Week 52 - 2015 in Photographs

Day 358

Yes, there is eight days in this week. But if you divide 365 by 52 it does not come out even. Or maybe I am off in my count but every one of the 52 posts in 2015 contained seven photographs except for this one.

And yes, it was a snowy week. And I found myself looking for new ways to photograph old subjects. Or new views to capture in the old neighborhood. Looking with the camera lens for what I had overlooked before. The cattails with snow caps was one of the overlooked previously shots. As is the landscape below. It is trail which goes up the mountain that I have never walked. It always looked too closed in for my tastes. But the freshly fallen snow made it lovely to photograph. No, I didn't walk it.

Day 359

Day 360

And sometimes the familiar just looks different. In the case of the wagon wheel landscaping feature above it was the light and shadow which made this capture more memorable than the half dozen snaps I had taken before.

And I have taken pictures of orchids before. Maybe too many times before. But I have never zeroed in on  the birth of an orchid stalk. Orchids are rather the opposite of amaryllis in this respect. Amaryllis decide to bloom and shoot up a stalk open a bloom in days. Orchids can take weeks. In both cases their showy flowers can cause you to overlook the beautiful structure of the plant itself.

Day 361

This has been the year of Old Mike (often mistaken for Wheeler Peak) and actually Wheeler is visible in this shot. It is the tiny dark point just to the left of the highest point. Wheeler is in fact taller but not by much and from most of the angles in Angel Fire it hides behind Old Mike. Not that it matters. It is the high ridge of the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the center of the Enchanted Circle. And I am always looking for a new perspective for a photograph. My sister thinks I should do a photographic book of my views of the mountain. I think it would be interesting to have all the local artists/photographers cooperate on such a book.

For me it is not so much the mountain itself as the trees upon it. I really love the trees.

Day 362

 I think all photographers have one subject which dominates their photographs. My friend, Jessica Duke, is into birds. I confess I mostly photograph birds when they are in trees or sliding across the surface of a pond with a reflection. They are an element in the photograph, rather like Wheeler or Old Mike sits in the midst of a forest of trees, and not the photograph itself.

What attracted me to the Chickadee in the conifer was the branches of the pine. 

Day 363

And my favorite tree is the aspen. Especially in winter. All seems laid bare to expose its beautiful and simple architecture, not unlike the orchid without flowers pictured earlier.

I love the way snow finds places to pile upon its branches. There is something about an aspen in the snow which cries to be processed in black and white.

Day 364

 I close this year of photographs with a snowy lane I have photographed often. It reminds me of Robert Frost and Monet. Robert Frost because of his poems, and Monet because he revisited lily ponds like I revisit trees.

Day 365

No doubt 2016 will feature more trees. Maybe the same trees again. Maybe 2016 will hold a trip beyond my customary borders, back to my beloved canyons of Utah with very few trees, or off to the shores of Maine with less trees. But the trees will be found and chronicled in pixels.