22 Oct 12. With the fog dissipating on Sunday morning we initially made our way to Artist's Point (it closed this week for the year) for some pre-breakfast shots and then did a bit of work around Picture Lake until approx 1100, then made our way to the Bagley Lakes region and prepared to walk that trail for the remainder of our time there. We managed to make our way along perhaps 5% of the trail, being constantly derailed by one photographic opportunity after the other, even retracing some of our steps to re-work the same area under differing light conditions. Today's submission will give you a small idea of what it was we were experiencing and it may help to explain why we didn't make much progress on our planned hike along the trail. At the time I took this particular image they sky wasn't as interesting as I would have liked it to have been, so I've taken the option of replacing a rather mundane sky with the one you see. That of course meant that I had to do a little alteration to the water and the snow banks as well, because the grayish tone they displayed represented correctly the grayish nature of the sky, and as I elected to substitute a blue sky, the water and snow fields needed to reflect light of a similar temperature. Otherwise, this is how it looked as we spent about 4 hours walking along the area in the vicinity of the darker area near 4 o'clock of the small lake. D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/125 sec @ f /16 on a tripod.
23 Oct 12. While we were in the process of reducing our logs into splits of a size that we could chop for firewood, I had a chance to look closely at the butt ends of many of them prior to applying the chain saw. What I saw was far more than rings of growth, although to be certain, they were clearly there. But I also saw patterns, colors, shape, and design. The dripping pitch could be seen as rain falling on the tree or perhaps as the tree crying tears that were falling down across its surface. Perhaps the red color was anger at having been cut down, or signs of the fever that caused its decay and ultimate death. The cracks being signs of aging like our wrinkles or merely indications of sever periods of stress. All of these are things that we seldom see as we toss our firewood into our fire places or wood burning stoves, but things that are present on every log. Next time you are out in the woods and find a fallen tree, or perhaps cutting down your own tree for firewood, or tossing out your next Christmas tree with sawed off butt, take a moment to get a good close look at that cut end to see what you might observe there. You might be really surprised. Nikon D300s; Aperture Priority; 18 - 200; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f / 5.6 with fill flash.
