The Series: Duke

Each year for Thanksgiving, I travel to South Carolina to meet family & friends for a weekend of food, cards, and some much needed down time.  Our hosts have a beautiful Chow Chow named Duke, who reigns over the yard like a queen.  With the equally beautiful weather, I spent some time outside with Duke & my camera:

The Trips: Fall 2011

You may have noticed I haven't posted in a few weeks.


I've been on the road, criss-crossing the state and the country for the past two months, but am now settling back into my home base in North Carolina for an extended period.  


From Atlanta to New Orleans to the Sandhills to Chicago, I've put in a lot of long days at work, but still managed to eek out some time to explore.


Here a preview of what's coming:

The Series: Sunsets

I've always had a thing for sunsets.

It seems strange.  I've usually lived on the east side of things: the eastern coast of Florida, the eastern part of Iowa, the eastern seaboard.  I'm much more a morning lark than night owl; sunrise is my favorite time of day.

But sunsets are an entirely different kind of magic.

Depending on the weather, the air quality, the temperature, or your elevation, sunsets can be anything from mundane to extraordinary. 

Shooting them can be tough, as sometimes they're so fleeting or change so rapidly that you have to work quickly.  But this is a chance to experiment with your ISO settings, filters, and exposure to capture that scene in all its beauty.

Sunset from a plane; over Jacksonville, FL

Sunset over Blue Ridge Mountains; Asheville, NC

Sunset over Iowa City, IA

Sky on Fire; Durham, NC

The Series: Old Well

The Carolina campus is one of my favorite settings.  It is that quintessential college campus that has so many interesting facets to capture and, quite honestly, it's tough to take a bad picture there, even on the rainiest of days.

It's certainly a conundrum, this trying to capture an entire campus in one shot -- how do you do it?  There are those iconic images, those hidden gems, places where historical buildings meet innovative structures.  The student body is so varied; how do you portray that through the lens in a way that doesn't appear staged?  An ideal shot would be a panoramic of the quad with morning light AND students...but some things just don't exist in nature.

Every campus has their one symbol that is instantly identifiable as theirs.  At Iowa, it's the Old Capitol - imagine our horror when it caught on fire in 2001 (at least this was an accident, unlike the Auburn oaks).

At UNC, it's the Old Well.  What once served as the original water source for campus now stands as the gathering point for everyone from visitors to current students to alumni.  It is an image that immediately evokes a sense of this place, arguably more than any other on the Carolina campus.

When the azaleas come into bloom, this space is nothing short of magical, especially when the sky is clear to reveal that perfect Carolina blue canopy overhead.  It is simply Carolina, then, now, and forever.

 

 

 

The Series: Great Blue Herons

Many Native American traditions believe in totem animals that provide spiritual guidance and lessons throughout our lives.  In this tradition, the Great Blue Heron stands for individuality, uniqueness, balance, and peace.

Herons seem to have a way of finding me.

Back in Davenport, we had a large pond out back that was home to the standard run of urban woodland creatures: squirrels, deer, raccoons, ducks, the occasional groundhog -- but we also had a heron nest that was used every year.  Though I moved away many years ago, my mother tells me that the herons are still there.

Last fall, I traveled through western North Carolina, starting with an afternoon sitting on an empty cove along the shores of Lake Norman.  As I read under the shade of the trees, I enjoyed the quiet, broken only by the occasional boat in the distance and the steady lapping of the water against the shore.

And then there it was.

I sat, still and silent, watching the heron wade in the shallows, catching minnows and whatever other small creatures were living there.  After about twenty minutes, it meandered off...and so did I.

That next spring, I was caught completely off guard by a heron on my roof.  These are the best shots I have of the creature, as I had the perfect combination of good lighting, clear blue sky, and a patient subject that somehow stayed still long enough for me to capture it in great detail.

 On a recent trip to DC, I was exploring the Jefferson Memorial as part of a segway safari (incidentally, a fabulously fun way to see the city).  As my friend and I made our way around the perimeter of the monument, I spotted another heron in the shallows of the Tidal Basin.  The fading evening light and the compressed timeframe made for a less than ideal shot, but the blurry edges of it almost captures the moment better: something fleeting and on the edge of your vision.

I've since seen my current resident heron flying overhead a few more times, once with a partner, so I imagine somewhere off in the grove of trees there are little heron chicks getting ready to make their first flights.  I can only hope they make another stop on my roof and that I'm there to witness it.

The Series: Windows II - Asheville

A while back, I spent some time musing on windows.

My love affair with this architectural feature continued on a recent trip to Asheville.  Between the Thomas Wolfe Memorial and the Grove Park Inn, I had plenty of material:

The Series: Windows

Windows let the sun shine in, they keep the elements out; that first spring day that warrants throwing them open to the warmer weather is a wonderful and much-anticipated moment. 

They also allow us to take a glimpse into the lives of those around us, sometimes by invitation in the case of a storefront, others by circumstance as we walk through our own neighborhood.  A boarded window almost instinctively signifies that something is wrong: it triggers thoughts of abandonment, disrepair, and even disaster.

There is a semi-ubiquitous poster in this area of The Doors of Chapel Hill - but I prefer the windows, especially those on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.   

Fall

 

I credit the Playmakers Theatre building with starting the trend.  While taking fall shots, I stopped on the traffic circle in front of the building to capture the reflection of the nearby oak.  This window has now become a seasonal series, with corresponding spring and winter shots tracing the change in foliage as the calendar marches on.


The side windows of the building offer new perspectives, from the reflections of neighboring magnolias to the inherent framing in catching windows that look on to other windows.

Elsewhere on campus, other windows beckon, from Wilson Library to the Physical Science Complex. 




The foundation, then, was laid when I traveled to New York City, where the Solow Building on 57th provided one of my favorite shots:

Reflections in facade of Solow Building

The Series: Bees & Butterflies

Some of the best things in life are things we stumble into rather than explicitly seek.  For me, I count many things in this category, including my majors in college, but one of the more fruitful has become a favorite subject of mine: bees and butterflies.

As a child, I was petrified of bees - to this day, I am still wary of hornets - and adored chasing after butterflies in my grandmother's backyard.  As I've grown older, I continue to be fascinated by their movement, the sheer physics of their flight, and their drive and intent in moving methodically from flower to flower in pursuit of that next great hit of pollen. 

Their variety in color and size seems limitless, especially when combined with the vibrant colors of the flowers they frequent.  The delicacy of their movement across the petals and amongst the stamen of the blooms betrays something beyond pure instinct and approaching intelligence.

One of the most special moments I've had was while I was driving the Blue Ridge Parkway between Asheville and Marion in western North Carolina.  I pulled over at each overlook to take in the spectacular views, but at one of the stops, I was more captivated by the flock of monarchs that was gathering around a patch of yellow flowers.  There were at least twenty, perhaps more, of the butterflies, all flitting about from flower to flower, intent on their mission.  I had and would spend most of the afternoon gaping at the rolling peaks of the Appalachians, but for this time, I was mesmerized by these creatures.




The intersection of flowers and the creatures that pollinate them also offers an opportunity to capture nature at its most pure: the connection forged between species for mutual benefit and continuation of life. Their flight patterns seem almost a dance with the wind, an invisible partner as they carry on their mission in our gardens and across the fields.