Day 32: Winter Still Life

 Backyard Nature, Native Plants, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Feb 012014
 

I set out mid-morning today under cloudy skies, the temperature already over the freezing line and headed into the 50s.  I was in search of what vestiges of snow I might find, knowing that this could be the last day in 2014 when a snowy photograph would be possible.  I made a few discoveries, including a previously unknown patch of lichens (Cladonia leporina) which will almost certainly appear in this blog within the next few days.  Meanwhile, I offer one parting photograph with snow, a roadside still life with a still-green water oak leaf and dried grasses.  Tomorrow this same spot will turn into a fairly nondescript patch of winter weeds, but while the snow lingers, I find the image beautiful.

Winter Still Life

January 2014: A Retrospective

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Jan 312014
 

My Piney Woods Church Road Project ends its first month today, though eleven more still lie ahead!  I offer these thumbnails (which can be viewed full-size by clicking on them) as a retrospective of the month’s journey.  In my own thoughts, I have traveled so little distance, yet come so far….

Day 31: Nunataks

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Jan 312014
 

At last, today brought clear skies and much warmer weather  (into the 40s), which also brought the demise of the recent snow.  I took this afternoon’s photograph when much of the snow had already melted along Piney Woods Church Road, with vestiges remaining in the most wooded areas. One such bit of snow still covered the edge of an old loblolly pine stump.  The stump’s interior has rotted away, leaving behind bark layers around the edges.  These layers have flaked apart, producing something that evokes a rock outcrop in miniature, with metamorphic layers of slate or schist that have been tilted upward by tectonic forces.  Nunataks are isolated rocky areas, rising above the surrounding glaciers, found in polar regions such as Greenland and Antarctica.  The term popped into my head as fitting this image well, perhaps because I was remembering back to how cold it was yesterday morning.  As a geologist who loves the stark rocky landscapes of the West (especially the Colorado Plateau), I rarely encounter anything similar in the Georgia Piedmont.  Except, maybe, for this.

Nunataks

Day 30: After Dawn, Eight Degrees

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Jan 302014
 

On the advice of a neighbor, I finally decided it was time to experience dawn along Piney Woods Church Road.  I knew it would not offer prospects as spectacular as sunset, because the eastern side of the road is almost entirely wooded.  Still, I had high hopes for a grove of pines to be illuminated briefly (though this never happened).  So I dutifully made my way there (across a neighbor’s horse pasture, this being the fastest route) before 8 am, a few minutes past sunrise.  For an hour, I wandered the Hutcheson Ferry end of the road, photographing the rural landscape in the morning light.  I noticed a few things about that golden hour as the sun rose slowly in the sky:  first, that there was a stillness to the air; second, that it was rather cold; and third, that I live near the world’s busiest airport, as evidenced by a series of airplanes crossing the sky.  All three of these realizations are contained, to some extent, within the photograph below.  After nearly an hour of waiting and watching (toes and fingers growing numb), I saw my neighbor at the head of his driveway.  He wandered over, mug of steaming coffee in hand, to politely inquire if I was aware that it was currently eight degrees Fahrenheit, according to his outdoor thermometer.  Suddenly I felt much, much colder.  My next sunrise may be a few months away yet.

After Dawn, Eight Degrees

Day 29: A Winter Pastoral

 Agriculture and Husbandry, Golden Hour, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  2 Responses »
Jan 292014
 

Today remained cold, and our car remained garaged.  In the late afternoon, I set out to explore the local landscape, in search of snowy scenes to photograph — an opportunity that comes to Piedmont Georgia once every few years at most.  My tranquil surroundings felt so far removed from all the scenes of highway gridlock around Atlanta last night and today, with drivers stuck in their cars for tens of hours, struggling to get home.  I was already home, and at home, in the comfortable countryside of Piney Woods Church Road.  This photograph captures the mood well — a pastoral scene with winter trees and fields, with a horse peacefully feeding on hay in the foreground.

