Light, line, shape, color, and gesture make photos we love. But texture also attracts our eyes and our cameras. Here’s a dozen of our favorites from 2023. We love the feel of these images from wispy to gritty. Hope you love them too. Click on each to see a larger version.
When in the night we wake and hear the rain
Like myriad merry footfalls on the grass,
And, on the roof, the friendly, threatening crash
Of sweeping, cloud-sped messengers, that pass
Far through the clamoring night; or loudly dash
Against the rattling windows; storming, still
In swift recurrence, each dim-streaming pane,
Insistent that the dreamer wake, within,
And dancing in the darkness on the sill:
How is it, then, with us—amidst the din,
Recalled from Sleep's dim, vision-swept domain—
When in the night we wake and hear the rain?
Robert Burns
Castles come in many shapes and sizes. How would you like your castle to be? Big? Small? Here are some ways to have your castle if you are in England or Scotland.
Maybe you want your castle traditional, royal and large.
Maybe you want your castle tall and brooding over a strategic body of water.
Maybe you want your castle with turrets and cannon.
Maybe you want your castle to have a small entrance, difficult for enemies to force.
Maybe you want your castle to have a grand entrance over a bridge.
Maybe you want your castle in the middle of the Loch.
Maybe you want your castle with armored knights.
Maybe you want your castle protection a little more modern.
Maybe you want your castle with a pensive princess waiting on her prince.
Maybe you want music in and around your castle.
Maybe you want a fixer-upper.
Whatever you want in a castle, there are plenty of ideas in the Great Britain castle design center.
As we travel, we seem to find there are certain features that stand out about an area. Maybe it’s the hummingbirds in Costa Rica. Maybe it’s the walls of Tuscany. Maybe it’s the flowers of a desert springtime. For us, in Yellowstone, the features that stand out are the textures.
Yellowstone is rightfully famous for the geothermal features. But as photographers it is hard to get photographically excited about Old Faithful. Millions of photos have been taken of Old Faithful just this summer. But by spending a little more time in the park, we noticed the geothermal areas also had a wide variety of textures. And then we started seeing textures all around the park. There are the smooth pool surfaces and the rough edges at hot springs.
There are the textures where deposits have built up for millennia creating ledges on ledges on ledges.
And the frothing of the mud pots generates textures that hint at somewhere that may exceed Dante’s imagination, a place of boiling souls screaming to escape.
Yet some pools are calm with a zen-like, meditative feel to their texture. How long does the bubble exist?
Besides the geothermal areas, the grasses of midsummer are a tangle of lines and texture and color shifting away from the greens of spring.
Even the wildlife contribute to the palette of texture.
And as the grass dries and the bison shed, eat and procreate, the hot springs, mud pots and geysers provide a show of building new textures.
Meanwhile above the geyser basins and hot springs, above the bison and the grass, the sky is also textured and hints at changes to come and the end of the shortest season.
What is a ‘Slack Day” and why is it in this blog? Good questions buckaroos. The first part is easy. Slack Day is a day between ‘performances’ when competitors who couldn’t get into the regular performance part of the rodeo get to compete. Maybe there were too many steer wrestlers to fit the allotted time in the performances. At the Sisters Rodeo it is also free to watch and photographers (Boyd in this case) can stand next to the arena fence. So it is a great opportunity to make some images of a pretty unique piece of western culture. So are you ready to pull up your Wrangler’s and tighten up that belt? Let’s Rodeo.
For those who aren’t sure what these images are about let’s start with steer wrestling. The idea is to jump off a horse onto a steer weighing about 500 pounds, and as quickly as possible throw the steer to the ground. Oh and the steer is running as fast as it can. Which means the horse is also running pretty darn fast. Yes 180-pound man tackles 500-pound steer from the back of an 800-pound horse in under 10 seconds. Easy Peezy. What could possibly go wrong?
Maybe steer wrestling is too brute force for your taste. Maybe team roping is more in your corral. Start with a calf in the chute, a cowboy on a horse with a lariat (that lasso thing) on each side of the chute. Throw one lasso around the horns of the steer. Then the other cowboy throws a loop around the back legs of the now spinning and angry calf. There is a lot going on in this event and I didn’t do too well capturing it.
Two horses, two cowboys, two horns, two loops, too much? Then try tie down roping. Just you, your horse, a big loop of rope, a little loop of rope and a calf. Much simpler: lasso the calf, jump off your horse, throw the calf to the ground, use the little rope to bind the calf’s legs, raise your hands up to stop the clock. Yes this is a timed event. And you might be getting the idea that the horses are maybe more important than the cowboys.
And if you think this is a cowBOY only day you would be mighty wrong there fella. The barrel racing is an all cowgirl event involving 3 large empty barrels, one large horse and the ability to get around all 3 in the quickest possible time. Oh and you have to do it in a cloverleaf fashion. Knock over a barrel and get time added as a penalty. Can you stay on a horse that just went to 0 mph from a full run in 2 of your steps? Didn’t think so.
And that my vaqueros is a taste of Slack Day. Maybe next year we’ll pony up for a performance and get some saddle broncs and bull riding images. Yeehaw. And with that thought: TIME!
