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That’s a curious title… isn’t this a picture of three trees?  At first glance it is.  And in our fast paced world, that is all most people will give this picture and even the real scene.  A quick glance… “Oh, that’s nice”… and then move on.  But when you slow down and let the picture sink in a little, you notice the larger gap between two of the trees.  And once you see it, you cannot “un-see it”.  It very clearly changes to a picture of two trees and one tree.  

I had a little help in noticing this because I made several images of this scene over the course of several days.  I was certain that I wanted a very clear sky with no clouds.  I waited until we had two days of clear weather and went out at sunset on the first day to ensure a clear sky for the background.  And, initially I thought I was making an image of three trees in an open field.  And the first images were in fact three trees… with evenly spaced gaps between them.  But on the last day, I changed my tripod location just a little, and the gap on the right opened up.  And the picture, and story, completely changed.

I’ve often thought bare winter trees take on human shapes and emotions when you look at them long enough and let your imagination wander.  With a little creativity, you might see two parent trees wishing their child tree well as she leaves to go who knows where.  It’s a bittersweet scene… the parent trees are proud as they wave to their child.  But she already has her back turned and is striding quickly into her future.

Yes, it’s just an imaginative story.  But that story never gets created or told if I didn’t spend time shivering in a field at sunset on a cold winter day and move my tripod ten feet to the left.

It’s good to be back out in the field with my camera, with an excuse to notice the little things.  I hope you are having a great holiday season and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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Remember me? I used to go out hiking, spending quiet time in nature, capturing what I felt with my camera. I would then share these images with friends in a monthly blog post along with a sometimes humorous anecdote. Alas, that was before I succumbed to a pickleball addiction. I haven't sent out a new image in several months - only the second time I've missed a monthly post in nine years! And, to show how harmful this addiction is, it has spread to my wife too! Now we are both battling it! Maybe as the cold weather approaches it will ease up and I will get the chance to once again go out into nature and create some meaningful images. Fingers crossed.

In late October, Marilyn and I took a break from pickleball and went to Sedona with friends. This was a repeat visit to red rock country and it was a very enjoyable week - beautiful weather, great hiking, nice meals, and we attended the annual Plein Air Painting festival. We even did a couple side trips.

One excursion was a trip to Page Arizona to visit the slot canyons... Antelope Canyon to be exact. These slot canyons are incredible things to see. They are areas of Navajo sandstone eroded by flash floods and wind into twisted, multi-colored shapes. As the sun passes overhead, the light changes and the eroded canyons change constantly. Marilyn and I had been there seventeen years ago with our daughters. And while the canyons remained the same, the time certainly brought changes. It seems the crowds of people who discovered our National Parks and outdoor areas during Covid are still visiting these places... I wish they'd go back to their sofas and TV's so we can enjoy the outdoors with a little less crowds! :)

It feels good to share a new image with you all. Hopefully more good images to come as I get back out into the land with my camera.

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One more image from our National Park trip in May. I haven't been out photographing much because I have a severe Pickleball addiction problem. They say the first step in solving the problem is admitting you have one. Maybe I do... maybe I don't. Is eight times a week for three hours each session a problem? Depends who you ask! Whether it's a problem or not, it does take up a lot of my time leaving little time left for photography. But I'm sure I'll get back out there with the camera sometime soon.

If you have followed this blog for awhile, you'll know I have a weakness for certain recurring themes... lone trees, rocks, desert canyon landscapes, etc. It's no surprise then that I couldn't pass up this image of a lone tree, in a desert canyon, surrounded by rocks! This image was made in Bryce Canyon at the end of a sunrise morning photo walk. It is such a beautiful place to be when the sun rises. I'd go back any time!

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer. Maybe next time I'll have a new local image to share... if I make progress on my Pickleball problem!

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This is another image from the trip we took with friends in May to the National Parks out west. We arrived at our Yosemite NP lodging in late afternoon.  After unpacking and sitting around talking, I saw there was still a lot of light left and cloud banks were forming and breaking up. We were only twenty minutes from Tunnel View so I decided to drive over to the Valley.   My friend Bill wanted to come along.  I did give him fair warning… I told him if the light was great, there’d be no rushing to get back for dinner!  He reluctantly agreed. 

