At my wife’s urging, I am adding one more heart photograph to the blog for Valentine’s Day. This one, which I found in the middle of the gravel roadway, is made of crushed pine cone husks that somehow managed to form themselves into a heart.
On the occasion of Valentine’s Day, I found myself seeking out heart images along Piney Woods Church Road. I found one that was rather intriguing but fell short of beautiful: a pair of crushed pine cone husks on the gravel road that together formed the shape of a heart. Elsewhere, though, there were abundant greenbrier leaves still on the vines, many quite heart-shaped indeed. I settled on this photo, in which the leaf becomes a screen for the shadowy forms behind it.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!
As I walked Piney Woods Church Road this morning, in the wake of the ice storm (which continued through the night, turning to snow toward the end), I took quite a few photographs of ice festooning pines and other trees and shrubs. The ice was already melting, covering my camera and me with water droplets. The drops also fell into a pothole along the road, forming overlapping circles on the water’s surface. If I had been asked two months ago if I would ever photograph a pothole as art, I would have laughed. Of course, since then I have taken numerous photographs of Piney Woods Church Road ruts and drainage gullies…. There is beauty and wonder everywhere.
Since this was my very first ice storm since moving to Georgia 7 1/2 years ago, it seems fitting to post a collection of images from the morning after. On my walk, I found new animal tracks in the snow, telling stories I did not pause long enough to read. I also saw ice everywhere, covering loblolly pines and the bare branches of pecan trees. I took delight in the crystalline landscape, though I mourned for the trees that lost branches and in some cases fell altogether.
I offer one more photograph from during the ice storm yesterday. It wasn’t the most pleasant day to be a cow.
For the first time since this project began, I was unable to make a post yesterday. Light freezing rain began Tuesday night and continued throughout the day on Wednesday, changing to sleet and back to rain several times before ending as snow. Casualties included my electricity (out for 30 hours), one pine tree in the backyard, and three cedars in the backyard. (Ice falling on cedars is far worse than snow falling on cedars, in my experience). One snapped two-thirds of the way to the top, and the uppermost branches are currently resting on my roof.
I ventured out early in the day. Beginning a year-long project, I expected I might have a day or two when I would have to be out on the road closer to a thunderstorm than I would like. But I never anticipated that I would be feeling a bit scared during a winter storm. But the quarter-inch or so of ice covering the trees made even my Piney Woods Church Road stroll a bit of an adventure. I heard a couple of limbs fall, and pine branches littered the ground. But nothing fell close to me during my walk, fortunately. It was sleeting while I took all my photographs; icy pellets kept landing on the camera lens, adding to the challenge.
In this photo I am looking southeast, beyond Piney Woods Church Road in the foreground to Rico Road in the background.
While sitting at the keyboard monitoring the approaching ice storm on Weather.com radar every five minutes or so, I thought I might post another abstract photograph, this time one from earlier today. I took this shot looking into the woods near Rico Road. Using the telephoto zoom and focusing on a nearer object, I managed to bring the rest of the image out of focus. Keeping my finger halfway down on the exposure button and then moving my camera enabled me to circumvent the auto-focus feature and produce a few intriguing abstract images. How I ended up with these colors (with minimal post-processing on my part) by shooting a photo looking into a gray-brown forest in winter is not entirely clear.
It was a gray, raw day along Piney Woods Church Road, on the afternoon before a storm named Pax (ironically) is slated to hit the Atlanta area with perhaps half an inch of icing and then an inch or two of sleet or snow. An earlier spell of light rain left a few water droplets scattered on the branches of shrubs and vines. I took quite a few photographs on my way toward Hutcheson Ferry Road, some abstracts and others close-ups of multi-colored water oak leaves, gray-green lichens, and rusty-orange fungi. On my way home, I stopped to glance at the ruts near the intersection with Rico Rd. A leafy vine growing next to the rut was reflected in the silt-laden water. The result is evocative of Japanese art — a visual haiku lying in a muddy rut on a gravel road in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia.
A few abstract images gleaned from today’s Piney Woods Church walk. I am enjoying the possibilities of the blur. I have opted for spare titles to accompany them. From top to bottom: Winter Shrub; Robin in the Lawn; Distant Leaf; Budding Tree; and Loblolly Pine.
Late afternoon today was truly overcast, with a gloom betokening approaching winter weather. Rain tomorrow, freezing rain on Wednesday. I spent most of my hour along Piney Woods Church Road looking for splashes of color to photograph, doing a lot of experimental out-of-focus work (Is it possible to be focused on not focusing?). I took several images reminiscent of abstract watercolors, which may find their way into a separate post. At the end of my time in the field, on the way back to Rico Road, I took several photographs of red-winged blackbirds silhouetted in the bare upper branches of a distant tree. To try for some telephoto shots without blur, I used a metal fencepost to steady my camera. I took only one photo, and then the birds were gone. By sheer luck, I caught this bird with its wings extended, about to launch itself into space.
