sunset over the city

I’ve been in a state of emotional limbo this past week loosing some motivation to go out and shoot.  I know this happens on occasion to every artist, but I just cannot seem to find that spark in my usual subject matter.  So I’ve started playing with the camera… not trying to really capture anything in particular, but rather trying to capture how my spirit is feeling in my images.  This image is close to reflecting that state of conflict and retrospection that I am feeling right now.  Who knows, this might be a new body of work?

serpentine barren

This past weekend I visited a serpentine barren only 13.8 miles from home at the Willisbrook Preserve managed and protected by the Natural Lands Trust organization.  I’ve only been to a few serpentine barrens on the west coast of North America, but it always amazes me the flora that grows on these soils in comparison with nearby plant communities.

From Wikipedia, “Serpentine barrens are a unique ecosystem found in parts of the United States in small but widely-distributed areas of the Appalachians and the Coast Ranges of California, Oregon and Washington. The barrens occur on outcrops of altered ultramafic ophiolites.  They are named for minerals of the serpentine group, resulting in serpentine soils, with unusually high concentrations of iron, chromium, nickel and cobalt. Serpentine barrens often consist of grassland or savannas in areas where the climate would normally lead to the growth of forests.^“

In the case of this particular serpentine barren in Pennsylvania, there would be a hardwood forest of maples, hickory, beech, and ash if not for the limiting soil factors as evidenced by the nearby woods.  Instead, lots of pines, grasses and a few oaks seem to dominate the landscape here.

My graduated ND filter was not enough for this scene and I had to make some adjustments in Photoshop.  I failed miserably with blending two exposures, so this is one exposure adjusted the best I currently know how… guess it’s time for some software learning work!

moon set

Last week I was busy in Champaign-Urbana, Ilinois attending an AERGC (Association of Education and Research Greenhouse Curators) meeting.  But when I arrived at the small 4 gate airport on Sunday the sky was blazing for a beautiful sunset.  I was in the heartland and the summer storms were at their peak.  It was all I could do to get checked into the hotel room and grab the camera from my bag to shoot out the 5th floor hotel room!  The next morning something woke me up quite early and I saw this amazing moon in the still cloudy sky.  I knew there would be another great opportunity in about 30 minutes for a moon set as the sunrise came into play.

The next 3 days were full of great lectures and meeting fellow greenhouse managers.  But after dinner the second night I was able to witness another wonderful display of light.  I cannot decide which of these images is my favorite, so please comment!  Darn that I packed light because my focus was the conference and didn’t bring the wide-angle… lesson learned!