Stick and Pool (Sand Fortress VI)

Another in my very long line of photographs of small structures on beaches: this lone stick, keeping watch over a pool by the edge of the Indian Ocean. A massive storm the night before had filled the ocean with silt and covered the shore with enormous puddles—earth and sea had been mixed in a way that neither particularly seemed to appreciate (not to overly anthropomorphize or anything).

Stick and Pool (Sand Fortress VI)

The Towel Dealer

As you might expect for a charming town on the Indian Ocean, St. Lucia is heavily carpeted with folks ready to sell anything and everything (to tourists, of course.) The waves were crashing just beyond this dune—I could already smell and hear them—but on this little rise, under the shade of the coniferous trees, beach towels and toys were for sale. The brightly colored array, flapping in the breeze in a strangely orderly way, brought to my mind nothing more than some strange local variation on a Shinto shrine.

The Towel Dealer

Time-Space Material

I’ve posted before on the strange properties of Berkeley and the Bay Area: the condensation of nature and suburb and weird architecture and intensity urbanity that compresses human interest and life into a tiny area. This high-density material seems to deform the very fabric of space a time, and make the distance of a few miles seem like a light year and the time of a decade seem mere moments. This photograph captures the folding and crinkling as it happens: crunch clouds, sharp trees, an array of buildings from multiple Berkeley colleges within the University, the stretch of Telegraph Ave. and the tiny shapes of Oakland (at the far right) in the distance.

Time-Space Material

Hillside in Eden

The herds of impala in Zulu Nyala Reserve have almost no fear of the people who come to see them. During the wet start of the summer, that leads to scenes like this one: a verdant savannah hillside, dotted with impala and craggy trees and brushed by the breeze. I start to think that there could be no danger to ever disturb this peace—even if I could see the inevitable cheetah hiding in the grass.

Hillside in Eden

Guest Post: Desert Nightfall

Today’s post comes courtesy of Piper J. Klemm:

Mid-winter brings the Thermal horse show near Palm Desert, California. The whole scene is alien: the barren hills and the enormous, surreal jumps are watched over by the otherworldly poles of the lights. In HDR, the way these metal cylinders distort and section the landscape is fascinatingly exaggerated.

Desert Nightfall