Portals of TUR Part 1

We had a journal entry a few months ago about the Portals of St. Elmo. This set of portals are in Tur. Never heard of Tur? Probably because I just made it up. It’s Tuscany, Umbria and Rome. That area of ancient villages, walled cities, and the odd Etruscan artifact. Buildings are considered new here if they are less than 250 years old. Tur is ancient and yet modern. What lies behind these portals into the heart of central Italy? Sometimes it is stacks of fine leather. Sometimes there are ultra modern residences. Most of the time one can only guess. But the portals themselves provide clues to an ancient past with textures and hints of places far away in time.

Clues to what lies behind these portals are often found hanging nearby.

And there are a substantial number of portals with flowering plants nearby.

We don’t know where the lower portal in the image below goes, but it doesn’t look good.

Portals in danger of being swallowed.

High density portals

Portals to high fashion,

portals to religious passion.

And portals to other passions:

So many portals into the soul of TUR.

Part 2 soon.

[And if you are on a device with a larger screen, click on any image to see a larger version.]

Boyd TurnerDecember 10, 2021Comment

Making Cheese by Hand in Chianti

We recently returned from a trip to Italy - Tuscany, Umbria and Rome specifically. This is a land with lots of history, churches, artwork, narrow streets and red wine. We experienced all of that and more. But we thought we would start with a post about something you might not associate with Italy: goat cheese. We were fortunate to have a demonstration and assist in the making of goat cheese by hand at a small, artisanal operation called Podere Le Fornaci.

Of course it starts with a goat.

Goats provide the main ingredient of milk. The herd was very friendly and obviously well cared for. But like any milking operation, there is a ton of work to do. Not only do the goats have to be milked every single day during the milking season. (Yes there is a season. The goats get time off in the winter to get ready for having baby goats.) But there is feeding, and cleaning and caring for the goats.

Once you have goat milk, you need a cheese maker.

The cheese maker works with the milk to make curds and whey.

With the help of some natural enzymes, the milk separates into the firm curds which the cheese maker will cut and breakup. Under the curd is the whey.

This is a small operation where the cheese maker uses a lot of handwork to cut, stir and pack the curds.

An example of the curds.

On this day, she hand packed the curds into these small plastic containers. This allowed the excess whey (the watery part) to drain out.

After filling the containers there are more steps of drying and aging. Of course this is also managed by the cheese maker and requires a lot of knowledge of cheese and fermentation.

And yes our cheese maker is a very animated person, who loves to talk with her hands about what she does.

And with different aging time and conditions the farm produces a variety of cheeses from this simple process. And we can testify that they were all delicious. Especially when washed down with a little red wine.

So a hearty Thank You to the folks at Podere Le Fornaci for spending a morning with us. These ladies are extremely dedicated to their farm, goats and cheese. They also are really fun people.

If you want to learn more about this farm, check out their website below. The website is in both Italian and English.

Boyd TurnerNovember 13, 2021Comment

Respecting and Refreshing

We built this website with the intent to share and give our work a place to live unencumbered by the constraints of the social media platforms. If we want to crop our picture in a weird aspect ratio we can do so and display it here. And we control which image is adjacent to which other images. And we don’t have ads and we don’t sell product. We just share.

Colorado Sandbox - one of our new images

But we don’t want you to be bored to death. We don’t have so many viewers that we don’t care if we lose a few. We are thankful you took some of your precious time to view our work. If you look at a lot of photographer websites you will see there is a ton of wonderful images out there. But often when you go back weeks, months, years later not much has changed. We want you to come back. Read the journal, dive into the image galleries. Maybe even go watch our video “Land of Salmon”. And that is why we have refreshed this site. The welcome page is different and the images in the galleries are all new. Hopefully, you were as fond of some of those older images as we are. We haven’t eliminated them ‘with prejudice’. They are just on vacation. So it was time to give some of our other work the spotlight. Two of the images in the refreshed galleries have been published in competitions. Which two? We aren’t telling. We love all of our children equally. We hope you will love them too.

Now go browse the galleries, spend some time with each image, even read some of those older journal posts. Enjoy, and thank you for being here. Boyd & Kathy

Suppression - An oldie but one of our favorites.

Boyd TurnerJuly 26, 2021Comment

Portals of St. Elmo

In our previous post, we mentioned that sometimes we don’t travel far to make an image. Sometimes it seems we travel a long way through time. Take a trip with us through the Portals of St. Elmo.

A boardwalk in the formerly bustling town of St. Elmo.

A door is labeled Number 8. But eight what? No other doors have numbers? Does its lightness have significance as to what lays behind?

Does a dark door denote a darkness through the portal?

Two doors up. Or are they two doors down? Did they inspire a band?

But portals to the other side are not just doors. Are those trees reflected or refracted through time and dimension?

Rumpled bed sheets? It appears we are not alone.

Maybe we are being observed through these portals in time.

