Photography

Little Things

By / April 15, 2012

During our vacation trip we went to both Goblin Valley State Park and Arches National Park. These places are known for their stunning large scenery. The scale of things is amazing and encourages photography. Everyone snaps pictures, trying to capture in a still shot the scale of what they are seeing. Or sometimes they take pictures of each other in front of these huge structures as if to document that they really were there. Among the 500 pictures we took of the parks, we have lots of these shots. Howard took lots of pictures of rock textures which he’ll use later for art projects. Kiki took lots of landscape and gnarled tree pictures as reference for future art. I took some landscape shots, but mostly I took pictures of the kids, trying to capture them as they are right now. However I also found myself drawn to tiny things, the small details which are often missed in the grandeur of the landscape.

Goblin Valley was all sand and rock. The sand formed a crust under our feet that sometimes cracked into miniature canyons and boulders. I pondered as I looked, the weather processes necessary to re-create this crust time and again despite the hundreds of thousands of human feet that trample across it every year.

Along the sides of the rock formations were mudslides in miniature. Wind threw coated the sandstone with dust, then rain would cause it to slide and cling.

Goblin Valley was mostly devoid of life. We did find a few plants with flowers up a side canyon. As I admired the tenacity of these flowers to survive in such circumstances, something bright blue buzzed past me. It was a bee. I spent several minutes attempting to capture a picture of him, I never did catch the bright blue one. The one I did manage to photograph was more gray than blue.

Another thing which amazed me about Goblin Valley was the way that it made us seem small. The goblin formations did not look all that large on first glance, but they dwarfed us all once we were among them and climbing. Then of course there was the sky. Enough sky can make anything seem small.

Arches had far more life in it than Goblin Valley. We hiked among desert plants and watched crows soar above our heads. The mammals were hidden away from the squalls which dampened our hiking trail, but we saw signs of them. Spring is a lovely time to visit the desert. It blooms.

There was something wonderful about hiking just after a rainstorm. The ground soaked up the water quickly, leaving only a few puddles nestled in the concavities of rock. Link took it as his personal mission to stomp in as many of these puddles as possible. I was fascinated that the water only penetrated the top lair of sand on the trail. Our footsteps exposed dry sand underneath the wet. The plants were lovely washed clean of dust.

Most of my travels through the parks were occupied with keeping track of my kids or marveling at things on a grand scale, but every so often it was nice to notice the little things

Tiny Pretty Things

By / April 4, 2012 / 1 Comment

These blue flowers are a weed. I find them most often in the cracks along the edges of my driveway. Tiny and beautiful, they thrive even though no one particularly wants them there and even though the conditions around them are adverse to growth. I can love that sort of flower.

Weekend Gifts

By / February 19, 2012 / 2 Comments

Went on a walk a week or more ago and took my camera with me. There was a bed full of dried up plants, weedy and broken. When I stepped closer, I saw this.

Add one to the count of small lovely things in the world.

In other news, I spent the weekend hostessing for my brother and his family. With nine children and four adults, most of my days revolved around cooking and cleaning up after cooking. Everyone pitched in to help, but for the most part I handled it. This is fine because sometimes I get to land on my sister in law with all of my kids. It is rather nice to be able to give a break to a pair of stressed parents who don’t often get one.

Beauty Where I Stand

By / February 8, 2012 / 1 Comment

Sometimes I forget that I’m surrounded by beauty everywhere. It seems like I have to go someplace special, and away, to find lovely things. It is not true. Here is a shot I took from my car while my daughter was driving us along the freeway. There are some unlovely things in the photo, but look at that mountain.

Everywhere in Utah, there are mountains. Sometimes they are distant on the horizon, but where I live they are right there. You have to look up to see the tops of them. I can get to a mountain by driving for a mere 10 minutes. My world is full of small beautiful things too. This next week I’m going to try to notice more of them.

Comparative Winters

By / February 8, 2012 / 2 Comments

Last year we were in the midst of one of the wettest winters I’ve ever experienced in Utah. This year we are in the middle of one of the driest. The contrast is striking. I keep considering stealing one of the 50 degree days to sneak outside and do some spring garden preparatory work. Then I don’t because half a dozen projects are more pressing. Gardening can wait until we’re actually in springtime. To remind myself of what winter really ought to look like, I have this photo from last year.

