A walk interrupted, intentionally

ISO 100, 78mm, 1/1000 sec., f/2

Stare at enough scenes of the American southwest and you begin to think the world is composed of irregularly shaped, warm color landscapes.  And maybe much of it is.  But this is not Arizona or New Mexico or southern Utah – this is a fallen tree trunk being lit by the afternoon sun.  I liked how the surface texture, seen up close, resembled the terrain captured in hundreds of images from out west.  Much as a universe exists in a raindrop there is a world just around our feet if we take the time to look for it.

 

ISO 100, 50mm, 1/80 sec., f/8

Sometimes around our feet can be measured in hundreds of yards.  For this scene I’m standing on a very tall bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, just south of Milwaukee.  I liked the curvature of the beach leading to the groins that suddenly recede in linear fashion around the point of land.  And between each groin is a small curve of beach depositing by the lake as it tries to wash Wisconsin’s shoreline toward Chicago.  The waves give me a nice texture in the water’s surface and some breakers against the narrow pebbly ledge beneath the bluffs.

Both images made while just walking around, no particular scene in mind.  It’s one reason I enjoy being an outdoor photographer.  Your pressure is not other people’s time or the urgency of an event’s frantic action, but rather a sense of light and openness to what you see and what it can become in the viewfinder.