Top Travel Photos Of 2009
All year long, at MSNBC, people have been voting for their favorite travel photos sent in by readers. The top 50 photos make a pretty amazing collection. I’d like to give you a sample or two here, but MSNBC requires permissions be granted and I would rather not get into that process, so go HERE to have a look. Well worth it.
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Paean For Tumacacori
Last week I spent a few hours visiting the Mission San José de Tumacácori. It was established in 1691 in the Santa Cruz River Valley of southern Arizona. Following a stormy history involving a Pima Indian rebellion, Mexico’s War of Independence from Spain, and Apache raids, it was abandoned by 1848 and began falling into disrepair. Preservation and stabilization efforts began in 1908 when the area was declared a National Monument.
I’ll let my photos and a few quotes from the mission’s early years speak for themselves, and I’d love to hear what you take away from them.
The Key To Understanding
There are many matters that I cannot and do not need to understand, such as Love, and God, and why I became fascinated with an intersection in downtown Fargo, North Dakota.
I was in Fargo last week to lead an Open Space session and a Genius Workshop for Jodee Bock and the wonderful people that she always gathers for her annual Bigger Small Talk Summit.
Attentive And At Peace
A friend lays claim to the title, Ultimate Introvert, and offers as proof he deserves that appellation, “I even like to watch other people fish.”
As introverted as I am, that beats any claim I might have made on the title. I have never had an urge to watch other people fish. I do, however, like taking pictures of other people fishing.
I took the photo above many years ago in Cascais, Portugal, and the one below last year when capelin were roiling the surface of the sea in one of Newfoundland’s many coves.
Meaning-Making Is Both Blessing And Curse
…my mind often buzzes with questions about mundane events…
Red Mountain is in close-up view from a picnic area on the southern bank of the Salt River a few miles north of Mesa, Arizona, where the Bush Highway enters the south-west corner of the nearly three million acre Tonto National Forest. I sat there alone at a weathered and rickety picnic bench one day last week, my attention divided between the mountain and a narrow strip of river where a breeze rippled the surface and trout leaped. I had a notebook in front of me to record what I saw, thought and felt.
With A Thousand Eyes
A few lines from Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha have taken residence in my mind thanks to a comment from Dan Oestreich to a previous post. I guess I am supposed to pass the lines on.
Tenderly, he looked into the rushing water, into the transparent green, into the crystal lines of its drawing, so rich in secrets. Bright pearls he saw rising from the deep, quiet bubbles of air floating on the reflecting surface, the blue of the sky being depicted in it.
Making Weighty Matters Light And Light Matters Weighty
As it is with making photographs, so it is with the pictures we make of our lives…
That pictures should be balanced is another general compositional rule. Subject elements are weighted and assigned different degrees of importance depending on their size and their tone or color. (Patricia Caulfield in Capturing The Landscape With Your Camera)
I assigned weight to elements of the three pictures in this post by using color selectively. My choices about where to assign weight were deliberate, but in our lives we often assign weight to objects or events out of habit or predisposition, or because assigning weight in one way or another serves a purpose of which we are unaware. Thus we make weighty matters light and light matters weighty, and sometimes we know it and sometimes we don’t.
Is It Me, Or You, Or An Antelope?
The word “you” acts as a container. It holds the actual you, plus my perception of you, plus whatever parts of myself I project onto you. When I use the container–when I say or think “you”–I make no differentiation between those three, and so I am never aware of referring to one or the other. It is all just “you.” No wonder I become confused about who you are.
During a visit to Wildlife World in Phoenix, I found myself taking portraits of the animals rather than just snapping photos. I was looking for something in their faces, particularly in their eyes. What is in there that I can see, that is available to a human?
