Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

I have finally got back into my growing rock collection and actually revisited an older piece of Arizona Petrified Wood I have. This small slice has some of the most incredible micro landscapes within it as you can see above. . These two images are of the front and back of the slice, and I think they are quite complimentary of each other.
The concept of “Stone Windows” came to mind to me – looking into this small piece of stone and seeing not only something of your imagination, but it is also a window into the past. . Imagine what was going on in the world when this piece of wood was being solidifed!!. . It is actually quite hard to believe this was once wood actually!
I did something with these images I don’t normally do – I used the Auto-Tone Develop preset in Lightroom. . . Of course, normally I like to adjust myself, but once in awhile I will hover over this preset just to see if it is close to what I want. . Raw files are typically a bit flat. . Auto-Tone really did well with these particular images and just made them sing. . I didn’t adjust anything else, except for to decrease the luminance of the red a small bit, it was just too red.
Just to give you an idea of what this small piece of petrified wood looks like..

Tags: abstracts, art, fine art photography, fine art prints, landscape, macro, nature fine art, petrified wood, rock abstracts, rocks, stone
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Friday, May 23rd, 2008
While photographing this particular piece of pietersite, I couldn’t help notice a section of it that resembled a waterfall. . It seems to happen that way when we view abstracts. Our minds try to make sense of it by trying to associate what we are seeing with something familiar. . Normally just some interesting patterns are enough to make me want to photograph them. . But in this case, I couldn’t see anything BUT a waterfall. . It actually affected some of the compositions I was making, because I felt the need for the areas that look like water to be flowing downward. . . I even tried to break that perception by slipping the stone around in various ways, but nothing else seemed to ‘look right.’. . . So I succumbed to what my brain was telling me and made the arrangements look like segments of a waterfall.

Tags: abstracts, pietersite, rock art, rock pictures, stone
Posted in abstracts, art, artistry, composition, creativity, macro, nature photography, rock, stone | 12 Comments »