lake

Bridge over Turntable Bay

I know, I know. You all want me to post some more of my Urban Explore photography. Â Well, worry not. Â I have more brackets left to develop from my many shoots in former East Germany than you can imagine. Â All in good time, though, ’cause at the moment I’m keeping myself busy exploring the great outdoors in Northern California. Â Here is a shot taken shortly after sunrise. Â And I’m probably glad I waited until the sun illuminated the dark woods at the edge of the bay, ’cause I swear I saw some fresh bear droppings as I was headed back to the car from shooting this. Â Have to admit, bears were not on my mind at all, but then neither were the rattle snakes they say are plentiful around another area I shot yesterday in Redding. Â Guess I better watch my step!

Buck Wild!

Kenya is chock full of DLTs (that would be deer-lke things), and one of my favorites is the water-buck, pictured here.Â Usually you’ll find these roaming around grassy plains and such, but I had never encountered one near or on the water.Â This fella was about knee deep in Lake Naivasha, where we also came across LOTS of hippos.Â What with the name water-buck and fact that he is actually hanging out in the lake, this has to be my favorite “environmental portrait” shots of one of these magnificent creatures.Â We were in a long-boat when I shot this with the D700 and Nikkor 70-200 2.8 VR set to 180mm.Â Sure was cool to get so close to this guy and have him look up at me in time for the shot, though the boat was also moving (slowly) when I shot this.

Where I felt the presence of God

This afternoon, my daughter and I took the dog down to this frozen lake for a walk.Â I sure was glad that I had tucked my small Leica D-Lux 5 camera into my pocket, because what we beheld there was heavenly.Â The colorful sky, the cotton-candy like clouds, the mist surrounding us…Â pure beauty …pure peace.Â I knew that I needed a special song playing to process this image, so I chose the beautiful mix by U.N.K.L.E. (featuring Moby) called God Moving Over the Face of the Water / A State. Take a listen, won’t you, while you look at this photograph and maybe you’ll be able to get a sense of the feeling I had at the frozen lake shore.Â If you want to see the lyrics for the song you can find them here.Â I’ve pasted my favorite part of the lyrics under the photograph.

Fronted by solitude without decadence or a…
Single material thing to prostitute and elevate you to a spiritual plane
Where I felt the presence of God
Now, there’s the God they taught me about at school
And there is the God that’s hidden… by what surrounds us in this civilization
That’s the God I meant

~ Sung by UNKLE

By the way, the above lyrics originally appeared in the movie Alive (1993), the amazing story about the survivors of Uruguayan Air Flight 571.Â That film was based upon the 1974 book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, by British author Piers Paul Reed.Â It was one of my favorite books when I was a wee lad.