Day 22: Bare Branches

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Jan 222014
 

Another shot of arctic air arrived yesterday, and this morning it was twenty-five degrees, with a light breeze.  Bare hands became partially numb after just four or five photographs.  It was a day for admiring Mark Hirsch, who photographed an old burr oak tree in a pasture every day of the year, including on days that were bitterly cold by Wisconsin standards, not Georgia ones.  Adapting to the cold, I have identified a few images I have been taking practically every day, and for the next few days I will focus on each one of them in turn.  Today, I drove to the midway point of Piney Woods Church Road, to photograph some old pecan trees, some of which actually appear on an aerial photograph of the area back in 1938,making them probably 100 years or more in age.  The most grizzled veteran stands in one of the pastures, and merits its own photograph, which I will take sometime soon.  For today, though, I offer the image of bare tree branches, reaching for the sky.

Reaching for the Sky

 

Day 21: Oak Leaf Pilgrimage

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Jan 212014
 

I raced and approaching front (with its impending clouds, colder temperatures, and strong winds), getting out to Piney Woods Church Road while  the skies were still clear.  Morning sunshine offered marvelous backlighting for macro photographs of oak leaves, mosses and fern fronds.  The veins on this water oak leaf (Quecus nigra) form a kind of botanical map, reminiscent of medieval strip maps showing paths of pilgrimage (you can view an example of one here).  What kind of journey does this leaf offer us?  What holy lands does it reveal?

Oak Leaf Pilgrimage

Day Twenty: Being Watched

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Jan 202014
 

On yet another in a near-endless stream of clear and sunny days, I set out for Piney Wood Church Road convinced, yet again, that I would bring back a macro image to share.  I photographed quite a few still partly green oak leaves, backlit by the morning sun.   I immersed myself in a couple of clumps of moss, too.  My favorite photograph of the day, however, is this sparrow, perched on a barbed wire fence in front of an old barn (formerly used for mules that plowed the cotton fields in the area).  He (or she) is gazing straight at me.  Looking at this picture, I remember that, as I walk the road, I am under near-continual surveillance by a host of avian presences.  Turkey buzzards circle overhead, a bluebird pauses on its territorial circuit to observe me from a pecan tree branch, and sparrows hunt for seeds in a cow pasture.  Carrying my camera, it is easy for me to think of the Piney Woods Church Road landscape as a collection of objects to be photographed, rather than being alive, participatory.  Then my eyes catch those of a sparrow, gazing back, and I know that I am not alone.

Being Watched

Day Nineteen: Beyond the Fence

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Jan 192014
 

On yet another clear, breezy winter day, I set out with a longing to immerse myself in green things.  I photographed moss and leaves, mostly using my plus ten macro lens.  While walking the road, I struggled with feeling that I was running out of things to photograph, wondering how I could keep going until the first spring flowers come into bloom (most likely the daffodils in mid-February).  Yet, coming home, I discovered quite a few intriguing shots.  Most captivating of all, from my point of view, is this image of a barbed wire fence illumined by the afternoon sun, with two black cows beyond, sparring in play.  Who knows how much longer the three young cows in that pasture will remain there, before being sent away…..

Beyond the Fence

Day Eighteen: A Bend in the Road

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Jan 182014
 

Under clear skies and with the temperature at about freezing, I set off late on a Saturday morning in search of adventures along Piney Woods Church Road.  Perhaps it was the forecast, calling for more of the same for days on end, briefly interrupted by warmer weather on Monday, that made me seek out patches of green and buds suggesting spring.  I took quite a few photographs of mosses and the green leaves of a vine I have yet to identify.  But in the end, I selected this photograph of a vine tendril beside the roadway, looking back toward the junction with Rico Road.  There is a patch of distant green, at least — the blurred outlines of a pair of cedars.  Springtime seems quite distant at the moment, too.

Bend in the Road

Day Seventeen: Suncatcher

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Jan 172014
 

In the hour before sunset, walking through the wooded section of Piney Woods Church Road, my eye was caught by three shriveled brown leaves caught on the branch of a shrub.  There was something sensual about their curving forms, and about the way they held the late-day sunlight.  Perhaps “sunsual” is the most fitting word to use.

Suncatcher

 

The Photographer as Shaman

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Jan 172014
 

Shaman

Lately I have been pondering the analogy of the photographer as shaman.  In many indigenous cultures, particularly those in northern Asia and parts of North and South America, shamans were guides and healers who would venture into the spirit world underlying everyday reality in order to bring back messages to restore order and balance to an individual or group.  They would alter their consciousness, passing into a trance by such means as drumming, chanting, and/or the ingestion of hallucinogens.   Within a trance state, they would encounter and interact with spiritual beings and forces, gathering the information needed to solve community problems and benefit others.

