Picture-Perfect Sunset

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Photo #631: Supurb SunsetLocation Taken: Skihist Provincial Park, British Columbia
Time Taken: June 2010

One of the primary criteria for the “Best” category I post on Saturday nights is, quite simply, whether or not I can imagine the piece looking at home printed quite large, framed, and hung over a kitchen table.

I know, how prosaic of me. Hmmm… Not sure if prosaic is the right word. I’d say “capitalistic”, but the fact that I have yet to actually put these pieces up for sale runs counter to that.

And of course, my having said that makes it just a hair less likely to get around to doing that any time soon.

It’s one of those fun quirks of human psychology. Telling someone else about a goal you have triggers the same reward mechanisms as actually completing the goal. In other words, the more you talk about your plans, the more you feel instinctively like you’re making progress towards them, despite not doing one iota of actual work. Which, of course, means you’ve got less motivation to do the actual work, because it’s, well, work, and you get the same joy just from talking.

Isn’t that a fun factoid?

  

Just because it’s cool doesn’t make it not lava. That’s the trees’ job.

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Photo #630: Lava TreesLocation Taken: Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho
Time Taken: June 2010

You know, there’s something really striking about the combination of black ground and green trees. It’s a really nifty color combination, and not just because there’s all sorts of lovely symbology about trees growing in an old lava field. The strong shadows from the sunset just add delicious icing to the lovely lava-cake.

…Yes, I did just type lava-cake. That’s what happens when you are tossing together geology and metaphors. Things get… sticky. And covered with icing, apparently.

  

A Place With A View

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Photo #629: Banff MountainLocation Taken: Banff, Alberta, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like living in a tourist town like Banff, one where all the shops are themed and there’s a gorgeous mountain visible all the time.

I mean, do you just ignore the view after a while or do you occasionally stop and say “man, am I glad I live someplace this pretty”?

I haven’t actually lived anywhere with overly fantastic scenery, though there is a touristy spot in town. And well, while usually I just accept it as part of normal life, I do occasionally stop and admire it. But it’s not one that has too much of a seasonal pattern to the tourists, so it’s quite different in that respect from most tourist towns.

Though my Grandma does live in a seasonal tourist area, along the shores of Lake Michigan, so I do see some of how that sort of thing affects the locals. A lot of the stores shut down in the off-season, and the streets become empty. A surprisingly large amount of the town just leaves, as well, heading who knows where. That’s probably what it’s like in Banff during their off-seasons.

Well, if they have an off-season. After all, they’ve got summer visitors coming for the hot springs and scenery, and winter visitors for the skiing and the like. And since the town is literally inside a national park, there’s always people like me visiting in the odd times of the year, hoping to avoid the crowds.

Maybe they have no real off-season.

Maybe that’s why they go to such efforts to keep the town looking all pretty and thematic. Get the odd-season people to visit just for the architecture and the like.

  

Little Blue Flowers, the cure for your beauty-deprivation problem!

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Photo #628: Little Blue FlowersLocation Taken: Powder River Pass, Wyoming
Time Taken: June 2010

Sometimes I think all this world needs is more little blue flowers all over the place.

Just a touch of extra beauty, hidden in every corner.

Though perhaps if they were all blue flowers, we’d get used to them too fast and just call them weeds. There are already plenty of weeds that would look marvelous in a garden if the gardener had actually wanted them there.

So maybe it should be all sorts of touches of beauty. Not just little blue flowers.

Though we can still have a lot of those in the mix.

  

If it’s this pretty in poor lighting, imagine it in good lighting!

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Photo #627: Lower YellowstoneFallsLocation Taken: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Time Taken: October 2012

I think I’ll continue the “nothing too poignant or educational, just pretty stuff” theme.

So here’s the Lower Yellowstone Falls.

It’s not that great of a photo of the falls, since it was the wrong time of day for sunlight to really make it into the canyon. But these falls still look nice even in poor lighting.

So all is good.