Day 42: Upon Further Reflection

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Feb 112014
 

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.

Upon Further Reflection

Day 41: Blackbird Fly

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Feb 102014
 

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.

Blackbird Fly

Day 40: Red Leaf

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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 39: Dandelion

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Feb 082014
 

A few days ago, I began adding to my Piney Woods Church Road walk a few furtive glances for signs of spring.  I have been watching, in particular, for daffodils to emerge from the soil — there are quite a few clusters of them growing in and alongside a pasture about halfway on my walk.  Alas, no luck yet.  Imagine my surprise today when I discovered a dandelion — not a budding flower stalk, or even an open flower, but a seed head, waiting for the wind.  It is a marvelous reminder of all that I have missed this year.  Somehow, the flower stalk emerged and bloomed and produced seeds during January and early February, all without my noticing.  But today I paused to take this photograph.  After snapping half a dozen shots, as I was about to stop and be on my way home, the sun emerged from a cloud.  A lovely moment on a Saturday afternoon in not-yet-springtime.

Dandelion

Day 38: The Mossy Bank

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Feb 072014
 

Yet another of this year’s mostly cloudy and chilly afternoons found me along Piney Woods Church Road, scrambling for an image to share for today.  I explored a few new possibilities that might lead to photographs, including an almost-Southwestern miniature erosion landscape with lichens.  But for the most part, the muse eluded me.  Fortunately, I had begun my outing — like so many before this one — taking a few photographs of a mossy spot along the  wooded part of the road, looking back toward the junction with Rico Road.  I tried to investigate what species of moss this is, but I turned up lots of photographs of Spanish Moss and Elisabeth Moss instead.  And I learned from a listserv on bryophytes (mosses and their kin) that a field guide to Georgia mosses is well overdue (if anyone out there is interested in a topic for their next book).  Short of a name for this moss, I can at least identify the stalks scattered among the green leaves as sporophytes, and the capsules atop the stalks (containing the spores for the next gametophyte generation) as sporangia.  The complete life cycle of mosses is depicted here.

Mossy Bank

Day 37: Morning Ice

 Backyard Nature, Landscape History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  2 Responses »
Feb 062014
 

I returned this morning to the same spot along the side of Piney Woods Church Road where I saw the oak leaf floating yesterday, and discovered needles of ice had formed overnight.  Every moment, the world around us is changing.  In the spirit of Heraclitus, we can never step onto the same road twice.

Morning Ice

Day 36: After the Storm

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Feb 052014
 

After the overnight rainstorm, the ditches along Piney Woods Church Road had filled with water once again.  In one of them, I saw this oak leaf floating, the edges of the leaf slowly taking on water.   The stillness of the scene offers no hint of the raw winter’s day on which I took this photograph.

After the Storm

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

Day 33: Lichens!

 Backyard Nature, Native Plants, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  2 Responses »
Feb 022014
 

I have always been fond of lichens.  I recall, far back in my childhood, encountering British soldiers lichens (Cladonia cristatella) growing atop a neighbor’s fencepost, in an enticing micro-forest of gray-green stalks and brilliant red caps.  Lichens are odd among living organisms, for being two in one:  an alga and a fungus joined together.  Scientists still don’t know who gets the upper hand in the partnership:  are lichens simply fungi that have taken up farming, or are they algae in fungal space-suits (allowing them to live in brutally hot, dry, and cold conditions where algae alone could not survive).  Lichens are odd, and lichenologists can be a rather odd bunch, too — I count a few among my friends.  On a gray and foggy winter morning, as I walked down Piney Woods Church Road from Rico Road, it was wonderful to be greeted by a splash of red on a fallen fencepost.  Closer inspection revealed a community of lichens.  This photograph includes two members of the genus Cladonia:  Cladonia didyma, (Southern soldiers, the one with the red caps) and Cladonia subtenuis (Dixie reindeer lichen, the one that looks like a shrub with bare branches).

Lichens!

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