July 2015

Lectio #57
Salt Lake City, Utah
2015

This lady snuck in and took advantage of the chair out in the open while the owner (see yesterday’s photo) was away somewhere. She left before he returned so there was no awkward confrontation.

Lectio #56
Salt Lake City, Utah
2015

This guy was the significant other of one of the artists near me at the Utah Arts Festival in June. Why he chose to put his chair right out in the middle of things instead of tucked up against a tree or otherwise out of the traffic flow like other folks were doing is a mystery to me. Maybe he figured the more exposed he was the more likely he was to feel the bare hint of a breeze that would come through now and then in the 100 degree heat. Fortunately the heat was also keeping the attendance at the show low during the middle of the day so he didn’t get run over by folks like he would normally.

Spread Eagle
Bozeman, Montana
2015

I know what you’re thinking, that’s a robin not an eagle. But it’s a robin doing a spread-eagle.

Four-Square
Bozeman, Montana
2015

This deteriorating leaf made its way into my studio somehow and was lingering around on the floor. I picked it up and put it to work in front of the camera before releasing it back into the wild. I was taken by the nearly perfect right angle of the stem, which suggested the square arrangement.

Arboreal Arc
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
2015

Zippy on Mount Blackmore
(photo by Robert Boik)

Sometime back in the mid-seventies I was sitting on top of 11,400 foot Mount Baldy in Arizona with a friend enjoying the view after our long hike up when a small group of Boy Scouts and their leader arrived. After sitting there for a while the leader said to his scouts “the higher I get, the higher I get,” a double entendre that still generates quite a chuckle. These days, I don’t often get as high as I did back then, but I did get out hiking the other day and enjoyed the spectacular views from the heights of 10,200 foot Mount Blackmore near Bozeman.

Solar Flare
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
2015

The view across Jenny Lake in the Tetons. This one definitely violates my “no more recognizable Teton images” vow, but I was really most interested in the sun reflecting on the water; the mountains just happened to get in the way, sort of a geological photo-bomb you might say.

Remnants
Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
2015

I pretty much swore off of taking photographs of the all-too-often photographed Tetons a long time ago. But damn if they aren’t fine looking mountains; so fine they call my camera lens like a siren song whenever I’m down there. I often succumb and console my guilt about the backsliding by concentrating on close-in shots that aren’t usually recognizable as the Tetons. In this case I was interested in the dissipating remnants of clouds from a storm that had passed through earlier that afternoon. (Note that the dark area behind the clouds is not sky, rather it is a bigger, taller part of the mountain.)

Why They Call It Yellowstone
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
2015

I’ve been to “the park” (as we call it around here) many times, but am still impressed by the views down into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. This is a pretty touristy shot, but I just love the color.

I took this photo after I’d walked away from where most folks gather to gawk at the canyon from the pullout I’d parked in but didn’t quite manage to be alone–there was a young woman sitting on a rock near me on a cell phone giving someone a grammar lesson. Go figure.

Why Paper Beats Rock
Pipestone, Montana
2015