Diamonds in Air
Diamonds in Air
When that fine powdery snow blows around in the wind on a cold morning so that the early golden sun highlights each tiny crystal it looks as if diamonds are floating around in the air, flashing as they turn and fly. I tried to capture it, some even have little rainbows; I think I’ll try my cross-screen filter next.
Sands of Time
Sands of Time
What primordial wash left these deposits of colored sand between layers of limestone? How many times did the landscape change to create these layers? How much time does this represent?
This highwall is a man-made cut along the Panhandle Trail in Collier Twp., PA, a former rail line from Pittsburgh to Weirton, WV and connecting to points north and west. A section at the trail head runs through the McShane Quarry of Collier Stone, providing Collier Gray limestone and other products around southwestern Pennsylvania.
The portion of the quarry around the trail is no longer mined, but several quarry ponds still provide interest and habitat, and in the woods huge quarried and natural boulders left behind are covered with lichen and moss. And like most limestone and sandstone formations, there’s a natural cave to explore. Farther along the trail is another limestone feature, the Fossil Cliffs where millennia of flora and fauna remain in this ghostly form.
Welcome to the Neighborhood
The Pink Birdhouse
Hand made birdhouses, created by local kids in school, hang in young maples along the Panhandle Trail in Collier Township. You can’t miss this one! And it looks like the birds have noticed it as well—this one is either showing signs of occupation from last year, or a new resident this year.
A Little Thaw
A Little Thaw.
Imagine the sound of water.
The limestone cliffs of the quarry seep groundwater dripping down the rock face into the partially melted quarry pond in a constant patter. The gray of the limestone and pale yellow of the wan winter sun color this image into a burnished antique gold.
The trail can be so noisy on a bright winter afternoon with all the water dripping and the stream surging with icemelt, and the birds making the best of a clear day to stock up on food. Even tiny bits of fresh green showed in protected spots, ferns and mosses just waiting for a sunny day to store up some energy to make it through the winter.
Unexpected Berries
Unexpected Berries
The burning bush continues to flare, even as its leaves are gone for the season. These berries had been there all along, but not nearly as brilliant in the landscape as on a snowy morning, as the snowfall slowed and the sun struggled through the cloud cover to touch each berry, each accented with a little tuft of fresh fluffy white snow, a perfect touch for the holiday season no matter which holiday it happens to be.
I offer this image in a set of holiday cards entitled “Unexpected Berries”. I also sell prints upon request.
A Delicate Balance, 2010
A Delicate Balance
The dried pods of the Rose of Sharon look like hands reaching to catch the gentle snowfall, each flake silently landing on another, piling lightly, filling the space between to make a perfect cap, glowing with the warm light of sunrise. Some things are so beautiful they must simply be seen.
Still one of my favorite snow photos.
Red, 2011
Red
Sometimes the scene is just visually stunning, especially with a little flash of angled late afternoon sun on that bright red Virginia Creeper. Love the peeling paint, the weathered wood, cloudy windows and the door hinge. Yet the plant flashes its brilliance before it fades, while the building simply fades.
This is from several years ago, but each October, on a day as warm as summer, I remember this moment and share it again.
If you’d like a print of this photo it is available in my photography collection in my Fine Art America gallery entitled, simply, “Red”.
The Elves Had a Party: 2011
Mushroom Tables
And they left behind quite a mess on my picnic table—their table and chairs, and this orange dust all over the place. Who knows what those elves were up to?!
[I knew my table was slowly rotting away under the trees, as it has been for about 15 years, but growing mushrooms is going a little too far!]
Fossil: 2011
Fossil
Just a pattern in the rock, or a fossil?
We visited Fossils Cliff in Collier Township, the limestone layers in the valley the ideal for finding impressions of archaic living beings between the layers. Sometimes the patterns were clearly just a pattern of the layers settling against each other, but other patterns clearly looked organic. This, to me, looks like a spine and perhaps even ribs. It’s about 12″ long and on the underside of an outcrop, impossible to take away.
I came home with a pocket full of smaller possibilities.
Now there’s a place I’d like to be on a 97 degree day—under a limestone outcropping in the woods looking for fossils! I’ve meant to go back, I think it might be time.
Me and My Shadow: 2011
Damselfly
A busy damselfly pauses on a leaf, her shadow clear in the bright mid-day sun. She looks right at me and seems just as curious of me as I am of her.
I’m not as informed about damselflies as I could be and can’t really identify this one beyond a few guesses. I found it as I was wading in Robinson Run in Collier Township, Pennsylvania.
Bee Balm
Bee Balm
A bumble bee comes in for an intoxicated landing on yet another newly-opened bee balm blossom.
The flowers were literally humming with bees, and apparently the flower really is a balm to them as they weren’t at all interested in me. It’s good to have plants like this in your garden, both to attract the pollinators and to feed them—bee colonies have been struggling for many reasons in the past few years.
In the Sky: 2011
In the Sky
A crow harasses a very patient red-tailed hawk high up against the flat sky before a storm.
I followed a red-tailed hawk around this afternoon, trying to get the perfect photograph, but I did not succeed. The hawk was circling a fairly large valley that is a local county park, riding the thermals and gusts on an unusually hot day on the front of a storm. I couldn’t follow quickly enough on foot so I was actually driving my car and parking it, hopping out and looking at the sky for the hawk. It was always gracefully circling elsewhere, so I quit the pursuit and headed home, followed by the storm.
