Unfalling Waterfall

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Photo #361: Falling RocksLocation Taken: Great Falls of the Potomac, Border of Virginia and Maryland
Time Taken: June 2008

Every so often I come across one of my photos with a bit of a dreamlike impossibility about them.

Usually it’s like this one, where it comes from looking downstream on a waterfall.

The brain tries to find an even surface to make as its baseline slope when interpreting images, so if you’ve got a slight slope, especially one sloping away from you, every so often the brain will choose that instead of a true flat.

Which makes this photo look like the water is all on the same level, like a lake would be, but it still has the motion and odd shapes in the water from it flowing around the rocks.

And speaking of the rocks, they certainly aren’t helping orient the viewer. This area has a serious tilt on the strata! Which is what makes it such a fabulously awesome set of falls, but hey…

I suspect if I’d, say, taken this using high dynamic range techniques to bring out the color and contrast, this would be one of my masterpiece photos. As it is, though, the colors are just flat enough and the haze just strong enough that, while it’s still a good photo, it’s not a great one.

Maybe, once the leaves have filled out the trees once again, I should head back down to this spot and try to get that perfect photo…

  

Little House on the Ice

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Photo #360: Ice Fishing HutsLocation Taken: Cadillac, Michigan
Time Taken: December 2007

You ever been ice fishing?

There’s always a hut or two out on Lake Cadillac when we drive past there every Christmas season. Well, assuming the lake’s frozen enough to support people and the little houses they put out on the lake to protect themselves from the cold a little.

It seems to be a big event, really. All these houses clustered together, lots of people milling around, all that.

I’ve never been ice fishing, alas, so I don’t know the details.

  

Well, it’s Large, Green, and obviously a fruit…

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Photo #358: Large FruitLocation Taken: Garfield Conservatory, Chicago, Illinois
Time Taken: April 2008

I don’t know what tree this is, or what the fruit tastes like, or if it’s even edible.

But it’s an impressive size, isn’t it?

It was at least six inches across, if I’m remembering right. And it’s obviously tropical, with those massive leaves on the plant. They’re made for places with lots of sun and no frost.

I do wonder what causes all the scars on the fruit, though. There aren’t any animals or even bugs to damage it, since it’s an indoor plant in a large, well-cared for, conservatory. And it seems odd that it would gain those scars in the normal growing patterns, but well, I don’t know what the plant is, so I don’t know what’s normal for it.

Sometimes I wish that I knew more botany…

  

Think At The Speed of Stone

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Photo #357: Deadly RockLocation Taken: Gros Morne National Park
Time Taken: July 2012

I want you to sit and contemplate this hill for a while.

Look at it, see how the red rocks jut out from the slopes around it.

There is some grass and trees at the bottom of the hill. They peter out fast.

Perhaps this is a rather large hill, or maybe a small mountain.

The rocks are unusual, did you notice?

That’s not a rock pattern you see everyday.

It’s an odd rock, really. Pulled from deep within the Earth when this land was forming itself.

It’s full of all sorts of poisons like nickel that keep the plants from growing on it.

So it sits bare, eroding away over time.

It’s a hard material, but it still has eroded so much.

A large portion of the Earth is made of this rock. If the ground was covered in it, nothing would grow.

It is a good thing there are other types of rock.

Even though those rocks lose their shape and identity under a covering mass of greenery.

In order to stand out, a rock must kill.