A Winter Pastoral

Day 28: Wild Onions in the Snow

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Jan 282014
 

Snow is a great transformer of landscape.  Pick the most mundane scene imaginable, add a layer of freshly-fallen snow, and the result can border on magical.  I set out this afternoon into a steady snowfall, looking for images of trees and animals enduring the elements — pines catching snow on their needles, cows hunkered down in the pasture.  Ultimately, though, my favorite photograph of the lot is probably this one:  wild onion grass (the kind that occupies much of my front yard every spring) in the snow.  The photograph was an afterthought, really — practically the last one I took, just before rounding the corner onto Rico Road and heading home.

Wild Onions in the Snow

Day 27: Lone Bluebird

 Agriculture and Husbandry, Backyard Nature, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jan 272014
 

This time of year in Georgia, unless it snows (which may happen tomorrow!), the landscape takes on a dull, sere, gray-brown appearance.  The eye yearns for splashes of color.  Some of the plants oblige with still-green leaves, such as water oaks and greenbriers.  For yellows, there are the pine warblers, when one happens to catch a glimpse of one.  For purples and reds, there is always the possibility of another sunset.  For blues, there is the sky.  And, occasionally, there are bluebirds.

This is an accidental photograph; I am not a wildlife photographer.  Still, this time of year there is so little changing along Piney Woods Church Road (apart from the weather, that is), that I eagerly photograph anything that moves on wings or feet.  Whenever I see a bird perch on a fence (which usually happens when the plus four macro is screwed onto my camera lens, preventing me from zooming until I remove it) I quickly try to take a photo, without really thinking about composition or light or anything but whether or not the bird will fly before I zoom, focus, and snap the shutter.  Usually, I get but one image, and rarely two.  It is as if the birds know I am trying to photograph them, and dash away.  That happened today — I saw a distant bird alight on a barbed wire fence, I zoomed in, took the photo, and the bird flew off.  I thought nothing more of it until I returned home, reviewed the photographs on Picasa 3, and discovered my subject was a lone bluebird, against a nearly monochromatic background.  Beautiful.

Lone Bluebird

Day 26: Touching Sky

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Jan 262014
 

At last a mild(er) afternoon arrived, with temperatures reaching into the lower 50s.  What I first hoped would be a mostly sunny visit to Piney Woods Church Road turned quickly into a mostly cloudy one.  I couldn’t get enthused about macro work — I kept looking upward for the few places where gray and white clouds thinned to deep blue.  The old pecan trees’ bare branches offer such wonderful skeletal forms, inviting not one or two, but a series of images.  Everywhere I looked, I discovered new possible compositions in the dynamic of trees and sky.

Touching Sky

Day 25: At Day’s End

 Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jan 252014
 

Finally, an evening that was both warm enough and cloudy enough to offer the possibility of interesting sunset photography.  I set out an hour early, taking a few desultory photographs here and there, then stopping to visit neighbors to chat for a few minutes, watching the sun sinking in the sky through their living room window out of the corner of my eye.  My attention was captured by an odd snag on a pasture ridge.  The most difficult part of the process for me today was not taking the picture (my hands never even went numb — what a delight) or even processing it (Picasa 3 offers pleasantly few choices compared to Photoshop or Lightroom).  The problem this time was figuring out a title for the blog post.  Everything I could come up with the word “sunset” in it sounded like either a cookie-cutter housing development or a New Age instrumental song title.  Not that I have anything against them — New Age instrumentals, that is — but nothing felt right for the image.  Finally, I abandoned the idea of sunset, and settled on the fact that it is also an “end of day” picture.  There is something foreboding, almost apocalyptic, in it — I am haunted by the image of that strange snag.  I wonder what happened to the tree it once was, and why it still stands there, alone against the sky.

At Day's End

Day 23: Frond Memories

 Backyard Nature, Native Plants, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place  No Responses »
Jan 232014
 

Today offered me yet another in a string of cold mornings, and coming home from errands I stopped at Piney Woods Church Road, my camera with plus ten macro in hand.  I explored worlds contained in leaves, mosses, and bark from a long-dead pine tree.  My choice from the day’s ramblings is this image of the leaflets of a Christmas fern, verdant green in a stark brown and gray Georgia winter landscape.

Frond Memories

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