It was a mild day. February isn’t supposed to be “mild”. It’s supposed to be cold, stormy. The time of the year when the indoor chores get done. Not this year in Central Oregon. We have had a lot of sunny days with relatively mild daytime temperatures. On one of these days, we took a snowshoe hike in the area of the Santiam Pass on the Willamette National Forest. We found a land of textures, glare and shadows between Mt. Washington and Three Fingered Jack. Here’s a visual summary of our Santiam snowshoe.
Hi. It’s Kathy. I don’t write here that often but since Boyd posted his top 15 I thought I should put my Top 15 up also. And yes, it was a big flower year!
As Boyd said in his post, we are trying something new. These are just a portion of each image. Click on the thumbnail to see the whole image.
Seriously we try to post at least once a month. This has not been achieved as we only posted 9 times in 2019. We will try again in 2020. But we are already a month behind. Wow. Where does the time go?
For now here are Boyd’s 15 favorite images from 2019. This is kind of an eclectic mess. But we have plans for some interesting places in 2020, so hopefully more interesting stories and images will follow more frequently.
I’m trying something new. These are just a portion of each image. Click on the thumbnail to see the whole image.
We recently found ourselves in the Caribbean with some time to explore old San Juan, Puerto Rico. And old means really old. Back to the days of shortly after Columbus old. We took time on a very warm day to walk the Morro and the Cristobal forts. Built in the days of Dutch raiders and English privateers the Moro protects the entrance to the strategic port of San Juan. After 400 years of invaders and hurricanes, that the structures still stand is a testament to the effort that went into their construction. We were so impressed with the structures (and the 87F heat and 87% humidity) we thought we should share our afternoon at El Morro.
Tarde en El Morro
Esperando la Flota
Puerta a la Luz
Borde del Nuevo Mundo
Let’s start with the second part of the title first. Trees can live much longer than humans. The average pine tree in the western US might have a lifespan of 300 plus years. An oak tree might also be good for a couple of hundred years or more. Bristlecone pine can be 2,000 years old, or more. What if trees have a perception of time? Would they perceive a day or an hour or a minute in the same way as a human? Us humans perceive motion with a certain frame rate. If you go to the cinema the film in the old days showed at approximately 24 frames per second. Video generates around 30 frames per second. Trees potentially live 30 times the lifespan of a human. What if their frame rate is a thirtieth that of a human? What would that look like? What would a tree see if it was growing alongside a river? What if I slow my camera down so that I’m taking one frame every 4-6 seconds. Would it be what the tree saw? Look at the images below and see if you can see like a tree.
Beard of the Wizard
Carnal Curves
Drop to Enlightenment
Laminar Darkness
Release to Turbulence
Strands of Silver
Tresses of Namakaokahai
Ok the titles might be a little fruity or nutty. But I think trees may be serious thinkers and would give serious titles. After all they have deep roots. And time.
Maybe you have noticed that Instagram and Facebook have hard parameters for aspect ratios for photos. In case you didn’t know, aspect ratio is the length of one side of an image to the other side. These big media sharing sites really like the aspect ratio of a cell phone screen, especially a cell phone held upright in the portrait mode, not the landscape mode.
Maybe you don’t care. We think you will care after you see the full version of these panoramas. You can click on these and they should expand to a larger size. Hopefully you will see these on a big screen (27” high res monitors work well) but even a pad will do, just don’t expect much out of that phone.
Maybe you still won’t care about panos after you look at the larger version of these panoramas. That’s ok, you don’t have to like what we like. But sometimes a good visual story just demands a good pano.
Sometimes it’s about a great sky…
Or putting something in a size context…
Or showing off the grand sweep of the landscape…
Or maybe showing off the grand detail at our feet…
Or showing the grand detail of a famous location…
Whether it’s a monochrome panorama…
Or a colorful panorama…
Sometimes you just need a panorama - uncropped, unadultared, unconstrained because that is the story. A story you can’t get on Instagram/Facebook.
O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the forenoon.
Walt Whitman
Paroxysm is defined as “a sudden attack or violent expression of a particular emotion or activity.” The onset of desert blooms is certainly sudden. The “Super Bloom” of 2019 certainly is a violent attack on the sensibility of some that the desert is a bare and boring place. The foot soldiers of this attack were the multitudes of flowers in many shades of yellow, gold, blue, violet and other colors. Millions of bright spots, each competing for attention, to show that the desert is not bland, monotone, boring or bare. In these images we used intentional movements of the camera to blur, yet focus on the colors of the bloom. We hope this paroxysm of color imparts a sudden attack of a pleasant emotion in your day. It certainly captured us.
Super. Synonyms include: superb, superlative, superior, outstanding, remarkable, dazzling, marvelous, magnificent, wonderful, splendid, fine, exquisite, exceptional, glorious, sublime, and more. In this post we include some of our images from Joshua Tree National Park made during the 2019 “Super Bloom”. We hope you will agree that many of those synonyms are applicable. Clearly the bloom was exceptional. The riot of colors was remarkable. The density was magnificent. The scent of millions of blooming flowers was sublime. All together it was glorious. We hope you concur. [You can click on each image for a larger version.]
A couple of weeks ago we found ourselves in Southern California. And just like in 2017, we were there during a “Super Bloom” event. Fortunately we had time to go make some images of the blooms. Unlike 2017, the best blooms were not on the Carizzo Plain. We found dense blooms in the vicinity of Anza-Borrego State Park and Joshua Tree National Park. We also did a drive-by of the poppy bloom near Temescal/Alberhill along I-15. We didn’t stop at Temescal/Alberhill because it was crazy. There were hundreds of people trying to get to the poppys at 9AM on a Monday. We can’t imagine how crazy the weekends must have been. But Joshua Tree in particular, was incredible. The density and diversity of flowering plants was overwhelming. The scent of blooming flowers almost overpowering when we got out of the vehicle along the south Entrance Road. We tried to make images of the mass but all of our attempts seemed to fall short of relaying the intensity of the bloom. Instead we tried to make images that captured some of the details of this incredible floral outburst in the desert. Here in Part 1 are images from the Carizzo Plain and the area around Anza-Borrego State Park. (Click on the photos for a larger view.)
