December 2023

The Visible Man
Sand Island, Utah
2023

Those of us of a certain age may remember the Visible Man (and Visible Woman) “toys” from back in the day. I put toys in parens there because they were sort of marketed as such, especially around Christmans, but also were billed as simply anatomical models for educational purposes. Anyway, this petroglyph comes across to me as kind of an Ancient Puebloan version of the same thing.

Mark and the Moon
American Prairie, Montana
2023

I read an article in the Washington Post recently titled “This once-in-a-generation Rothko exhibition is spellbinding“. I was amused, perhaps a bit bemused even, reading the author’s gushing enthusiasm for Rothko’s color field paintings. Myself, I find them certainly eye-catching (which they are to some degree simply because they tend to be huge), very colorful (of course), and perhaps surprisingly (to me anyway), pretty memorable given their somewhat excessive simplicity. If you ask me to quickly name one notable exhibit room at the National Gallery of Art in D.C., the Rothko room in the east building would immediately come to mind. They are not at all my favorite works at the National Gallery, but some of the most memorable nonetheless.  So, it is not surprising that, even though he would never have put something so literal as a moon in his paintings, he came immediately to mind just now when I was going through my photos from our trip to American Prairie last month and came to this sunset photo. If you also saw this photo and immediately thought of Rothko (perhaps after making note of the image title but without reading all this description), then you know what I’m talking about when I say his paintings are memorable if nothing else.

Triggers
American Prairie, Montana
2023

Nothing particularly special about this sunset photo. In fact it’s quite mundane–except that it triggered some memories for me (as photos, smells, sounds, etc. often do). In particular the colors and the trees reminded me of a photo I still have tucked away somewhere of a very similar sunset view looking up the hill to the west from the front porch of my grandparent’s house on their farm outside of Lyndon, Kansas many years ago. That blurry old photo in and of itself is even less special than this one, except to me, because whenever I happen to come across it, it reminds me of all the good family times and adventures that were spent at that farm decades ago.

Creation Myth #6
Bozeman, Montana
2023

At one point while working on the composition for yesterday’s Last Flight Out post I tried placing this winged Vitruvian Man in an orb in the landscape. But it didn’t really fit in with the general theme I had in mind for that image; which was, by the way, one relating to global warming and its accompanying uncontrolled wildfires, as well as the rather desperate national and international political situations we find ourselves in these days–all from which you can try and run but you can’t hide. But with the Vitruvian Man it did occur to me I could turn the theme around 180 degrees and present a scene depicting the rather blank slate of an imaginary beginning, or after yesterday’s image, perhaps a new beginning.

Last Flight Out
Bozeman, Montana
2023

Three on the Verge
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
2023

Three bison on the verge of a patch of faint sunshine on a cloudy day, on the verge of the brunt of winter, on the verge of being pushed north to more open ground in their search for available forage, on the verge of (maybe) wandering outside of the park boundaries in that search, on the verge of senseless slaughter as the result of the State of Montana’s asinine bison regulations. Stay away from Beattie Gulch!

Sunset Flora
Cedar Mesa, Utah
2023

Bear’s Ears View
Cedar Mesa, Utah
2023

The two mesas on the horizon are the namesake for the Bear’s Ears National Monument. I’ve messed around this amazing part of the country off and on for 50 years now. While I am grateful for the protection from development offered by its designation as a National Monument in 2016, I’m chagrined by the increased popularity that designation has engendered compared to back when it was known mostly simply as BLM land. While I won’t have to put up with threatened developments such as mining, drilling etc. when visiting there now, the empty, wide-open spaces just don’t seem so empty anymore. It just goes to show you can’t get something for nothing.

Edge to Edge
Cedar Mesa, Utah
2023

I took this photo because I liked the way the rock on the cliff edge in the center of the image was surrounded by shadow. But I also find it interesting that in this black and white view the foreground cliff edge seems, at first glance,  to blend almost seamlessly into the background, even though that background is the much larger scale far cliff edge across the separating canyon. The actual distance is disguised by the fact that the close-up texture of the foreground rocks just happens to mimic the larger scale texture of the cliff face across the way, sort of a strange Mandlebrot set effect in a way.

On the Edge
Cedar Mesa, Utah
2023

Balanced on the the precipices of canyon and darkness.