Vibiant

Ten thousand years ago, shortly after the last glacial recession, a sandbar formed on a shallow slate shelf along the southern shore of the Lake Erie. Soon, by geological standards, it connected to the mainland and drew to itself living matter, trees and scrub, deer and turtles. Indians hunted there, or fished in the sheltered bay created by the hook-shaped landmass. When the French finally arrived, they named it Presque Isle, or almost and island.

As a sandbar, it’s shape changed, as it slowly wended its way along the shore, it’s actually rather farther east than when it first formed. Now, because it is a state park, the Army Corps od Engineers have put in some truly truloy hideous looking wave control constructions to keep the narrow neck of land connecting it to Millcreek from washing away, though the sandbar is still growing slowly eastward. The last time I stood on the easternmost tip with a GPS, about 1998, I discovered that the peninsula extended about 100 yards farther east than it was shown on USGS topo maps, which were last updated in that area in 1978.

If you get away from the roads and bike trails and interpretive centers and lighthouses and erosion control devices, out past the point the deer tick warning signs cease, you see a place that hasbeen essentially unchanged since maybe 6000 BC. THe nature of the site means that trees never grow tro any great hight, there never was any old growth forest. The clearings and trails the animals made, or the wind and weather, change every season, but duplicate the forms of the past. The endless change is what preserves it the best.

This image looks out onto the lake itself, approximately

in a northeasterly direction. The view covers about 180 degrees. The only thing you could hear was the surf.

If you’ve spent any time at all actually reading this blog, you see that I have an affinity for mechanical objects, cars in particular.  In addition, cars make for some interesting photo studies, or at least challenging ones.  The North American International Auto Show is held in Detroit every January, and has been the largest such show in North America.  That, is unfortunately changing, thanks, Los Angeles, but even now it is quite popular, and between the huge crowds, moody lighting, and special effect paints, it is no easy thing to get good pictures.

Subaru is known across the world for their participation in the World Rally Championship,and brings a current rally cart to the show every year.  These are probably the mopst driveable of all top-tier race cars, despite my assertions that I could commute in a DTM Audi.   Generally, Subaru has the good sense to put the damn thing on a pedistal, or at least have some kind of barrier around it, to keep the crowds back and make it possibile to photograph the silly thing.  Not in 2007, where the desert diarama [though the car was set up as the sexier visually tarmac version] was not bkig enough to keep backthe hordes of Koreans and Germans who were a the show this year.  As an experiment, I tried a collage of the subject.

A three dimensional world does not translate well to a two dimensional photograph.  Usually, this isn’t a problem because  the actual differences, warpages,  you could say, are small enough to be ignored, most of the time.  When you are two feet from the car and need five photos to cover the entire subject, those warpages become more pronounced.

It’s not every day you stumble across Buddhiust monks making a sand painting. Well, maybe you do if you’re from Katmandu, but I’m not so I shot some dozen rolls during the several week period this particular painting was created. SOme individual photos, as well as a number of collages. Frankly, some of the collages I shot were pointlessly humongous, and stand a reasonable chance that they will be never assembled, though this one is a more rational size, and usually hangs on my wall at home.