Tag: Clouds

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Tempest

SSA Photography (387 of 400)

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
-Shakespeare, The Tempest
This photograph was taken on the moors outside of Haworth, England earlier this year.  It was cloudless until dusk, when shadows crept over the heather, and tempestuous clouds filled the sky.  The rock in the foreground is a landmark that can be seen for miles, and indeed it can be seen from the house which Anna’s grandfather built stone by stone from an old ostler house.  It is but a pinpoint on the horizon from the house, and we trekked miles up and down (and up again) through the heather and sheep until we reached it.  The views, as can be seen here, and in the gallery “The Moors” were breathtaking, and though I cursed Anna’s mother and uncle for taking us on such a hard-fought scramble up the moors, it was indeed worth it in the end.  And in the end, as the Bard said, “what’s past is prologue.”
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Through the Ferns

SSA Photography (1 of 400)

In 2006, I took the trip of a lifetime.  After decades studying literature and Latin, I stood in Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s home, and amongst the columns in the forum of Pompeii.  We were young then, Anna and I, but to this day we love traveling with our families whether in North Carolina, or Alaska, or England where we were engaged and where this photograph was taken.  I saw many marvelous sights on that trip–Marseilles, Mallorca, and all of the little English hamlets we visited like Grasmere.  This photograph of a well-trod path through the bracken ferns was taken in the Lake District in Northwest England.  Though you cannot tell from the perspective of the photograph, the bracken are as tall as I was, and the white and black sheep cloistered themselves between the fronds.  I felt a bit like Alice, dwarfed by the thick blanket of beautiful green ferns.   The Lake District truly is a wonderland, and I cannot wait to return.

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Skagway Mist

SSA Photography (18 of 400)

This small panorama was taken from the bow of a ship in the Inside Passage in Alaska, near Skagway.  To call the nature in Alaska untamed would be an understatement.  The glaciers are so plentiful that some have no names, and the fjords stretch for days.  All of the stones have stories, variegated and striated like this one from eons of ebbing and flowing tides.  The morning mist was a beautiful phenomenon, which I attempted to capture in this photograph.  It blanketed everything in a soft, dense fog, which sometimes did not burn off until well into the afternoon, when the blue skies brought out the deep cerulean of the glaciers.  Although beautiful in full color, I felt that the black and white of this photograph worked ever so well with the natural contrasts of the subject.

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Remnant

SSA Photography (376 of 400)

I studied art history in high school and college, learning from incredible teachers and professors.  I went to museums and saw visiting collections, but I never stood in the middle of St. Peter’s square or under the arches of a gothic cathedral until 2006 when I stood in La Seu, visited Pompeii, and walked into the middle of the Piazza San Pietro, marveling at the history that surrounded me.  Yet something about Bolton Abbey, the skeleton of which I captured in this photograph, struck me more than even walking through the ancient streets of Pompeii.  Perhaps because I was older, I had a new appreciation for the feats of architecture.  Perhaps, too, it was because I was alone with my camera and my thoughts, not being bustled about by tour guides or other eager tourists.  Whatever the difference, Bolton Abbey was more majestic to me than even St. Peter’s.  It is a memory, a remnant of time gone by, of the monarchy, of the Reformation, and of the shifting sands of faith.  While other abbeys were deconstructed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and all that remains of them is rubble, Bolton Abbey remains – like a fossil, its bones bared and resolute.  When I stood in the nave, I placed my hand on a monolithic column, lingering for a moment and hoping to physically connect to the priory.  With the weathered stone pressed against my hand, I wondered how many generations had set their hands upon the stonework, and at that moment I felt truly connected to a continuum of time – those who had come before and those who would come after to admire the remnant as I had.

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Pebble Hill Cypress

SSA Photography (221 of 400)

This photograph is a morning panorama of the Pebble Hill golf course just outside of Carmel, California.  In fact, the photograph was taken on the beach of Carmel Bay.  Beyond the point at the far left of the photograph is Spyglass Cove, where I have sat a number of times and just watched the sea otters and harbor seals bob between the long, whip-like strands of bull kelp.

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Across the Way

SSA Photography (345 of 400)

This photograph was taken mid-morning from the top of the driveway of the home that my wife’s grandfather built stone by stone over decades from a ruined ostler’s barn that sat on a hill overlooking the home in which my mother-in-law grew up in West Yorkshire, England.  When the Worth Valley Railway was being built, many of the horses used to build the rails were kept in the ostler’s barn on the property, just a short walk to the eventual railway station in Oxenhope.  Anna’s grandfather was a fighter pilot in World War II, and later a textile mill owner, as well as a self-taught stone mason, who worked and kept adding to the home (nicknamed “Ostlerhouse”) quite literally until the day he died.

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Marine Layers

SSA Photography (177 of 400)

This photograph was taken just after dawn in Point Lobos State Natural Reserve in Carmel, California.  The stratification in the photo is a result of the low “marine layer” rolling in over the bay, which layer forms in the summer months as the warmer air above the Pacific is cooled by the ocean waters.  The resulting gradient was interesting in full color, but I felt that the monochromatic layers gave the photograph a more distinct presence, which is set off nicely by the black and white gull.

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