The Artful Engineer

There are a fair number of swamps and swampy areas in the Huntsville area. In addition to the Beaver Dam Boardwalk in the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, featured a few weeks ago, we went to a place called Hays Nature Preserve. It didn’t turn out to be one of our favorite places to walk—primarily because the trails are a disorganized jumble—but there are definitely things to photograph. Although, like most woodlands and swamps, the bugbear to be vanquished is the overwhelming busyness of the setting. The image above has so many layers to it: other than the tree standing in the water, the rest of the image is a chaotic overlay of what is visible below the water, on the water, and reflected from above the water. I like the orangish-brown color of the leaves sitting on the bottom of the swamp, only a few inches below the surface. I also like the horizontal streaks of pollen floating on the water, which is most visible in the upper left, and the way it contrasts with the vertical reflections of the trees.

We spotted quite a few turtles, which are not a particularly dynamic subject, but always fun. This one is striking its best stately pose given its absurdly short legs:

As with other woods around Alabama, the trees are dense. This image is all about the contrast between the background of vertical trees and the solitary sideways one. It’s not easy to find a subject that stands out enough to be considered one in such a scene, but this seems like a successful attempt. The long horizontal crop works well with this image, too, focusing attention on the horizontal tree.

I’m not a mycologist, but Alabama has a lot of impressive fungi, many of which are feeding on things not yet dead. The image below features some impressive shelf fungi. It is a simple composition, but effective, I think. This image would probably be a winner with colorful fall leaves on the ground in the background, but then again the vibrant color might detract from the mood. I have to mention the water, too, because it looks absolutely vile. The turtles are welcome to it.

I have absolutely no idea what has happened to this young water tupelo tree. My only guess—likely an incorrect one—is that a bear clawed and gnawed away the bark to get at beetles and such. But why just this one? In terms of the image itself, the strong contrast between the exposed wood and the dark bark of the larger tree behind it give it a visual focal point. The fact that the remaining bark on the subject tree blends almost perfectly with the bark behind adds a visual puzzle: flattened into two dimensions, it’s hard to tell exactly what is going on. A small detail is the sliver of light that separates the tree on the left edge from the large tree; although the image deliberately exploits the first and second trees merging together, it is nice that the third tree maintains some separation.

If you were wondering why I chose Pollination as the title of this week’s post, this next image should make it clear. Some areas of this swamp had a shocking amount of pollen floating on the water. Yes, that is a thick layer of pollen. If I converted this image to black and white, it would look like trees sticking out of the frozen shallows of a pond. I think this image definitely portrays it well, but I do worry that people wouldn’t realize what they were looking at without the title. (Like the photo judge that clearly mistook one of my photographs of a bobcat for an orange tabby. I’m not bitter, mind you, but it was clearly not a house cat.)

Thank you so much for visiting my blog. If you are already a subscriber, please consider sharing my blog with a friend who might appreciate it as well. Thank you for your support!