Freak of Nature

wfeller

schmoo

Is it big? Is it small? So hard to tell! Quite a nice riddle in pictures.

bryanj87

That is quite nice. The snow covered tree contrasts nicely with the darker sky. Well done.

wfeller

schmoo wrote:

Is it big? Is it small? So hard to tell! Quite a nice riddle in pictures.

A riddle I enjoy presenting, although the 'scale' in this shot is more apparent than in my 'Chanting Rock' photo. Someone commented that, they couldn't tell if the rock were small or 100 feet tall. I didn't see the scale as relevant in the least. When I shoot I very rarely care about presenting what most percieve as reality, just my interpretation of what I saw or felt at that time or memory of it.

This is my release from the 'reality' photos I do for a living- a way to relax and express myself.

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
~White Rabbit, Jefferson Starship

wfeller

bryanj87 wrote:

That is quite nice. The snow covered tree contrasts nicely with the darker sky. Well done.

Cool. Thank you.

LCD

Beautiful.
I think the bushes in the fg provide scale if you need it, but I don't think the shot is about size but rather the shape, texture and contrast.
Well done!
Lisa

Dogdots

Nice...different....I like it

dusty-dog

To me, this looks like a small bit of lichen, maybe a few inches high. Just my first impression about what it is and its scale. But, it sure makes a great landscape image. Do tell, am I right?

wfeller

LCD wrote:

Beautiful.
I think the bushes in the fg provide scale if you need it, but I don't think the shot is about size but rather the shape, texture and contrast.
Well done!
Lisa

Lisa, thank you. That's pretty much it in a nutshell. One of the nice things about the ridge that this Jeffery pine sits on (although this almost shows it) is that at 8000' elevation the sunlight sets lower than eye level. In this photo the light is just about at a right angle to the left of the trunk of the tree. About a mile north, and in the summer, the light seems to brighten up the area under the branches. Very strange to me, very cool.

wfeller

Dogdots wrote:

Nice...different....I like it

Thank you.

wfeller

dusty-dog wrote:

To me, this looks like a small bit of lichen, maybe a few inches high. Just my first impression about what it is and its scale. But, it sure makes a great landscape image. Do tell, am I right?

Nope, not even close As I mentioned above, this is a Jeffery pine growing at about an 8000' elevation. Two factors have most likely contributed to the strange growth of this approximately 20' tall evergreen; high winds and lightening. The ridge is the watershed divide between the Southern California and Mojave Desert geomorphic regions. Basically this means when rain falls the water to the left of the tree eventually reaches the Pacific Ocean. To the right, the water finds its way into the Mojave Desert aquifers terminating for the most part in a place called Soda Lake and possibly Death Valley several hundred miles away (at least it -may have- up to about 20,000 years ago).

The difference in elevations of the two geo-regions (the Southern Basin starts at sea level, the Mojave at about 4,000 feet with an 8000-10,000 ft ridge between them) cause pressure to build and once it reaches so high releases as usually high winds over this ridge- the predominate wind-force. The mountain range that this ridge is part of, creating what is known as a 'rain shadow' hangs up storms until they either rain themselves, out or build enough pressure and push themselves over into the desert side of the range. In the summer, lightening storms seem to have the same affinity for striking the trees on this ridge as tornadoes do for trailer parks in the midwest.

The lichen and mosses here in this drier climate rarely is more than a few millimeters thick. In the latitudes further north, such as Yosemite it grows much thicker, but around here it usually provides a very colorful 2 dimensional decoration.

summerz

Really nice effects here.

wfeller

summerz wrote:

Really nice effects here.

Thanks-