I admire the lovely ice, while being simultaneously glad for the lack of windshield scraping and driveway shoveling. Yet even this dry winter is more wintry than those during my growing-up years in California. Here is a picture I took while visiting California in January of 2010.

And I think I’ll stop there. This picture is far lovelier than the brown lawn outside my window.

Antelope Island: January

By / February 8, 2012 / 4 Comments

When I went to Antelope Island last October, I knew I had to go there again. I wanted to bring my daughters, who I knew would love the place as much as I did. The park is open year round and the brochures list things to look for by month. Today we packed ourselves into the car along with lots of warm clothes to go see how the animals fared in winter.

Kiki drove. She is trying to get the last few hours of driving practice which are required before she can test for her license. She loved driving across the causeway and around the island. She could drive at a leisurely pace which she found relaxing. There were some people on the island, but not many. Most people seek out indoor recreation midwinter. I was fascinated to see that the water on one side of the causeway was frozen in a solid sheet. The other side was liquid.

We began our visit by driving down to the south end of the island to the Fielding Garr Ranch. We were greeted there by a volunteer who gave us a quick orientation to the ranch buildings. They ranged from over 150 years old to a mere 30 years old. All the eras in between were represented in various machines, tools, and implements. These things were arrayed for us to look at and to touch. The whole place was completely hands-on. Gleek was in heaven. She particularly loved the blacksmithy.

Kiki got cold after awhile and returned to the car, but Gleek wanted to look at every inch of the small homestead and barn. My favorite place was the spring house. It was this little rock building half buried in the ground right over a spring. Food that needed to be kept cold would be wrapped and placed in the icy spring water. We were able to walk inside and look around. I particularly liked the view toward the door.

The one thing about Garr Ranch we all loved were the owls

One of the volunteers led us into a copse of trees and showed us where to look. There they were, glaring down at us for waking them up. Unfortunately my camera wanted to focus on the branches in front of the owls instead of them. The same guide pointed to some distant trees where Bald Eagles hang out, but we opted to take our frozen fingers back to the van.

We did some sight seeing from the van and saw lots of buffalo. We even sighted a coyote out wandering by himself across the ice of a bay. Our next stop was the same beach that I photographed last fall.

In October silence was the first thing I noticed about the island. This time I had chatty company, but on the beach silence returned. We walked across frozen sheets of ice, noticing that salt water ice is springy-er than normal ice. It clumped in unexpected ways. Gleek liked to walk on sheets and use her toes to chase the air bubbles under the surface.

Once again the beach encouraged photography.

We spent a lot of time admiring the glass-smooth surface of the water, or looking out to the sand bar filled with seagulls.

On our way back to the van we took a side trip through the tall reeds. We were obviously not the first to do so. A trail of sorts wove through the clump. When I exited the beauty of the sun touched reeds against the blue sky caught my attention.

It is an interesting exercise in photographic lighting. I was able to completely change the effect of the reeds and sky by facing the setting sun instead of shooting away from it. This shot was taken simply by rotating from the one above.

When we left the island, it was understood that we need to come back. In the spring. When we can go on some of those hikes that we drove past because our fingers were still numb from the two trips out of the car that we’d already taken. I tucked some of the silence of the island into my heart. It’ll have to last until I can go back again.

Antelope Island

By / February 8, 2012 / 7 Comments

The first thing I noticed on the island was the silence. It wrapped around and surrounded me the moment I exited my van. No engine noise, hum of power lines, or buzz of refrigerator could be heard. Most times even the drone of airplane engines were absent. Instead I heard the sound of the breeze blowing gently against my ear, the buzz of a beetle flying ten feet away, the distant cry of sea gulls. It was a place which exuded solitude even when other people were nearby. I could hear other people from as far away as the sea gulls, but these noises were welcomed by the island. Voices belonged there as much as the birds and beetles. I stood on the first overlook and breathed in the fresh salty air. I was simultaneously glad to be on the island with my friend and her baby, while wishing to be there alone, and wishing I’d brought my own children. I was going to need to take another pilgrimage there, this much was obvious.

(Many more pictures beyond the jump) …

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