October 2023

Pleasure Palette
Bozeman, Montana
2023

Nothing scary about this Halloween photo–except for the realization that these leaves will soon be covered by cold winter snow for some time to come.

A Fine Smattering
Bozeman, Montana
2023

A collection of rain-kissed aspen leaves in a variety of shades of yellow and red on nicely lichen covered boulders. I couldn’t have composed this if I’d tried.

Foggy Morning
Devil’s Tower, Wyoming
2023

Now seems a good time to be posing some recent fall color photos–or maybe past time given we in the middle of our first snowstorm of the winter after a long and lovely Indian Summer.

A Tale of Two Horses
San Rafael Swell, Utah
2023

The Fashion Queen was sitting on a rock facing this wall with some faded red pictographs on it when she announced she saw a horse on the wall below the pictographs. I asked where and she proceeded to describe where I should be looking to see what she was talking about. I couldn’t see it a first but finally figured out what she was talking about–or at least I thought I did. Just for fun, I took a photo of the wall to post here on the POTD. When it came time to post it I decided I should print it out and have her draw in her horse because I figured other people were no more likely than me to see what she was talking about without some help. So I printed it and she drew her horse and it turns out that I actually had no idea where she was seeing the horse. In fact it was so far off from where I thought she was telling me to look that I failed to even include the whole horse that she saw in the photo.

Here’s the photo with her small horse drawn on the center left of the image, along with what I thought she was talking about, drawn in the center of the photo. Who picked the better horse, and what this all says about a couple’s ability to communicate after 40 years of marriage–well, I’ll leave that assessment up to you.

I’m very happy that Art Fluent chose my composite photographs for their current Curator’s Choice Artist Spotlight! You can see the write-up here, or on Instagram at @art__fluent.

Magritte’s Leftovers

Prometheus Bound
San Rafael Swell, Utah
2023

Eyes of gentianellas azure,
Staring, winking at the skies.
–Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Bare Tree #115
San Rafael Swell, Utah
2023

Sometimes things just don’t work out.

Making the Best of a Bad Situation
San Rafael Swell, Utah
2023

Trees, like people, don’t get to choose where their life starts. People though, can at least theoretically pick up and move to more favorable environs. All a tree can do is to try to live and maybe even thrive wherever it is they managed to put down roots. About the only advantage I can see for this tree growing in a crack in the rock is that, opposed to the open dirt desert floor, the crack likely does a pretty good job of accumulating what little rain flows down the rock.

Bare Tree #114
San Rafael Swell, Utah
2023

Annularity
Cedar Mesa, Utah
2023

We traveled to southern Utah to see the annular solar eclipse on the 14th and to visit with family and friends. The annular eclipse was definitely interesting, but for my money it paled (no pun intended) in comparison to the total eclipse we witnessed in 2017. That total eclipse was one of the most, if not the most, spectacular and surreal natural events I’ve ever seen. But YMMV. Regardless I did take the time to photograph the annular eclipse so I thought I’d post something, even though there’s of course no shortage of photos of it on social media. To make mine a bit more interesting I combined a photo of the eclipse at its most perfectly annular stage encircling a photo of a rock on the ground with eclipse images formed by, in this case, a gap someone formed with their hands, or possibly their armpit of all things.