We hope you enjoyed traveling with us through the Portals of St. Elmo. If you click on the images they will open in a separate window. Or would it be a portal?

Boyd TurnerJune 23, 2021Comment

Blossoms

Sometimes you don’t have to travel far for a photograph. The flowering trees in our yard provided the flowers and a rare (for 2021) rain storm provided the water drops. Hope you enjoy.

As usual, if you click on any of the images they will open in a separate window.

Boyd TurnerMay 5, 2021Comment

Into the Ground

In the wilds of eastern Oregon there exists a mysterious feature. A place where walls of basalt have been riven apart by mysterious and powerful forces. With seemingly no warning, the traveler is lead down, and down, into a place with little resemblance to the world of sage and juniper that exists above. Journey with us into Crack In The Ground.

It begins with what appears to be an innocuous path. A place between some rocks.

As we enter we soon notice large pieces of rock thrown in precarious positions. Might a rock fall at any time smashing us between rock and more rock? Is this some sort of troglodyte trap?

But being the intrepid explorers that we are, we forge on.

Past mysterious slits in the wall. Are these sealed doors from whence Orcs might spring behind us?

What horrific forces have been at work here that caused rock to run and bubble?

As we continue our descent, red streaks and strange patches grow on some surfaces. Remnants of the surface winter accumulate on the occasional flat surface.

As our descent continues, more red streaks are seen. Are these the embedded stains from the bloody event that created this rip in the solid rock? What horrific clash of forces occurred here?

Deeper we trudge into the chasm. The footing becomes ever more treacherous and slippery. The light ever more dim.

The texture of the walls becomes rough. With the treacherous footing, a fall here could lead to horrific avulsions of our lightly protected integument. But onward we trudge.

The light begins to fail completely.

I hear a voice. Is it calling my name?

Boyd

Boyd!

Boyd!!!

Boyd I think we need to cut back on our Netflix streaming. Your prose is getting a little out of hand.

Maybe you are right Kathy. But it is a Crack in the Ground.

Boyd TurnerMarch 27, 2021Comment

Bark

(ˈbärk) noun (1) the tough exterior covering of a woody root or stem
specifically : the tissues outside the cambium that include an inner layer especially of secondary phloem and an outer layer of periderm

(2) The photographically interesting outside of a tree

Click on the individual images to see them in full frame.

Boyd TurnerFebruary 19, 2021Comment

Kathy's 2020 Favorites

Kathy thinks I’m better at writing these blog posts then she is. I don’t know about that. I do know Kathy is an incredible photo editor who makes my work much better. I also know that her own work is pretty darn good too. I hope you enjoy these highlights from Kathy’s 2020 photo efforts.

Note: These images are all letterboxed which means if you click on them they will be shown in a separate pop-up window. Depending on your device screen this may make the image easier to view.

North bank of the eastern Columbia Gorge in Fall

Boyd TurnerDecember 31, 2020Comment

Boyd's 2020 Favorites

2020. Not the year we had planned. And by we I mean the planet. But we, Kathy and I, tried to take opportunities as they presented themselves. We think we managed to make some interesting images this year without traveling to far away lands. All of the photos in this collection, and the follow-on one with Kathy’s favorites, were taken within a day’s drive of Central Oregon. So good bye 2020, hello 2021 and hopefully we all will find more opportunities for good light and enlightenment. Boyd

Note: These images are all letterboxed which means if you click on them they will be shown in a separate pop-up window. Depending on your device screen this may make the image easier to view.

Boyd TurnerDecember 31, 2020Comment

Columbia Gorge Sojourn

North bank near the eastern end of the Columbia Gorge

In November 1805 the Lewis and Clark expedition passed through the Columbia Gorge for the first time. The Gorge was much different then. With no dams, the Columbia River was a wild river with dangerous rapids and rocky shoals. Now the river is a series of impoundments, bracketed by high speed transport. But the walls of the Gorge are still mostly wild. The many waterfalls and streams, indeed the source of the name of the mountain range, still tumble down the steep slopes toward the Columbia. We visited the Gorge 215 years to the month after Lewis and Clark. And it wasn’t our first trip to the big gorge through the Cascades. For this trip we “enjoyed” stereotypical Oregon November weather: cloudy with rain. And though we wore goretex rather than buckskins, we were moved by the landscape in a way we think Lewis and Clark may have been. Large trees, falling water, the threat of the onset of winter and shortening daylight haven’t changed in 215 years. Although the accommodations and variety of food have gotten somewhat better. We hope we can share with you some of what we saw and felt as we travelled the Gorge.

Fall at Bridge of the Gods in Cascade Locks.

Cas cade (ka’ skad)
1. a small waterfall, typically one of several that fall in stages down a steep rocky slope
2. a process whereby something, typically information or knowledge, is successively passed on

We think the small streams do pass on information: they carry traces of the lands above to the great river below. Has there been a fire? The streams carry woody debris. Is fall coming? The cascade of water cascades leaves downstream.