March 2017

Firewall
Death Valley National Park, California
2017

A striking abstract on the wall of a burned out building.

Rapid Oxidation
Death Valley National Park, California
2017

This is a photo of some burned beams in a building at Furnace Creek in Death Valley. I wasn’t thinking about it when I took the photo, but in going back over the images from the trip on my computer when I got home I was struck by the similarities of this photo to some of those of the eroded landscape I’d taken at the Ubehebe crater earlier the same day. Compare the above to this one for example:

Ubehebe #8
Death Valley National Park, California
2017

Ubehebe #7
Death Valley National Park, California
2017

The bottom of it all. In the upper right of the photo, you can see where (fool) hardy people have trekked to the bottom (and presumably back up). A 600 foot elevation change in less than a quarter mile bested any interest I had in seeing what things looked like from the bottom of the crater.

Ubehebe #6
Death Valley National Park, California
2017

Ubehebe #5
Death Valley National Park, California
2017

Ubehebe #4
Death Valley National Park, California
2017

Gaining a foothold for plant growth in the loose cinders at Ubehebe isn’t hard, finding nutrients is something else. Creosote bushes like this one are the largest plants there and they grow only a fraction of the size they do in more fertile ground. Even then many of them seem to hover between life and death.

Ubehebe #3
Death Valley, National Park, California
2017

Even more mind-boggling than the view of this convoluted landscape is the thought of having to walk across it in the summer heat, in a hurry, before your water ran out and the 100+ degree temperatures fried you to a crisp.

Ubehebe #2
Death Valley National Park, California
2017

A while back I posted a shot of a raven at the Great Wall of China (here), making reference to the Game of Thrones. Here is another raven Watcher on the Wall, this time the rim of the wall of the Ubehebe crater.

I had a great time at the reception for my exhibit at the Maturango Museum on Friday. I knew it was going to be a good day when I was sitting at an intersection waiting for the light to change and saw my name up in lights across the street. That’s a first for me! (Click on the video below to see a short video clip of the scrolling message on the display.)

A very engaged group of about 35 people showed up for the reception and I enjoyed the conversations and discussion, especially those following my artist’s talk titled “The Importance of Vision, Inspiration, and Theft in the Creative Process.” Here’s a photo of some of the audience. They are all smiling either because they enjoyed the talk or because it was finally over!

All in all it was a great evening and I’m thankful to Andrea Pelcher and the other staff at the museum for providing the opportunity to exhibit and all the work they did for the reception, and of course to everyone who showed up.

Ubehebe #1
Death Valley National Park, California
2017

Early one morning, I spent a couple of hours hiking the rim of the Ubehebe Crater in the northern part of Death Valley. I only walked about two miles total but the mostly dark volcanic ground combined with various contrasting plants and soils, aided with the long shadows from the low morning sun, made for some great photography. It seems like I often only walked a few steps before I saw something else worthy of pointing my camera at. That slowed my progress on the hike considerably.

This particular image shows the interior slope of the 600′ deep crater where it meets the flat, dried crater floor. The very light color of the crater floor was, I presume, alkaline material left on the ground after rainwater runoff collected there and then evaporated.