January 03, 2017 – Muddy Stream

201701-03-blog

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Textures – a long obsession of mine.
Without spending too much time being overwhelmingly boring, I will say that I have spent weeks – probably months – of my life with a macro lens in my hands and earbuds piping music into my brain, photographing cracks in pavement, tree bark, broken patches of clay-rich earth, rusty garbage containers, and just about anything you can find on a rusting old car or in a back alley, in order to expand my collection of texture images.

My library is extensive.

Some of these images are used to add grit and texture to other photographs I’ve taken (as overlays and double exposures). Some of them reveal themselves to be stand-alone pieces. The image above just so happens to be one of those stand alone pieces. While hiking through the rain-drenched red mud of Sedona, Arizona, there was a moment when I realized I had been paying too much attention to the mountains towering over me – that’s what always captures people’s attention – and I needed to take a moment and start looking around.

So I trained my lens on the ground, rather than the high peaks. To the streams and the insects, the animal tracks and the budding cacti, rather than the red rock spires that dominate the landscape. And this is what I got – a portrait of the tiny little stream, the stream that traveled a long distance from a large rock formation, from a mist of rain, to soak into my boots and ensure that my feet would be wet and itchy all day long.

Small price to pay to be reminded how beautiful the world is.

The details, the small little things? They really are beautiful. And they really do matter.

“The past becomes a texture, an ambience to our present.”
~Paul Scott

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