Day 45: Greenbrier Leaf

 Backyard Nature, Native Plants, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project  2 Responses »
Feb 142014
 

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!

Greenbrier Leaf

Day 40: Red Leaf

 Backyard Nature, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Feb 092014
 

Yesterday evening and earlier today, I spent a couple of hours poring over the work of Kathryn Kolb, a fine art nature photographer living in Atlanta.  She has taken stunning medium-format camera photos of branches and leaves in her backyard, around the city, and across the country.  In her work, there is often no central subject in focus — the entrancement of the image comes from the pattern of forms and the play of light.   Many of them are like impressionistic paintings, venturing below the surface forms to encounter the life energy contained within.  Before I saw her images, I tended to consider pictures with an unfocused subject as mistakes.  Now I know otherwise; blurred images have their own power and allurement.  Today’s offering of a greenbrier leaf from Piney Woods Church Road is in appreciation of Kathryn Kolb.

Red Leaf

Day 34: Cloudy Day Dreaming

 Backyard Nature, Native Plants, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  2 Responses »
Feb 032014
 

After a brief rain overnight, I arrived on a lazy mid-morning Monday for my ramble down Piney Woods Church Road.  I took quite a few photographs, as usual, including those of a vibrant green patch of resurrection ferns covering a branch of an old pecan tree (no doubt this photo will appear in the blog before too long).  But I settled today on this dreamy, more abstract image of greenbriers.  Cloudy Day Dreaming is intended in part as a nod to Australian Aboriginal spirituality; the Dreamings, or creatures of the Dreamtime, are ancestral beings that created the Australian landscape at a time that is simultaneously long ago and ongoing now.  Aboriginal ritual dancing is a means of accessing the parallel world of the Dreamtime to enable Aborigines to participate in the ongoing Dreamtime story.  In a similar way, I think of my photographs as possible doorways for encountering a world of wonder hidden just beneath the surfaces of our everyday natural places.

Cloudy Day Dreaming

Strange Leaf

 Backyard Nature, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jan 112014
 

Eleven days into my Piney Woods Church Road project, and already I feel compelled to break my self-imposed rule of only posting one photo per day.  I find this image so haunting and disturbing that I feel compelled to share it, yet I find it too dark for my 365 project.  What makes this picture so troubling?  It is only a shriveled oak leaf, somehow caught up in the tendril of a greenbrier.  Or is it?

Strange Leaf

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