Last winter, my fiance and I spent the weekend after Christmas at her parent's house in Upstate NY. There's limited development and much of the landscape is still pastoral farmland which means very little light pollution. So on clear nights, the galaxy spreads out in every direction like a bejeweled dome glistening in candle light.

I wanted to bring three elements into this photo: the contrast of the lighted house against the darkness of the forest behind and the starry sky above. My intent is to convey the feeling of warmth and safety from the house, while the forest looms ominously in the background bridged by the eerie glow from the sky. While inside you may be safe, one step beyond and you may not.

I setup my D70 on a tripod to prevent image blur, set the ISO to 1600 and the exposure to manual holding it open for five minutes. The extended exposure made the light from the house appear to glow in the windows in addition to capturing the stars. I set the aperture to f4 to let the maximum amount of light in. I took several exposures, experimenting with the aperture and the amount of time I kept the shutter open and found this combination to be the best.

So there's no photo this time. Just some thoughts. . . That's what blogging is all about right? Well after two years of toiling away in corporate America and watching my staff dwindle from 9 to 4, I've sort of let go of trying to accomplish anything real. I need to be the warm happy Zen center of the Universe and let the tempest blow around me. I also need to focus on my future. This is just a stepping stone, and even though photography hasn't take off the way I would have liked it to, I haven't given up on finding a creative, professional outlet for everything that's bottled up in my head.
You see, I've had this vision. This idea of what life could be like. A paradigm shift really from what society quietly whispers in our ears. It started in my senior year of high school when we read Ishmael, and I had my beliefs challenged for the first time. It continued in college as I learned about biodiversity and sustainability. When I quit the government, hiked 2,000 miles, and found a deeply gratifying connection to nature, my idea became more focused. And at last, when my fiance took her first grad school class in planning last fall and introduced me to the work of Ian McHarg, my idea solidified. I want to find a way for our society to live with nature in our daily lives and reconnect to our environment and regain our sense of place. Something that has been vacant for too long and has had deleterious consequences. The overwhelming and prevailing sense of entitlement is one of them. The widespread estrangement from the land is another.
And the way for me to do this? Landscape Architecture. It's the vehicle I've been searching for to galvanize all of the thoughts that have been rattling around in my head for the last ten years looking for a voice. It's the way for me to pull it all together and express myself creatively as well. It's down right thrilling and it's been worth every step, even the 1,000 or so through the rains in New England in the spring of '06.
If you're at all intrigued, no worries, there'll be more to follow. And if you actually miss the photos, well I'll try to post more of them too. In the meantime, you can satiate yourselves at www.kitchensuccess.blogspot.com where I've started supplying my photographic talents.

This is another one from our trip to the Olympic Coast last summer. I've been experimenting on my Mac with making my digital photos black and white and have been really pleased with the outcome. Walking along the sandy coast of Kalaloch, I was drawn to the rushing waters of this tidal river as it left the confines of the forest and journeyed to the ocean.

I feel this photo gains a lot of power sans color. I've also cropped it to focus the viewer's attention on the schism between the sand and the water. Thus the image is reduced to its basic elements: the shape, texture, and interaction of the tidal river with the eroded sand "cliffs." I can feel the sand slipping away into the gushing waters dashing out to sea. The coast at Kalaloch is an enchanting place and one that beckons me to return.

Another one from the Pacific Northwest, this photo comes from Rialto Beach at the beginning of the North Coast Trail in Olympic National Park.  After a night in the Hoh Rainforest enjoying the quiet solitude of the gigantic verdant centurions that guard the gates of Olympus, my fiancee and I longed for the sonorous timbre of crashing waves and the sweet caress of ocean breezes on our faces.  We hiked a mile up the trail and spent the night just north of Ellen Creek.  After making camp, we wandered further up the coast, exploring the rocks, driftwood, and flotsam of Neptune's abode.  

One particularly large tree lay on its side, baring its story.  The cracks and crevices told the story of a Herculean life well led, one of strength and resilience until nature at last took its toll. Even here in the temple of the forest grand, the mighty cannot withstand the sheer force and fury of the sea's boundless energy. 

I love the rough and splintered texture of the wood pocked with holes and bleached by the sun.  The cross-like central feature seems symbolic of the burdens this forest elder faced until his last days, reflective of a time when one age must fall so another may stand.  The forest beginning anew, its life ever-lasting.

On a recent trip to Olympic National Park, my fiancee and I were exploring the Pacific coast and were drawn to the amount of driftwood on the beach at Kalaloch. As we strolled the rocky beach, stepping over tidal streams and crossing pools on fallen trees, we were struck by all of the storm-lashed and wind blown logs that were weathered down and smooth to the touch. Some you could hold in the palm of your hand, others were the size of full grown trees. All products of nature's power and grace.

I drew in close for this abstract shot of the grain to capture the flow of the wood. The swirling and whirling of the different colors is reminiscent of the ocean cresting and breaking behind me. I was lost in the forms and textures of the wood and barely had time to come up for air. The Pacific Northwest is nature's gallery of the majestic and magnificent; this picture offers only a glimpse.

Last August on a trip to Pennsylvania's "Grand Canyon" aka Pine Creek Gorge, I decided to experiment a little with my Nikon D70. By setting the white balance for incandescent light (color corrected for yellowish red sources) in a natural light environment (blue cast of daylight), I achieved this distorted color effect in an otherwise typical forest scene. The standard earthy greens and golds are replaced by the much cooler blues of the shade. The bright color of the leaves in the top right foreground draw our eye deep in to the background where we discover the bright, almost washed out sun filtering in through the canopy. The soft, subtle hues of the rocks in the foreground provide a relaxing point upon which to rest our gaze on an otherwise hot summer day. The altered color effect increases the amount of contrast between the foreground shadows and the background highlights helping the scene to "pop." This altered state lends a certain enchanted feeling to the overall mood of the photograph; leaving the observer to feel that perhaps they just missed the gathering of satyrs, nymphs and pixies who departed a moment before their arrival. Only the soft, gurgling babble of the stream offers any evidence reminiscent of Pan's flute.

While on a trip to New York's Finger Lakes region over the New Year's holidays, I heard about a local oddity. A derelict farm that played home to a mountainous collection of one man's obsession: a lifetime's worth of scavenging everyone else's unwanted detritus. Three barns, a house, and everywhere in between was littered with junk. Vaccuum cleaners, televsion sets, sleighs, toys, magazines and even a full size caboose, served as a reminder of one man's life spent hoarding and absconding the debris of other's lives. Thoroughly horrified, yet terribly curious, I found it impossible to look away from this forgotten collection of dreams and manias.