So we are trying something new. We have added a download page. Just click on Downloads at the top of this page. For now we have four titles available. The most recent is “White Sands Black Shadows”. This features 29 images from White Sands National Park. Then we have “Rushing Patience”. Water and rock make for a set of color images we enjoyed making and sharing in a book-like format with some related text. This PDF is best viewed as two pages side-by-side.
The third PDF is “Mountain Monochromes”. Being outdoors people we are drawn to mountains. And last but not least is “The National Park Posters” which is a collection of images made in units of the US National Park System. This collection is formatted with text in the style of Park Posters from the late 20th century.
We are hoping that putting images in PDFs will help you to view the images as they were intended to be seen. For the “Mountain Monochromes” and “National Park Posters” this means you can download and see these images on your larger monitor and enjoy the image as originally formatted, without the cropping constraints of Instagram. For “White Sands Black Shadows” and “Rushing Patience” we hope you will enjoy the sequencing of these image sets. Instagram and social media in general just don’t allow a set of images to be laid out and sequenced in a way that allows the viewer to not only linger over an image, but to delve into a longer subject.
We hope you try this out with us. We think you will find some images you enjoy and want to share. And sharing is another trait of PDFs and why we keep up this website. We want to share some of the beauty and interesting things we see when out with our cameras. So grab a favorite beverage, turn off that streaming service and try something different with us.
Yep - nothing happened when you clicked on the images. You have to go to the Downloads link at the top of the page. We will work on doing links on the journal entry sometime in the future.
It begins somewhere in the North Pacific. Pressure gradients build, wind blows, waves begin the long journey to the rocks of the Oregon coast. The linear wave strikes the chaotic shore. Billions of small plants, animals and other organic things are caught between the weight of the wave and the impassive rock. Their cells split, releasing proteins into the water. The waters churn the protein broth adding air, making bubbles, creating foam. This is The Churn.
Linear waves, a chaotic rocky edge, mark the beginning of The Churn
Water pushed by a thousand miles of wind meets the edge of sharp, unmoving rock shredding the cells of organisms living in the water.
Even between the ocean waves, reflected wave remnants continue the mixing.
The proteins begin to accumulate and change the surface of the water.
The Churn
Light. Shadow. They play across the immense walls of the canyon. Sometimes they reveal. Sometimes they conceal. The walls don’t change for us mortals but the light and shadow constantly changes. The change from night to day brings the revelation of canyon presence. Midday shadows and sun reveal details and textures. The fall of night brings a different revelation that dwarfs even the canyon.
Big horn ewe silhouette
Shadow of the Condor
We kept the view. While women came and went. Nike clad tourists too. Outside, in the distance, a storm did growl. Two cells were departing. The wind began to howl.
(My apologies to Bob Dylan. I had to do it.)
Princes Keeping View
All the women came and went
Barefoot servants, two
While in the distance, a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl
All along the Watchtower
(pictures scroll)
The Desert View Watchtower is a notable landmark on the South Rim. If you look closely, it is in each of the images in this post. You can learn more about the Desert View Watchtower by clicking: https://www.nps.gov/places/000/desert-view-watchtower.htm
We have wanted to visit the Grand Canyon again for a long time. It had been years, maybe decades, since our last visit. We knew we wanted our next visit to be when the monsoon was in progress. The monsoon season in Arizona brings spectacular storms and interesting skies. When combined with the grandest gorge on the planet, it is place that calls to any photographer of the land. So, we answered the call, loaded up, and made a road trip.
Bright Angel Dawn
Days are long here for photographers. Not that the sun stays up longer than other places at this latitude, but because you don’t want to miss sunrise or sunset. Because microclimate and burbles in the monsoon atmosphere cause moisture to move in complex ways, we found that weather forecasts often are frustratingly inaccurate about potential cloud cover and the chances of a spectacular sky. So we work under the old saying: “If you don’t go, you don’t know.” It’s up early (first bus at 0400 to the west end) and stay up late.
Evening dissipation - a storm breaks down at sunset
And because it’s the Grand Canyon, there can be interesting light, shadows and clouds at any time of the day; so no napping!
Rainbow and Cloud
The big reason for coming in the monsoon is the chance of a storm.
Sunset Storm
Evening at the Rim
Of course, even in the not-quite-off-season of late August, there are other people here, although, we found the crowds relatively small.
But, we didn’t go to the Grand Canyon for a storm that drops a little shower as the cloud collapses, or a storm that covers the sky in shades of gray or even a storm lit from below by a sunset, but the storm that has the power to dance with it’s erosional partner below. We came for a powerful dance between the sky and the river. And one evening it happened…
Out of Right Field
The first stroke of lightning is a surprise. It comes from a relatively small cloud. The crowd of visitors gasp and yell. “Did you catch that?” And then the intensity ramps up.
Veiled Lightning
Lighting up the Rim
Strikes 3
All Along the Watchtower
Storm and Stars
Even as night fell the storm continued off to the east as the clouds parted and the stars came out to watch.
We hope to have the next part of this story posted in a few days. In the meanwhile, you can click on the individual photos to see them in a larger “letterbox”. And if you can, use a large device to view these images, a phone just doesn’t do them justice. Hopefully, we did some justice to the dance in the sky.