Tag Archives: leaves

LOCAL COLOR

The daily circling out from home doesn’t extend very far these days, but

places nearby, when examined over and over

reveal delightful twists on

familiar forms.

Just look –

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Maple leaf

embraced.

 

Leaf ghosts

strewn across the sidewalk

make use of

graffiti punctuation.

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Field and forest:

these tangled masses

are experts at being

lost.

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Leaf’s clipped edges,

allow a glimpse of the next season.

 

Stem’s inner glow

recalls the season past.

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Lily pads blurred,

lily pads crisp:

neither one preferred.

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Queen Anne’s lace –

in the intimate clutch of its seedheads

Stink bug finds comfort.

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Leaf map

reminds me

to forget the way.

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Sucked into the void, floating on the wind –

leaves and ribbons

shadow the season.

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Parting shot: the first photograph, this time in black and white.

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Photos taken in King, Snohomish and Skagit counties, Washington State, USA.

Some taken with a Samsung phone, some with an Olympus EM-1. Processed in Lightroom, Silver efex pro and Color efex pro.

 

ON AN EDGE

it happens on

the edge: transition,

change, movement.

Definition.

At the edge, I see what’s

what. I think I

know what’s what, but

appearances, well,

you know – they’re

deceiving.

Still, I’m drawn to

an edge, if

only to keep

the comforting rhythm of

returning

to center.

Photos of Begonia leaves; Lumix G3, 60 mm, f 2.8, 1/40-1/80 sec, ISO 800.

 

 

 

VARIABLE HUES

What hue are you? This week’s Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge wonders how readers might reveal themselves via color.

These days I’m variable hues, reflected in the photo I took today.  Another day I may be the pure blue of an Yves Klein painting, or pale as dry sand in the dunes.  I remember a time when every night as I closed my eyes to sleep, a textured field of color flashed in my head – a shiny round of chartreuse, a densely shaded, rough earth brown, a rippled, floating, translucent pink. I don’t know what prompted the color fields, but each night I enjoyed that fleeting moment.      I was smart enough not to seek it, so the vision came and went lightly.

These days I rarely see those images, but no matter – color is a daily companion, intensifying sensory pleasure, carrying me along time’s winding ribbon.

Weekly Photo Challenge: “The Hue of You.”

Blowing, Caught, Wafting, Swirling: Ever Present, Never Twice the Same

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Apologies to Robert Irwin, an artist whose granite marker, inscribed with the phrase,

EVER PRESENT

NEVER TWICE

THE SAME

was part of an installation on the grounds of Wave Hill, a New York City public garden where I worked in 1987.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Irwin_(artist)

THE SUBTLE COLORS OF JANUARY

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Photos taken at Markworth State Forest, Carnation, Washington, and on Cherry Valley Road, Duvall, Washington, on two frosty, early January afternoons.

Lingering Local Color

Fall lingers in the pacific northwest; its transition to winter is subtle. Without the hard freezes many areas experience, scattered leaves cling tightly to fences, mushrooms crop up on forest logs, and berries and mosses remain bright.

APP

A few days ago I downloaded an Android app called Photogrid. It puts your phone photos into collages.

A shake of the phone produces a new arrangement (you pick frame styles & colors) –

Here’s a grid of road trips in the Pacific Northwest:

Here’s another arrangement of the same images:

This one is a mash-up of

Buddhas,

flora,

rain on the car window (near Seattle of course)

a hand,

and street shots in New York & Seattle:

I don’t think you can change the placement of the images by dragging them around – that would be even better.

But sometimes random choices produce juxtapositions you wouldn’t have thought of, and they’re really nice –

(yes, John Cage figured that out long ago).

I think I like this one best:

And the app is free!

Falling

Down, down, down…

But

so

lovely, even

in

their

demise…

Or especially so.

Photos taken in Bellevue, Port Angeles, and up on Hurricane Ridge on the Olympic Peninsula, all in Washington.

Travel Theme: Foliage

Ailsa, at Where’smybackpack, has given bloggers a new challenge:  Travel Theme – Foliage. Anyone who knows me, knows I love all things botanical. I must have close to a thousand images of foliage of one kind or another, so I’m going to restrict my offerings to foliage seen while traveling – but you’ll see that restriction still permits quite a bit of latitude.

A yucca plant in Colt’s Neck, NJ, a township in rural Monmouth County.  Love those curls!

Sensitive fern on the Buffalo River in the Ozarks, in northern Arkansas. The Buffalo River “flows freely for 135 miles and is one of the few remaining un-dammed rivers in the lower 48 states.”  The National Park Service warns visitors not to rely on GPS in this remote area, but to use Arkansas road maps. Remember road maps? Flooding caused some of these leaves to be covered in mud; later, new leaves grew among the old.

On the edge of a parking lot in Fort Myers, Florida, tropical foliage is torn and caught on a bamboo stalk.

This old home on Whidbey Island, off the coast of Washington, is almost invisable under layers of moss, bushes, weeds and trees.

More rampant foliage takes over another overgrown roadside attraction – an old tobacco barn in rural Duplin County, North Carolina.

Foliage of a completely different sort – a Tillandsia – an “air plant” that grows by anchoring its roots in tree branches for support while its leaves absorb nutrients and water from the air.  When I placed it on a map of the area where I found it, its leaves seemed to echo the roadway lines.

Undersea foliage: kelp and a bull whip plant lie on a beach on Whidbey Island, Washington.

Western Hemlocks, their foliage drained of color in the gloom of the forest, tower over Lodge Lake Trail in the  Snoqualmie National Forest, in northern Washington state.

You can find more bloggers’ foliage photos at:

http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/09/28/travel-theme-foliage/