We drove the twenty minutes on winding mountain roads through snow squalls and sunlight. It was unusually cold and with the altitude, the conditions were right for snow. No amount of snow on the steep, winding mountain roads was going to stop me from seeing what the valley looked like in these conditions.

We arrived to magnificent late evening light, partially blocked by constantly changing clouds and snow squalls. First you could see all the way up the Valley, then that view closed and El Capitan and Bridalveil Falls would magically appear.  It changed every ten minutes. I knew instantly that my friend Bill had no chance of getting back for dinner!  I finally settled on a composition where you could see the granite face of El Cap and Bridalveil Falls, with snow squalls opening just enough to show the golden light on Half Dome far up the valley.  It really was the right place at the right time. 

After pulling myself away from the fading light, it was time to head back home. I drove a bit fast for Bill, who kept telling me he didn’t mind getting home ten minutes later!  But we needed to get back before dark, since the location of our VRBO was not easy to find.  We finally made it and we arrived at our darkened house.  How could they all be asleep at 8:30?  They weren’t… we found the power was out to the entire neighborhood!  Bill did manage to eat a Subway hoagie and then we called it a night!

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Three years ago a group of our closest friends suggested we all go on a two week National Park hiking trip out west. Never one to turn down a chance to visit the National Parks, I said as fast as I could... "We're in!". And so began a lot of planning, and then a two year delay due to the pandemic. But, finally the day of departure arrived and the trip was on!

We spent the first two weeks of May in the deserts of Utah and California and finished in the high mountains. In total, we saw Canyonlands, Arches, Bryce, Zion, Death Valley, Sequoia, and Yosemite. We shivered in 30 degree temperatures while watching the sun come over the canyon rim and light up the orange and white hoodoos of Bryce. We hiked two thousand feet up to the top of the West Rim of Zion. We arrived to 109 degree heat in Death Valley followed by a day in the 40's in the high altitude of Sequoia! We doubled back on a pleasant hike around a meadow because a mother bear was guarding her cub too close to the trail. And we put our hands on the Dawn Wall of El Capitan and even climbed part of the famous wall of granite (ok, we only climbed five feet, but we still got off the ground on El Cap!).

It was a fantastic trip... a bit tiring, but everyone got to see an incredible variety of landscapes in a short amount of time.

I arose for six sunrises during the trip... great times to take out my camera and explore these landscapes in the beautiful light of early morning. One such sunrise was the sand dunes of Death Valley. I had done this before, ten years ago, and insisted that the group get up with me and experience it. That meant a 4:50am departure and some walking up and over the swells of loose sand... all before the sun came up. But it was worth it and the image above captured that calm, quiet feeling of being there as the sun crested the mountains and lit up the sand.

Look for a couple more of my favorite images coming over the next month or two. And consider planning your own visit to some of these great parks - they are simply amazing to experience!

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Spring is my absolute favorite season of all.  After being forced to live and eat indoors for what seems like an eternity during the winter, Spring holds the promise of endless days living outside, eating outside, sitting outside... just being outside!
 
I tend to notice the Spring long before most people.  In February, you can already see the swelling buds on hardwood trees... even while the twenty degree air whips by in twenty mile an hour gusts!  In March, from a distance, you can see the faint pastel colors tinging the treetops.  And in April, seemingly all at once, the trees take on a myriad of colors.  The most obvious of colors are the flowering blooms of the magnolia, cherry, pear, and plum trees.  Everyone sees those. 

But there is an amazing array of colors on non-flowering trees too!  When the buds burst open with the beginnings of what will soon become leaves, they do so in a rainbow of colors... many shades of yellows and greens, and of course the striking reds that will catch your attention from a mile away!  Like in the image above.

As I send this post out, most of those colorful bursts have turned into fresh young leaves of varying shades of yellow and green.  A sure sign that you will find me eating, sitting, and just plain living, where I belong... outside!

