Photo of the Week--2/20/11

Oh, yeah, they also have mountains in Colorado. It's fun driving up and coasting down them, and getting awesome pictures like this one. I love it when you get such a wide vista that it feels like you're looking down at a map: Ooo! I see roads! Look at the river twist! There's the highest peak! Somehow it makes you feel like you're getting away from it all and yet still in charge of all you survey.

Photo of the Week--2/6/12

I call this photo "Self-Portrait with Waterfall." There wasn't a good place to set up my camera with the timer—it was pretty crowded for that, anyway—so I sat down, stretched out, and put my feet in the picture. I figure they deserved it; by this point in the hike they had gone around 6 miles along the Glacier Gorge Trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park. And look! They are still on the end of my legs, looking ready to take me another mile or so!

Photo of the Week--1/30/12

You might have guessed from previous photos that I like trees, especially ones that take twisty turny shapes. I found this one while hiking along the Glacier Gorge Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park. (In Colorado, of course.) The scenery here was so gorgeous I almost forgot I was at nearly 10,000 feet of elevation during the six-nile trek. (My lungs were happy to remind me any time I found a steep section of trail, however.) Any physical discomfort was worth it to sit and have my lunch here, in the shade of a twisty tree with a cool lake at my feet.

Photo of the Week--1/9/12

For this week's installment of picture of things framed by other things: Picture Rocks National Lakeshore! The only way to really see this beautiful part of Michigan is by boat, which we did a couple of years ago. (In the future we'd love to do it by canoe, but that requires planning ahead for the special class.) I love the patterns the water makes on and through the rocks; testament again to the patience and power of water. Wait long enough, and water will triumph. It's an example to keep in mind as I prepare yet another cycle of revise-and-submit for my novel.

Photo of the Week--1/2/12

Ha! Mother Nature says. Get your picturesque photos of sunlight in a cathedral. That's easy, what with the walls and windows and all. Try this: a lone shaft of sunlight finding you in a forest. Now that's hard! (Or maybe not, if you take a trip to lovely northwest Michigan, as we did a couple of summers ago.)

Photo of the Week--12/19/11

Again, Mother Nature takes your architectural flourishes, your cornices and finials and whatnot, and says, "Yeah, babe, I did it first." I took this picture on the Glacier El Martial near Ushuaia, the southernmost town in Argentina. It was December, the beginning of summer, and so much of the snow had melted as we walked around the lovely scenery on the mountain. I found this stand of trees, so marvelously knotted and twisted, and couldn't resist snapping a shot.

Photo of the Week--12/12/11

All those funky little "details" I like to find in architecture? Sometimes nature likes to remind me that She came up with them first. I got this shot in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a lovely park that was only a block from our hotel. The tree was too huge to get in one shot—at least, not without crossing the street and putting the city back in the frame.  But I really took the shot to get the interesting vein-like appearance of this tree's roots; the pretty little dilute tortie was a bonus.

Photo of the Week--10/24/11

Ah, the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. So orange! So shapely! And here I got to take one of my favorite kind of photos: a landscape framed by more landscape! Usually it's trees that I like to use as a frame, but who can resist a big giant hole in a rock? Certainly not me, especially when there's lot of bright, white snow to add contrast.

Photo of the Week--10/17/11

Sometimes the waterfalls themselves aren't all that spectacular, but where they are situated is. This one I snapped in Zion National Park, Utah. I liked the angle from under the overhang, and how that little tree is doing its damnedest to grow despite its precarious position. The multi-colored rocks are pretty cool; I'm always fascinated how water interacts with rock to create so many variations in shape and color.

Photo of the Week--10/10/11

Sometimes nature comes up with an architecture more spectacular than anything humans can dream up.... This was in Florida in 2005, on a boat a trip through Everglades National Park. Pelicans landed on the boat begging for food before we even left, and of course we saw gators, egrets, and even wild pigs. I was fascinated by the shapes we found in the mangrove swamps, where roots and branches twist and combine and create a maze on the water. On a later trip to the state we would take a canoe into the waterways around Naples, where the mangroves grew even closer together and you had to play limbo under many of the branches.