But I did remember this photo I’d taken several years ago with an older digital camera. The photo itself is a little grainy, but I like the interplay of the two birds in this one. The crow was really dive bombing the hawk and you can see a few feathers missing in one wing. But the hawk didn’t divert from its circling on the rising wind, and I presume the crow eventually lost interest.
And neither bird paid attention to the leading edge of the front just entering into the photo, the tip of a big thunderhead pushed along by winds. As today, it likely developed into a cataclysm of hot and cold air, then settled down into rain.
Patterns
Patterns
One tiny sparrow decorates the picket fence, washed by angled morning sunlight.
Patterns, both natural and man made, work so well in black and white photography because you can avoid the distraction of color and just enjoy the shape and form, the play of light on an object and the abstract shapes created by the light and shadow. Running my eyes on the pattern of light and shadow on the picket fence for me is almost like walking along and dragging a stick on the pickets, hearing both the taps and the silences as they make their aural pattern, the companion to the visual pattern.
The waving habit of the fence adds interest to the pattern, creating a visual rhythm all its own.
The shadow on the ground, while not as strong, is also intriguing, broken up by grass and gravel.
And, of course, the common little house sparrow sits atop like a punctuation mark.
Fiddleheads on Parade
Fiddleheads on Parade
The ferns in my back yard popped up with great enthusiasm, apparently late for some important activity.
But My Hair!
But My Hair!
This male goldfinch is having a little bit of a bad feather day as he continues through his spring molt from the drab olive plumage to his bright yellow and black. He doesn’t look too happy about having a camera pointed at him, though. Many are done molting into their spring colors, but these must still be migrating from the far north.
They’ve Got the Feeling: 2011
They've got the feeling.
The pussy willow is blooming now—for real. Those hard-shell buds have been waiting, ready to burst, since the January thaw when several of them actually did burst.
I’ve seen snow on the pussy willow, but it never amounts to much. I’ve been watching this branch of the pussy willow all winter outside the bathroom window, and the fat, fuzzy catkins, the blue sky, the sunshine, the mild breeze, tell me spring is here.
Sands of Time: 2011
Sands of Time
What primordial wash left these deposits of colored sand between layers of limestone? How many times did the landscape change to create these layers? How much time does this represent?
This highwall is a man-made cut along the Panhandle Trail in Collier Twp., PA, a former rail line from Pittsburgh to Weirton, WV and connecting to points north and west. A section at the trail head runs through the McShane Quarry of Collier Stone, providing Collier Gray limestone and other products around southwestern Pennsylvania.
The portion of the quarry around the trail is no longer mined, but several quarry ponds still provide interest and habitat, and in the woods huge quarried and natural boulders left behind are covered with lichen and moss. And like most limestone and sandstone formations, there’s a natural cave to explore. Farther along the trail is another limestone feature, the Fossil Cliffs where millennia of flora and fauna remain in this ghostly form.
Saplings
Saplings
Hundreds of slender upright saplings along the creek in a moment of bright sun today.They are all just a little bit out of focus because it’s very windy and I think that added to the interest of the photo—each sapling is in a different level of focus, sometimes having little to do with its placement in the photo.
A Delicate Balance (2010)
A Delicate Balance
I posted this on December 27 last year. It’s so beautiful I wanted to share it again, and here’s hoping we have some snow.
The dried pods of the Rose of Sharon look like hands reaching to catch the gentle snowfall, each flake silently landing on another, piling lightly, filling the space between to make a perfect cap, glowing with the warm light of sunrise. Some things are so beautiful they must simply be seen.
Red
Red
Sometimes the scene is just visually stunning, especially with a little flash of angled late afternoon sun on that bright red Virginia Creeper. Love the peeling paint, the weathered wood, cloudy windows and the door hinge. Yet the plant flashes its brilliance before it fades, while the building simply fades.
This is actually from last year, but I passed the same door, sans Virginia Creeper, and couldn’t get the photo out of my mind.
The Elves Had a Party
Mushroom Tables
And they left behind quite a mess on my picnic table—their table and chairs, and this orange dust all over the place. Who knows what those elves were up to?!
[I knew my table was slowly rotting away under the trees, as it has been for about 15 years, but this is going a little too far!]
Me and My Shadow
Damselfly
A busy damselfly pauses on a leaf, her shadow clear in the bright mid-day sun. She looks right at me and seems just as curious of me as I am of her.
I’m not as informed about damselflies as I could be and can’t really identify this one beyond a few guesses. I found it as I was wading in Robinson Run in Collier Township, Pennsylvania this weekend.
Fossil
Fossil
Just a pattern in the rock, or a fossil?
We visited Fossils Cliff in Collier Township on Sunday, the limestone layers in the valley the ideal for finding impressions of archaic living beings between the layers. Sometimes the patterns were clearly just a pattern of the layers settling against each other, but other patterns clearly looked organic. This, to me, looks like a spine and perhaps even ribs. It’s about 12″ long and on the underside of an outcrop, impossible to take away.
I came home with a pocket full of smaller possibilities.
Below is a photo of the cliff with my niece and her children and Bingo the dog at the bottom, to give a sense of scale. It is easily three times wider than this, and between visitors and natural rock activity pieces of limestone are constantly falling. The fossil above is right about the center of this photo, on the shadowed outcrop right above the top of the loose limestone. We could only step around on this loose limestone, no climbing for us!
Fossils Cliff
Bee Balm
Bee Balm
A bumble bee comes in for an intoxicated landing on yet another newly-opened bee balm blossom.
The flowers were literally humming with bees, and apparently the flower is a balm to them as they weren’t at all interested in me.