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Whenever weather conditions are special but won't last long, I make my way to the Unami Creek for some photography and solitude.  It's only a fifteen minute drive from my home, but it feels like it is in a different world.  The suburban Philadelphia sprawl is replaced with mountainous terrain, trees, large boulders, water, and almost no inhabitants.  It truly is a small escape from the normal world.

It's also a bit of a frustrating photographic subject for me.  I really enjoy hiking along the creek's edge, and I have made countless images there.  But whenever I get back home and review my images, the excitement fades away.  And I am staring at bland, average images that just don't capture the feeling of the place.   I have been photographing the Unami Creek for eight years now, and I only have about ten images that I truly like, out of the hundreds of images I have made there.  I'll keep trying, but for some reason it's a tough challenge for me.

On this foggy morning however, I was able to create an image that captured the true feeling of the Unami Creek.  The fog was held in place by the trees giving a faded blue color to the background.  And over my shoulder,  the sun was just breaking through and lighting up the creek's edge in a special way.  There's a lot going on in this image, yet it seems to work.  And you can look at it for a long time and keep finding new things to see.  I hope this image gives you a sense of the feeling of this small, calm refuge from the busy world.

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We hadn’t had an ice storm in years, so I excitedly peaked through the blinds when I woke up... only to be disappointed. Instead of ice covered trees gleaming in early morning light, I saw another dreary day.  Sure, the trees were covered in ice… but it was just so dark and dreary.

I decided to go out with the camera anyway, and made my way to a local woodland.  As I was unloading my cameras, I started to get excited.  The light was getting better with each minute and I began walking faster.  I needed to make a great photo before the ice melted.  The pressure was on... there were only three days left in February and I needed to create an image worthy of a blog post.  If I didn’t make a good picture today, I would be forced to dig into the archives for this month’s post - which I have rarely done in eight years!

This is exactly the WRONG approach to make good pictures.  I was moving around very fast, feeling the pressure, and just not really seeing anything.  It was all so chaotic… ice covered branches, grasses, and shrubs.  So I decided to slow down and eliminate the need to make an image.  If I saw something worthy, great!  If I didn’t, then so be it.  And as I slowed down, images started to come to me. They weren’t all great, but some were good and I became more receptive to the landscape around me... I saw more clearly.

I arrived at a nice open area in the woodland. The ice covered branches and shrubs looked like winter’s lace adorning the trees, and the grasses on the hillside added some nice color.  I was pretty sure this would be the image of the day.  After patiently setting up and carefully composing, I made several images.  And then I made some more as the sun came out and lit up the scene.

But, you know what happens when the sun hits ice on trees? It melts… all at once!  And so eight hours of freezing rain from the night before started to melt very quickly.   And I was caught in the wintertime equivalent of a tropical rain storm. I was soaked, my equipment was soaked, my shoes were soaked, and it was cold. But what a memorable ending to a morning wandering around in an ice covered woodland.

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“Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought... about that which everybody sees.” (Schopenhauer)

It's amazing how nice 34 degrees can feel when it's sunny and there is no wind... especially after several days with highs in the low twenties!  It was one of those calm winter mornings where you feel the warmth of the sun on your face and the air is tolerably cold.  There was absolutely no wind... it was just completely still and quiet.  Soft sunlight filtered through a thin layer of white clouds and there was some leftover snow from the small storm two weeks ago.

It was more quiet than usual along the Unami Creek.  The bridge was out at the far end of the road, and on this end the sign said "road closed".  But the sign didn't completely block the road... and I have a Jeep... so I decided to see how closed it was.  It turns out only the bridge was closed and I got access to all my usual spots along the creek.

I was immediately drawn to the glowing golden light on the partially frozen creek.  I loved how the reflections of the trees on the ice created lines of color, mixing with the soft blue of the sky.  The arching lines of a bare winter thorn bush seemed to echo the lines of the tree reflections and I liked how all of the lines moved throughout the picture frame.

There are beautiful quiet scenes full of color and shape and light even in the middle of winter.  It's out there and we see it every day.  We just need to slow down and take notice.