Thread: Some random scribblings

here's my feeble feedback.

first of all, they're all great.

the first one is very simple and direct. it also describes how i was feeling during graduation and the end of school in the last couple months.

the second one is really smooth when you read it, which i like. it's not choppy and confusing. i can really feel the frustration and disappointment at the end with the whole cigarette scene and words like "smashed", "burn" and "broken".

the last one is amazing. i have a thing for short little poems like that. they make me smile. another one i love is "The Turtle":

The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

A fool paints himself into a corner
And beats upon the floor
An artist does the same
And paints himself a door

Quite brilliant, yes.

well thanks, folks. So far, I guess I'm my own worst critic.

I guess I can slap up some photos too. I'm mostly an outdoor/nature shooter, but I've got a tendency to take a lot of my grandson too.. Of course, I like to combine the two and capture him interacting with the outdoors.

One of my favorites is this one.. Just shooting at the ground on Caldwell Fork in the Smokies (practically my backyard). The funny part was, just out of frame, you would find horseshit.



Makes me almost smell the season (aside from the horseshit, of course).


I love this one... and I've got it framed and hung. My grandson is the only other person in my family who has ever taken a real interest in the mountains. I started him when he was 3 in the Summer and this was from a half year later in Winter. It speaks to me of his surprising confidence in marching toward unknown adventure, small, but supreme in his confidence.



I've also got one of him on the same hike, peeing behind a utility box by the side of the road. His quote was, I recall, "When a guy's gotta go, he's gotta go".

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The rhododendrum is the king of the understory in the Southern Appalachians. June is the month that this shrub, which grows big as trees in the moist conditions of the mountains down here, flowers in mad profusion. We've got two varieties, the larger-leafed white rosebay, and the smaller-leafed purple to pink catawba. I prefer the catawba when it's in flower. Both can form thickets, hells, slicks, lettuce-beds, patches, etc... as I call them, that can make cross-country travel not a matter of miles-per-hour, but rather a matter of hours-per-mile. Voluntarily and involuntary expletives are the norm when threading a route through this stuff (and just try to use a map and compass when all around you is impenetrable green). Interestingly enough (perhaps) is the fact that rhododendrum is often referred to locally as laurel, though laurel is more properly the mountain laurel, with pink-highlighted hexagonal white flowers that bloom in May, a bit earlier than the rhododendrum.

Here's catawba rhododendrum in all its' glory.





Its' neighbor, the flame azalea is no slouch either.





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The 1,000 square miles inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park are my stomping ground. I've stomped 3,500 miles through the park, but sometimes you gotta switch hands, so to speak, to keep from getting bored. So I've put in a miscellaneous 500 miles elsewhere.

One such elsewhere, on the Tennessee/North Carolina border is Roan Mountain and the Roan Highlands. This is one of those places that you'd expect to see Hobbits, and the locals hunting them.

At an elevation of 6,285 feet, the summit of Roan Mountain is a 1.6 mile, 773 foot climb front the parking area at Carvers Gap. It's an easy climb, unless you're a flabby out-of-shape pussy. So for all you flabby out-of-shape pussies, here it is.




The boulders at the summit would be a good place to hide from roaming Nazgul. And remember, one should not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for it makes them soggy and hard to light.

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I was going to reply with three simple words: "I am impressed," but I blew it.

Loving the last poem, and that shot of your grandson, Flav. We have mountain laurel all along our creek here, and rhododendrum and azaleas all over Pine Mountain. It's gorgeous in the spring.

Roan Mountain looks pretty awesome. This may sound stupid, but what kind of trees are those?

Originally Posted by Man of Steel

This may sound stupid, but what kind of trees are those?

They sure as hell aren't Red Spruce or Frasier Fir. Unless I am wildly mistaken, they are Eastern Hemlock.





Among the non-Pine conifers, we've typically got Eastern Hemlock, Red Spruce, and Frasier Fir. There are some Cedar too, but everybody knows what they look like. Typically, the Red Spruce and Frasier Fir are limited to elevations around 5800 feet and above in the Southern Appalachians. At these elevations, you're most generally talking about the Smokies. The Eastern Hemlock is abundant from the bottomlands all the way up to the high elevations. Numerous mid to high elevation tree farms around the south cultivate Frasier Fir for christmas trees.

Assuming you know a Pine from your ass (and don't get me going on differentiating the various Pine species hereabouts), the identification of Red Spruce -vs Eastern Hemlock -vs- Frasier Fir is pretty easy. An Eastern Hemlock's needle when pulled away from the branch will reveal a tiny short stem connecting it to the branch. The Red Spruce has a very sharp needle. If you press down on the end of the needle, it will sting a bit. If it looks like a chistmas tree and smell wonderfully strongly of resin, it's a Frasier Fir.


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Thanks! Very educational, as usual.

I put it to MoS or any other outdoors type that my buddy Adam is doing no fewer than 3 stupid things here. Can you identify them?

Hint, there are are a very few right ways to get a white gas stove lit, and countless wrong ways. Here, Adam demonstrates one of the wrong ways, the outstanding drunk that he is. Meanwhile, Jody can't believe what he's seeing, but finds it quite lulzy.