Photo of the Week--9/5/11

I know, I know, enough with the waterfalls! It's September, and it's starting to get cool outside, we don't need to imagine cool sheets of water falling on our head. I hear, and I obey: instead of a cool Icelandic waterfall, I give you a hot Icelandic geyser! Geyser, by the way, is one of the few English words of purely Icelandic origin, although the two languages have many words with  Old Norse roots in common.

Photo of the Week--8/29/11

Yes, I'm still posting picture of Icelandic waterfalls. (At least this one is taken from behind the waterfall.) And yes, my brain is still flooded with research for my book. I have four more weeks to finish everything, and while I could list everything I have left to do, the prospect makes me want to run around the yard screaming, so I'll spare us all. Just think of the cool, refreshing water....

Photo of the Week--8/22/11

Yes, it's another waterfall. It's like someone was experimenting in Iceland: "Hmm, let's try a blue water waterfall. Let's try a black stone waterfall. I know! Blue water AND black stone!" (Given his proclivity for the Norwegian fjords, I suspect Slartibartfast from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) In any case, this waterfall, Barnafos, was another beautiful variation on what you can do with rushing water and a little gravity.

Photo of the Week--8/15/10

You may be wondering, What's up with all the waterfalls? Well, there were so many different kinds I saw in Iceland, I thought it would be interesting to compare them. Or perhaps the waterfall is a metaphor for my longing for escape from my current, labor-intensive project. Or for the state of my brain, which feels like a droplet of water lost and unable to swim as it flows over the tall cliff of work-to-be-done to be beaten upon the rocks of quickly-arriving-deadlines. Or maybe it's just pretty. Pretty water! Water so sparkly pretty!

Yeah, it's a metaphor for my sad brain. :p

Photo of the Week--8/1/11

Still hot, so still continuing with Icelandic waterfalls. This one, Svartifoss, looks like it would be nice to take a shower under in 90-degree heat ... not that it ever gets up to 90 in Iceland, but I'd like to transplant this beautiful waterfall into my backyard for the summer!

Photo of the Week--7/25/11

It's hot here in the Midwest. I even went up to the UP of Michigan on vacation, and it was still hot (ie, above 85). So I can't resist photos of cool, cool water. This is another Icelandic waterfall, the magnificent Dettifoss. The last picture I showed was of a slow, seeping, blue beauty; this one is gray and huge and nasty, but still beautiful. And look! Do you see any guide ropes, any railings, any "DANGER" signs? Nope. Either Icelanders assume tourists are smart enough to figure it out, or else they don't have many liability lawyers. Either way, it was easy to get a great photo!

Photo of the Week--7/11/11

I've seen bigger waterfalls, and taller ones, and ones terrifyingly fast, but never one as cool as this one, Hraunfoss in Iceland. If you look closely you can see yes, that the water is actually coming out through the rocks and not over them. Coming through the rocks is what turns the water that unusual and very lovely opaque aqua, as minerals leach into the water. It was just one of the wonderful sights we saw in Iceland.

Photo of the Week--4/18/11

It's April in Michigan, and I'm looking outside at SNOW. To counteract this, I give you a picture of SUMMER. Granted, it's summer in Denmark, so it wasn't that warm, but at least there's SUN and not SNOW.

Photo of the Week--1/10/11

I know my theme this go-round was "interesting architecture," so why am I including this picture of a snow field? Well, if you look closely along the horizon of the snow, you'll see some glowing runway lights: this is not just a snow field, it's an airport runway! When we took our little jaunt up to the Arctic Circle at Christmas 1999, this was where we landed in Ivalo, Finland. The terminal was a small, stone building with two gates, and the runways were really snowways. Now, that's how to make your architecture fit in with the landscape!

Photo of the Week--9/27/10

We had most of a day to ourselves in Ushuaia, which purports to be the most southernmost city (not village) in the world. It's nestled in the foothills along the tail end of the Andes Mountains, and we took a little jaunt up into these foothills, where the glaciers were starting to melt in the southern summer. It was cloudy but still a beautiful day to be out and about among nature.