The Photography of Scott St. Amand
Like many of my photographs of waterfalls, this one was taken in the Pisgah National Forest outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Although I quickly shy away from the compliments and comparisons some have drawn between my black and white landscape shots and the photographs of the great Ansel Adams, this one does remind me of some of his shots of the falls in Yellowstone. If I can be half of the photographer Adams was, I think that will be accomplishment enough.
Click here for a larger version.
These bracken ferns on the moors in Yorkshire are substantially shorter than those in the lake district; nevertheless, they nearly engulfed my wife, Anna, as she tried to follow the path cut between the fiddleheads that popped out from the skeletons of heather, long since overcome by the dark green ferns. This photograph was taken at dusk outside of Haworth, England, where the Brontë sisters lived and wrote. Their stories were heavily influenced by the moors and the hardy people who lived on them (especially Wuthering Heights). Indeed, in this photograph, on the horizon to the left, there is a lone sycamore next to the barely perceptible ruins of a farmhouse (Top Withens), which is said to be the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. My mother-in-law grew up among the ferns on the moors, and she is closer to nature than anyone I have ever met. Yorkshire does something indelible to a person. The first time you walk over the top of a moor and look down into the Worth Valley at the train steaming along the tracks towards Leeds, you realize that you are in a living snapshot of a much simpler time.
Click here for a larger version.
I debated (at greater length than I care to admit) what to call this photograph, which typified to me the life cycle of the swamp near my home where I went hiking this weekend. (In Florida, we hike in swamps, have snapping turtles as pets, and casually brush away alligators with nine-irons when they encroach on your golf ball to the horror of your father-in-law, who grew up in Maryland.) This small laurel oak (Quercus Laurifolia) sprouted at the very base of the gigantic live oak (Quercus Virginiana), and I nearly passed by without paying it any heed. I found myself gravitating towards the bright green moss that was overcoming the live oak’s hollowed trunk. As I was musing on the etymology of the word phoenix (which bears its own post), and how, in the swamp, death feeds the living, I noticed this little laurel oak, no more than a year or two old, quite literally rising in the shadow of the live oak, which would have been more than three hundred years old, judging by its size. The English word “nascent” has its origins in the deponent Latin verb, nascor, meaning to come into existence or to spring forth. As I thought about calling this post “Ancient and Nascent,” I balked. This photograph, though set against the old live oak, is, in truth, about the laurel coming into existence and its embryonic roots taking hold betwixt and between the taproots of the dead oak, which could stretch for hundreds of feet in all directions.
Click here for a larger version.
The colors of China Cove in Point Lobos State Natural Reserve are surreal. The first time I saw China Cove was on a postcard in Carmel. That postcard, and this photograph do not do justice to the emeralds and turquoises of the water, framed by dense, dark bull kelp. I took this picture before I came into possession of a ultra wide angle lens, and so I am looking forward to capturing the whole cove when we go back to California next.
Click here for a larger version.
Nostalgia is a beautiful word. It is a is learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of the Homeric word νόστος (nóstos), meaning “homecoming” and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning “pain” or “ache”, and was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. For me, nothing evokes nostalgia like the mountains of North Carolina. The earliest associations are of visiting the Smoky Mountains with my family when I was much younger, and later the mountains close to Winston-Salem, which were only a short drive away from Wake Forest. For reasons I cannot explain, the feelings are strongest in the winter, when the wind has stripped away the leaves from the branches, and you can see through the skeletons of the trees through the valleys and to the peaks. This photograph, taken outside of Brevard, North Carolina, evokes so many strong memories – all positive – which was not always the case in North Carolina. Hindsight and nostalgia are curious like that, though. No matter the number of disheartening days and nights, I still long to be back in the mountains. We’re going up for a week after Christmas, and I know the feelings will rush back, satisfying the homesickness for a while. Until then, in my mind, I’m going to Carolina…
Click here for a larger version.
I have published many posts taken at Point Lobos, but none yet of the point itself. Point Lobos is located a few miles south down the coast from Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, and it is one of our favorite destinations when we visit Carmel. When I took this picture, I wanted to capture the ruggedness of the point as well as the grove of Monterey Cypresses, which as I mentioned in a previous post, is one of two groves left in the world where the cypresses grow naturally. When I went to “develop” or post-process the photograph, and I decided to go monochromatic, I was struck by the similarities to postcards I had seen in town from the 1930s and 1940s. The coastline remained the same, albeit a bit more worn by the waves. They cypresses were just as withered and topped by the constant winds. The great Californian poet Robinson Jeffers wrote extensively about the coastline in his verses, and as I gazed at the photograph, I thought to myself, this is as he would have seen it – hence the genesis of the title of the post.
Click here for a larger version (and a color version).
This photograph of a solitary Monterey Cypress (Hesperocyparis Macrocarpa) was taken at Point Lobos in Carmel, California. The species is native to the central coast of California, but now is confined to two small relict populations – Cypress Point in Pebble Beach and Point Lobos. The most famous of the trees is the Lone Cypress, which is found along Seventeen Mile Drive in Pebble Beach. Though the trees can grow to over forty feet, they are generally stunted by the strong winds that blow from the Pacific, which gives them their iconic flat-topped appearance. Although it has long been held that some of the cypresses are two millennia old, this is a romantic conception of seaside literature, and the oldest of the cypresses are likely closer to 300 years old than 2,000. Although only two native groves remain, the trees have been widely planted outside its native range, particularly along the coasts of California and Oregon. Indeed, some intrepid seeds have even made it to Great Britain (including the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands), France, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Sicily.
Click here for a larger version.
“Etch” comes to us from the German ätzen meaning “to eat” via the Dutch etsen. Etching is the traditional process of using an acid to cut into the unprotected parts of a surface to create an intaglio (incised) design on the surface. The word has been borrowed for human application, with it meaning something that is affixed permanently in one’s memory. This photograph has elements of both meanings. The breaks in the heather and scrub are beautiful, lasting reminders of what has come before. The paths on the moors have been etched by the footfalls of generations of Yorkshiremen and, indeed, even us outsiders. Likewise, the scenes captured along such paths, as if created by old masters, have been indelibly etched into my mind.
Click here for a larger version.
ST. AMAND PHOTOGRAPHY 