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lovely photos, dan.

you've got natural skills when it comes to composition, which is obvious in the photo of your grandson. the lighting also suits each picture and the colors of those flowers are beautiful.

i was about to mention the similarity the boulder picture has to the lord of the rings, and there you go mentioning nazguls and wizards.

keep it comin'.

Originally Posted by Flavour of Night

I put it to MoS or any other outdoors type that my buddy Adam is doing no fewer than 3 stupid things here. Can you identify them?

Hint, there are are a very few right ways to get a white gas stove lit, and countless wrong ways. Here, Adam demonstrates one of the wrong ways, the outstanding drunk that he is. Meanwhile, Jody can't believe what he's seeing, but finds it quite lulzy.




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I see too much fuel, too close to gear and a nice bed of dry leaves (unless they're wet). It also appears that he is sitting down wind from the giant flame, along with the gear. Is that a plastic canteen almost close enough to be melted in the heat from the flames? I can't tell how close it really is by the picture.

i see all the same things as you, xaqaria.

Everything Xaq said, except I'm pretty sure that's fuel, not a water bottle? Can't really tell, but the neck looks funky. Could be a Guyot-style though.

Needs bare dirt, at least, if not flat stones.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

I see too much fuel, too close to gear and a nice bed of dry leaves (unless they're wet). It also appears that he is sitting down wind from the giant flame, along with the gear. Is that a plastic canteen almost close enough to be melted in the heat from the flames? I can't tell how close it really is by the picture.

It's not a canteen, it's a 22 oz alumimum fuel bottle (and this trip was only a 2 nighter, get a smaller bottle, jackass!). Really more properly, he's being an idiot because he didn't prime the stove correctly. That fireball is coming out of the burner. The vaporizer loop is obviously still cold, else he'd have a nice blue flame and not currently be the subject of ridicule. Points for all the others. Oh, and he's not leveled the stove, and he's drunk.

Originally Posted by Anonymoose

you've got natural skills when it comes to composition, which is obvious in the photo of your grandson.

Thanks.

I got purely lucky that he was in the middle of a step, and swinging his arm purposefully to his side when I clicked. But with snapping people, luck is a big part of the equation. Flowers can be really overdone, but wildflowers have their own charm since generally you won't find them waiting in your garden.

I believe that much of composition is DE-composition. I.E. cropping is an art in itself. Then there's rotation, etc. If it were sculpture, I find my images have some granite that needs chipped away before they're done. Here's the raw image:




The roadside sign, and the sky beyond the ridgetop had to go. The foreground road is superfluous, and detracts... cropping to make the edge of the road meet the bottom corners seemed the way to go to both fix the foreground clutter and move the boy to a better location relative to the photo. Since the camera was not fixed, several degrees of rotation were needed too. This is so much easier to do with Photoshop or Gimp than in a darkroom!

And the side by side.. with the excess granite chipped away:





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Meet Kain's friend Ratty. Ratty is a stuffed rat, a perfectly normal friend to a four year old boy.





While in the car on the way to the Big Creek area of the Smokies, I argued with Kain that a hike was no place for Ratty. My efforts were quite in vain, as he insisted, "I have a plan."





It was a warm day for early March... in the 80's. Lots of day-hikers coming and going. First being seen by us, and us being seen by them... from a considerable distance. A practical joking four year old is a wonderful thing.

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hahaha. i don't like kids much but he's pretty damn funny. what a great idea.

if my grandma saw him walking towards her with that rat, she'd probably have a heart attack.
back when we had a pet rat, she would watch him nervously when walking by his cage. heheh.

The dot in the middle of this one isn't a defect in the picture, it's an underwater rock.. just barely breaking the surface.. quite neat and odd. I'll just shut-up for a change and post:





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The picture of the lake is breathtaking.

CB, Barbara Lake, Wind River Range, Wyoming.

This is among the first glacial lakes one runs across after hitting the trail from the parking lot at Elkhart Part on the way to Indian and Titcomb Basins... It's certainly not the largest, not by far, but it is the most picturesque. If you google it, you'll find a number of satisfying renditions by others who's attention it has caught.

Here's one example, I wouldn't have skipped the foreground like this one did, but to each his own. Nature gave and took away different things for this person's shot, but nature didn't fuck it up by getting too close, that was his own damned fault (oops, to each his own my ass!)





Nature provides many possibilities for any given subject. Depending on the season, time of day, weather.. you can shoot the exact same frame and get countless results. It just so happened that nature conspired this day to give me the mirror surface with puffy white clouds and trees reflected in the lake. But at the same time, nature didn't give me a good sky or clouds.. they look almost drawn in, and the nearly 14,000 footers in the background (which the guy with the other picture was able to nail) are washed out. (Maybe he was trying for the mountains because the lake is quite a bit less interesting under the conditions he had to work with?) I had 65 pounds on my back for a ten day September trip, so a good arsenal of filters and such had to be sacrificed. September in the Winds can bring you all possible temperature and conditions, you can't go light, and I ran into all of those conditions (more photos of that later). Carrying 65 pounds is a chore anytime, but doing it at 10,000 - 12,000 feet is doubly tough, especially when I'm tuned for elevations under 7,000 feet.

i like your picture more. like waaay more.

Originally Posted by Anonymoose

i like your picture more. like waaay more.

Yep, I love the colors of your lake picture. The picture that isn't yours looks much more dull, while yours looks very vibrant!

Goddamn, man.

You are brilliant!