“I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to.” — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
“Pilgrim leaves crowd the air with their falling every October. The journey is always the same.” — Linda Pastan
“The tree has been green all summer, but now it tries red…copper… even gold. Soon leaf after leaf will be discarded, there will be nothing but bare tree, soon it will be almost time to start over again.” — Linda Pastan
“I decided to accept as true my own thinking. I have already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain, and I am quite free.” — Georgia O’Keeffe via Cole Thompson
“Sometimes you have to be able to listen to yourself and be okay with no one else understanding.” — Christopher Barzak via Cole Thompson
“Bread feeds the body indeed, but flowers feed also the soul.” — The Koran
Spring is here and it is time to play in the garden again. Early Saturday morning, heavy overcast. I played until the wind came up. Newly opened Clematis.Budding blue flag iris.A water droplet trapped between two iris leaves. The reflection is the clump of iris.The color on these columbine is fantastic.
Trail Report
Choat Mine and Red Run Trail at Soldier’s Delight Natural Environmental Area
The main entrance to Soldiers’s Delight is at 5100 Deer Park Rd, Owings Mills, MD 21117 (restrooms are available at the visitor’s center). About .3 miles north on Deer Park Road, on the left, is an overlook and pull off where you can park. The trailhead for the Choate Mine Tail is across the street and about 50 feet south. This is definitely not a runners’ trail as sections have loose rocks and I would recommned against walking it in sandals. The natural area is largely a serpentine barren with open fields; 39 rare, threatened or endangered plant species have been found there. Photographically it wasn’t particularly interesting at this time of year. There were clumps of small flowers and the occasional butterfly. The old mine openings are fenced and flooded and obvious on the right side of the trail several hundred yards in. Prickly briar plants edge the trail until you get into the forest a bit further on. The forest areas have little understory. About one third mile in, the Choate Mine Train connects with the Red Run Trail just at the back of some apartments and the trail heads up hill in open forest; trail maps are available online. The serpentine barrens can be interesting if you are into the rare plants, but participating in a guided tour with a ranger/naturalist is definitely recommended initially.
Four species found at Soldiers Delight. All identifications are tentative. Confirmations or corrections via comment on the identifications are much appreciated.
“The more personal you make your work, the more universal it becomes.” — Katrin Eismann
“The enemy of art is the total lack of limitations.” — Orson Wells
“I chose nature photography as a way of capturing and sharing the beauty, power, and fragility of wild places and the life that inhabits them, so that those who have become mired in the man-made chaos may open their eyes to the real world.” – Guy Tal
Pet Expo at the Fairgrounds ran agility trials this weekend. Lots of fun for everyone. This German Shepherd made it look easy.The weave poles generally seemed to be the most difficult, but the smaller herding dogs like border collies and Australian shepherds were incredible at weaving through the poles.Superdog! … And a composite just for fun.
“The mystery isn’t in the technique, it’s in each of us.” — Harry Callahan, More Joy of Photography by Eastman Kodak (Editor)
“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.” — Salvador Dali
“In a photograph a person’s eyes tell much, sometimes they tell all.” — Alfred Eisenstaedt, Eisenstaedt: Remembrances by Bryan Holme, Doris C. O’Neil, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Barbara Baker Burrows
“The conversations are exasperated, the verdicts swift, conclusive and seemingly absolute. The goal is to protect and condemn work, not for its quality, per se, but for its values. Is this art or artist, this character, this joke bad for women, gays, trans people, nonwhites? Are the casts diverse enough? Is this museum show inclusive of enough different kinds of artists? Does the race of the curators correspond with the subject of the show or collection? Increasingly, these questions stand in for a discussion of the art itself.” — Wesley Morris, in an article titled The Morality Wars in the NY Times Magazine, Oct. 3, 2018
“But criticism isn’t about saying what’s bad — well, not only. It’s partly about situating a work in the world, in your feelings, in your collection.” — Wesley Morris, ibid.
“There are as many photographs possible from a single negative as the artist can imagine. I can never bear to finish with a negative, to say, ‘This is it.’ Tomorrow I can come and make new pictures from that negative. This is the thing I love most of all: the making of the final picture. No one else can do that for me, nor do I ever completely satisfy myself.” – Nell Dorr
“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.” — John Maeda
“On some level art is first an act arising from the self. Only then can it be concerned about speaking to, engaging with, or pleasing others. The more clear you are about your intent, the more simplified (not simplistic) your vision, the fewer barriers you’ll have to contend with as you execute that vision.” — David duChemin
“We have the choice, to actively write a more interesting story, or passively accept the one that comes our way.“– David DuChemin, A Beautiful Anarchy
Sort of a take on “yellow brick road,” but I can’t figure out how to make the “road” a consistent angle with the background. Any help out there? Do I need to re-shoot?
“Begin. With the humility of someone who’s not sure, and the excitement of someone who knows that it’s possible.” Posted by Seth Godin on January 25, 2018
“Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.” – Christina Rossetti
“…how extraordinary the commonplace world can be–miracles can come from it.” — Robert Adams
“Life, now, was unfolding before me, constantly and visibly, like the flowers of summer that drop fanlike petals on eternal soil.” — Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy
“Again and again, the cicada’s untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth.” — Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses: The Sea of Fertility
“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.” — E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
“Photography is the easiest medium with which to be merely competent. Almost anybody can be competent. It’s the hardest medium in which to have some sort of personal vision and to have a signature style.” – Chuck Close
“I became wary of simple interpretations that assumed fixed and final meanings.” – John Pfahl
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life of the artist, and this innerlife will result in his personal vision of the world.” – Edward Hopper
“Broken and broken again on the sea, the moon so easily mends.” — Chosu
“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” – Henry Ward Beecher
