line where the water ends, as there is no line. Some droplets fall fast, others far, even more all the way into a fine mist that hangs in the air. Any one spot you try pick, there will be another spot calling, saying “perhaps I am more appropriate”.
And the rock below? Perhaps that could count? Aside from the fact that we’re speaking of the waterfall and not the stone, perhaps it could form one of the edges, even if the other is impossible to define. But that edge is nebulous as well. The water mostly falls away from the rock, though some slips inward to carve away some stone. It’s not much that’s taken, just the width of a shimmering mirage, nothing more. And yet, it gets taken, and the rock changes every second.
It seems a bit strange. The water has an edge, but it passes too fast for it to be spotted. The stone has an edge, but it slips away slowly. Perhaps we should just take an average and call it a day.
Location Taken: Western Maryland
Time Taken: June 2007
The Appalachian Mountains are very different from what the stereotypical mountain looks like. There are no high rocky peaks, no streaks of white snow. In these lands, the mountains are rounded off, with a rowdy coating of trees.
They are mountains, though. It’s still difficult to travel through this part of the world, and passes still need to be found. But put them against, say, the Rockies, and they become nothing but foothills in comparison.
So why the difference? Why are these mountains not as grandiose as the rocky peaks found elsewhere?
The answer is time. Large amounts of time.
When these mountains first formed, as what is now Africa slammed into what is now North America and the supercontinent Pangaea formed, they were as tall and majestic as the Himalayas are today. However, this was some 480,000,000 years ago, give or take a few million. The tall mountains peaks eroded away as the years passed and the continents split once more.
Now all that’s left is the hard curls of rock that were once the heart of the mountains. Thousands of feet of rock have eroded off of them, by the hand of water and ice and green growing things. And the erosion continues. Perhaps in another hundred million years, there will be a vast plain where these gentle mountains now dwell.
Time Created: December 2006
Have you heard about pareidolia?
It is, in many ways, an artists best friend.
Our brains, as part of how we interpret the visual data our eyes give us, keep comparing any and all shapes we see to ones we already know. If you’ve seen one apple, you recognize the next. There’s a lot of wiggle room in that interpretation, as well. It’s useful to be able to tell that apple is an apple, even if it’s larger than the first one. Or colored green, or perhaps a bit of an odd shape. But this does lead to errors. Something that mostly looks like an apple, but green, larger, and in a different shape? It might just be a pear.
Those errors are a large part of what makes art possible. Our brains keep comparing shapes, and those two dots and a curved line can all of a sudden become a face. Wouldn’t you agree? 
This means, rather than having to have photo-realism for everything, we can explore variations. Simplify forms down to the key recognition points, lengthen some aspects, shorten others, the list goes on and on. And each variation carries with it advantages that give it a place. A simplified human form is far easier to animate than a photo-realistic one; that fact alone caused several whole genres of entertainment to come into being. And that’s just the beginning of the power of pareidolia.
So if I tell you this fanciful arrangement of circles and loops is a bird, would you believe me?
Location Taken: Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park
Time Taken: June 2008
Do not be sad when the giants of the forest fall.
They have lived long, they have lived strong. All that has happened is that their time is ended.
In their passing, the world around them springs into life, reaping the benefits of a life well lived.
The wood itself becomes a home and a source of food, for all sorts of flora and fauna. And in falling, the great tree leaves empty its spot in the sun. Many others, long in shadow, crowd in to fight for right of place.
In time, the space will be filled by another giant, or perhaps several smaller trees will reach an equilibrium. And only monuments like this will last, and then fade away.