In many ways, of course, my outing to Piney Woods Church Road is anything but a shamanic journey of “religious ecstasy” (as the late historian Mercea Eliade wrote).   I do not chant or drum while walking the roadway, though I might hum a bit or even talk to myself from time to time.  Nor do I ingest anything out of the ordinary before setting out — maybe a cup of coffee or tea, but nothing more.  What I return with — a collection of digital images — isn’t intended to solve any of the world’s ills or heal anyone.  Yet I have found that much of my time spent walking Piney Woods Church Road from one end to the other and back, I spend noticing my surroundings in a way that is different from how I go through the rest of my day, and different from how I would notice (or fail to notice) the same road during countless dog walks over the past seven years.  My eye is drawn to unusual compositions, and I feel compelled to engage with the place in different ways.  Yesterday I lay down at the end of a driveway to photograph the landscape at eye level, a concrete wasteland with a line of pines beyond.  Certainly, what I bring back continues to seem more amazing and delightful than I would have expected as a result of venturing there before beginning this project.  Does the landscape of such a seemingly nondescript gravel road really offer all that?  So far, I have gathered sixteen very different images to share on this blog (plus three extras, including the photo at the start of this article, taken on January 15th).  In my opinion, they are among the best photographs I have ever taken.  Yet I have over the years traveled the world in search of its wonders (particularly geological ones), from Australia and New Zealand to Belize and Bolivia, and from Arizona and California to Florida and Maine.

Certainly I do not enter the spirit world on any of my outings.  I remain firmly grounded in the everyday of my small corner of Fulton County, in the Piedmont of Georgia.  On my walk I see potholes and mud, barbed wire and drooling cows.  Yet I still find wonders there, hiding beneath the first glance we might make.  A pine warbler perches for just a moment on a fence wire, and a persimmon leaf lit from behind by the morning sun looks like a stained glass window.  Slowing down, lost in the moment, I find flow, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi terms it, a condition of heightened focus and immersion in our surroundings.  In the state of flow, creative and wonderful experiences can happen, and happiness be found.

Unlike the shaman who acts primarily to aid others, the daily journeys I take are ultimately for my own benefit.  They are intended to help me develop a discipline I have previously been lacking, committing me to a project that requires daily engagement with my immediate environment.  From the very beginning, I gambled that the benefits I would receive from my discoveries along the way would outweigh the sacrifices I must make, particularly an entire year spent without taking any trips longer than a day or so.  Thus far, I feel that I have been repaid for my efforts, in spades.  And I have been delighted to find that readers to my blog have enjoyed the photos I have shared.  (I have found that cows and sunsets tend to be the biggest hits — I await a composition involving both.)  Perhaps that instinct that urges many of us to hit the road from time to time in our lives might be met much closer to home than we might imagine.  Something akin to a shamanic journey might be possible without even leaving our own neighborhoods.

Day Sixteen: Wood Oats

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Jan 162014
 

I have wandered by this wild winter grass — still clutching much of its seed — for sixteen days now, and I have even photographed it on several occasions.  Today, I finally add it to the Piney Woods Church Project image collection.  While I had long appreciated its beautiful seed heads in the late afternoon light, I had never stopped to wonder what it is called, and whether it is invasive or wild.  After some online research, I discovered that it is called wood oats, along with a host of other common names, such as Indian wild oats, Northern sea oats, and river oats.  To avoid confusion, I suppose I ought to call it by its scientific name of Chasmanthium latifolium instead, but this translates into the rather non-poetic “gaping flower fat leaf.”  The grass is native to damp wooded places in the southeastern United States.  It reseeds itself quite readily, and manages to grow practically anywhere, including along this roadside in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia.

Wood Oats

Day Fifteen: Air-abesque

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Jan 152014
 

This morning I kept noticing fine vines, twisting and turning, along the roadside all around me.  Some of them I have photographed many times already; others I encountered for the first time today.  Against the sky, many appeared to be aerial calligraphy, though I could not decipher their meanings.

Air-abesque

Day Fourteen: Sweetgum Ornament

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Jan 142014
 

After a light rain yesterday evening, today was a clear-blue sky day.  I set off late in the afternoon to see what I might discover along Piney Woods Church Road.  I took quite a few stand-by photographs, and also found an unopened cocoon — probably belonging to a saturniid moth — suspended from the top of a winter weed.  While intriguing from a natural history perspective, the cocoon simply would not yield a good photo.  Indeed, it was a day of many shots coming close, but not quite working out.  As usual, the principle of taking lots of images and trusting the odds came to my rescue.  Near Rico Road, I photographed a sweetgum seed pod hanging from its stem about ten feet above the ground.  Since it was well out of my reach, I photographed it with my zoom lens, not the macro +4 I have been using of late.  I love the deep blue sky in this photo.

Sweetgum Ornament

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