Scarred Birch

#4

01.04.10

I've officially had my first panic attack only four days into this project of creating an iPhone photo journal / blog over 365 consecutive days.  How in the world am I going to keep up without resorting to posting silly photos of myself grinning while wearing soggy Cap'n Crunch treasure chests sticking to my chin?  Of course, I cornered myself into this project on purpose knowing that if I gave myself days, or even weeks between posts the whole project would just whither and die.  That eventuality might be cheered by anyone other than myself, because I've really wanted to get started on "something" for some time.  I've always wanted that "something" to be a book, but fear and slothfulness have always kept me back.  I'm hoping this blog will give me a little discipline and a little confidence toward that end.

Today I've quashed my anxieties (likely just temporarily) by giving myself a loophole.  Namely, any day where I simply cannot find a subject I want to capture, or time will not allow the search for a proper subject, I will post an older pic taken on my iPhone over the past 2.5 years.  {Deep exhale}.  There... I feel much better.  

Part of the anxiety developed this morning when I saw that my hoar frost from yesterday had vanished over night with wind, cloudy skies and a warming trend (it got up to about 14 degrees above zero).  Thankfully I had constructed my "loophole", which eventually gave me the courage to put on the snow gear and march out into the yard for a few minutes to look for something interesting.  Nature never really lets us down, does it?  Of course not.  Especially in Alaska!

I mentioned yesterday that we have a lot of birch and pine here in the Anchorage bowl.  Well, I had taken a mere 4 steps from our side entry when a scar on one of our paper birch trees looked my way and said "yoo-hoo" in its unique and sassy way.  So I plowed through what is now about 13 or 14 inches of snow (it has been shrinking over the past month in the extreme cold with little additional snow) to inspect the birch.  I've probably seen this birch and its large scar hundreds of times over the past several years, but only today did it strike me as both interesting and beautiful.  Which is not to say I take pleasure in the tree having been scarred, but rather it lends a sense of maturity and perhaps nobility to this wild thing that has continued to exist despite the fairly inhospitable environment, the chainsaws and bulldozers of developers, moose antlers, wind storms, aphids, etc.

I took about 20 photos of the scar from different angles, and just felt like the real colors weren't coming out based on our typical gray-blue midday skies of Anchorage when under cloud cover.  I mentioned this to my wife, who promptly reminded me that professional photographers use light boxes to bring out the finer colors and features of their subjects.  So I skeptically retrieved a small flashlight from our emergency box (it's the only one we own), and proceeded to shine it on the scar with one hand while taking pics with the other.  That is no simple feat with the iPhone; having a touch screen button just doesn't jive comfortably with the need to keep a firm hold on the slim rectangular camera.  Many will have discovered this for themselves, no doubt.  But we LOVE our relatively buttonless iPhones, do we not?  So I am not complaining here, just trying to find ways to adapt to that amazing little device.  

I felt like the difference with the flashlight was absolutely amazing, and it opened my mind to other possibilities of shooting with this small camera.  {Sigh}  I hate it when my wife correctly educates me on MY HOBBY.  {Sigh}  It really brought out the oranges, coppers and browns quite nicely.


I only took about 3 photos with the flashlight, and felt like I could not improve upon them.  And that was a good thing, because after those 15 to 20 minutes or so in the yard my right hand was submitting angry complaints to the "comment boxes" in my parietal lobes.  There was no digital processing of the image shown above.

Here is a photo without the flashlight.  I think you'll appreciate the difference readily.

For the soundtrack I wanted to add the Kings of Convenience's 'Scars on Land' off their latest album "Declaration of Dependence"; but it was not available on Playlist.com.  This album is just their third over 10 years, and was released in October 2009.  They are an indie folk group from Bergen, Norway - which is cool because my brother-in-law T.M.O. lived there for awhile in his late teens.  The Kings of Convenience sound is super mellow and soothing, a trend over these last four posts that I'm just noticing.  I promise to spice things up when appropriate.  This particular song 'Scars on Land' has a nice little lyric that goes:


Still untouched,
No stain of hands,
Caramelized
In a tilted light.  


Wow!  It's as if they lived in Alaska.  Well... it makes sense.  Bergen is on the western shores of Norway; just as Anchorage is on the western shores of Southcentral Alaska.  And guess what the latitude of Bergen is?  Why, 60 degrees 20 minutes.  Anchorage is just 1 measly degree further north at 61 degrees 20 minutes.  So we share that "tilted light", the Kings of Convenience and I, right down to the "caramelized" bark of my birch tree scar, even.


Why not treat yourself to a lovely listen of that song here? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgzyIkiCDMU


Until tomorrow... thanks for looking and reading (and hopefully listening, too).  


CCE 


PS Tomorrow my professional life resumes, which means you will likely not have to labor through my protracted blathering on near-future posts.  {You're welcome.}