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Thursdays

October 6, 2006 at 7:00 AM

This time of year, the weekly drive to my lesson is something to savor.

Tern Lake

Good Friday Quake of '64--near Portage, AK

Fireweed on the Kenai

I've seen that building before in another picture as the background. What was the picture of? Roadkill? UFO? I can't remember.
Meatyard. Remember?
Yes. The REM compositional experiment.
From a moving vehicle. Which explains the fuzzy memory.
The building feel weight somehow, REM style. Not sure how to do it. I could ask my teacher but not sure he's still alive. He was pretty skinny even back then.
I meant "needs to feel weight." Fix this so I can edit it.
I added another. I think this one feels heavier.
Beautiful pix! Random word association: I've climbed and clambered Portage Glacier! Before global warming [sort of], when it was big and I was small[er]!
Just gorgeous! Thank you for sharing a bit of fall in Alaska with us. Makes me want to spend a day communing with nature!
By George, you've got it. That horizontal line made by the top of the mountain behind it smashes that sucker down. Now I'd experiment with the rule of thirds to make the fact jump out. Or maybe try making it a square. Of course Meatyard would have done it all in the camera at the location, no cropping. Nice:)
Emily, I really enjoy your pictures. Makes my daily veiw feel a bit prison-like...grey concrete walls. For concret maybe, but not the Wagner I'm practicing. Hm...what music do these pictures bring to mind? I won't share, because it is probably not related to the atmosphere at all! Everyone has all sorts of different associations. Something brooding, yet quiet, misty like the mist rolling over those hills, but having definition in the edges. Who writes that?
Shostakovich? Mahler?
Hm. I'll have to contemplate that today.
Jennifer Warren
Alaska looks so amazing! I definitely want to go up there to a national park someday.
Nice!

I don't know whether one should be awed by the beauty of Nature or the intelligence of humans. So I worship both. Wow!

National park? Hahaha! Sydney, the entire state looks like that. The Entire State. (minus a few square miles of Anchorage...) You definitely have to come up. I was disappointed at how little I was able to capture with my camera on my drive. I'm going to keep trying, though. Pesky little cameras... I gotta learn a thing or two about shutter speed and aperture (whatever that is). And what to do in the rain.

Jim, I usually like thirds, but I especially like the extra weight of the sky in that particular photo. I have a whole series of this building, which echoed the line of the mountain ridges from three or four very different angles. It was an uncanny experience.

Jennifer, I liked your Bach that you posted! For the weather, Ravel's Sonatine (piano) has been good, as well as his string quartet. Rachmaninoff's piano concertos... :) I recall Shotakovich's piano preludes are good, too. I prefer to listen to the piano on rainy fall days. Or techno. That's also nice.

Vivian, thanks for warming me with your insights today. To me, beauty and aesthetics remind me of God. That's what I ponder as I drive. Then I think about creating. And then I think about Bach. :)

Beautiful photos. Thanks for posting.