Category: photography

if it’s just about the photography experience

Wild Buckwheat

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Days are warm and the grasses have faded to brown.
Such is the harbinger for the beautiful buckwheat bush plant.

It covers vast areas of flat fields and hillside chaparral and has proliferated due to the steady rains we received his season. These plants burst open with little pink/white flowers en masse. Their drought resistance empowers them as an environmental mainstay to the typical California climate.

Even more wonderful is how buckwheat support bees. The over-abundance of the flowers ensures busy bees have a good supply of nectar for their hives! The fields light up and bee support are a win/win scenario in my book.

As summer wears on, these flowers will turn a rust red. All stages of the colors make for some dreamy compressed photography.

California buckwheat is edible and was a staple for the indigenous Kumeyaay tribes within this region.

Changed

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Traffic billows
Clouds of disagreement
Heat rising from its midnight
Fumaroles to be embraced
While slowly killing us

This short journey quickly ends
Beyond the bounds
Of the enchanted forest
Where I will be changed again
To a time when everything was wonder

The door slams
Feet hit the pavement
And time begins to slow
A swirl of life
Circles about my head

Men and women in spandex
Bicycle to conquer
Run to escape and to find
Newer selves
Changed in heaving breaths
Pushing out the old self

Beyond the fumaroles
Lies the path
That will swallow me whole
And without a sound
Will make me a child again

When I started making photographs, I rediscovered the child in me. Easily impressed with life forms….like the simple guppy. A few days ago I witnessed a hummingbird courting his mate. He flew high and hovered, then swooshed down. During his upturn, his tail feathers made a “chirp” sound. A physical manifestation created at almost 9G’s of force. The forest is full of stories like that.

Into the Sun

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The path to your house
Well worn
Tamped down
By rabbit and wolf
Compels the feet
Step lightly
Swiftly

The journey
Stretched long
Like the tanning
Of the rattler
Bites relentlessly
That beautiful poison
Of anticipation

It’s that moment
When eyes meet
The relief
When held tight
To die wonderfully
Of days past


It’s All Energy

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This started as an opinion piece.

I changed my mind.

Suffice it to say that I love making photographs.
After years of looking to see every scene as a potential to a larger end (composition-wise), I have to say that there is no end to this for me. If the moon is in the wrong place for a composition, I will move it. If I need a spot of color found in the sunset in front of a tree or mountain, I will move it.

The camera makes light a willing participant who is just as happy to come along for the ride, as I am to bring it. Sometimes light will cooperate. Other times I must argue with it to get my way. Sometimes, many times, light tells me to re-think things for a better outcome.

No failures, just learning, always learning.