Monolith in the woods • click to embiggenYesterday afternoon, while attempting to gain a vantage point for a picture I wanted to make (but didn't), I came upon a steep jumbled boulder field in the woods. The boulders are at the foot of a 400-500 ft stone cliff.

The size of the field was impressive as were the boulders themselves - the one featured here is about 12 ft tall. What was equally amazing was the fact that the boulders and forest floor are covered with a 3-4 inch thick mossy carpet. The smell, the feel, the sensations were incredible. It is an altogether amazing little place in the woods. I will be back.

A large shattered erratic on the Bog River • click to embiggenIt's hard to believe but an entire summer has kind of sneaked by under the radar. It seems as though I was not able to get into any kind of summer flow - way too many 'matters' to tend to (house renovations, college preparations, a few unexpected work projects and spending most of August well under the weather).

One casualty of all this is that the wife and I have not been out in the canoes together even once this summer. Now that the nest is empty, our first priority is a 3 day / 2 night canoe trip this weekend, although, the tent will house our part-time nester, Hugo.

Hugo's mom and dad (the Cinemascapist) are out of town for a wedding in Pittsburgh and then a swing over to NYC to finalize a few details for his upcoming exhibition. Aaron and his pictures are being featured in e-zine articles all over the world. It seems that nary a day goes by that doesn't include a request for an interview.

If you aren't keeping up with his work, you should be - Aaron Hobson ~ Cinemascapes. He has also posted a new picture here in the Guest Photographer Forum.

PS - The Landscapist's Stand Apart From The Crowd Award of Recognition goes to Tim, who distinguished himself over the past 2 days by being the lone first-time visitor (out of over 1,800) to leave a comment. Thank you, Tim (and, yes, our college princess has an especially spacious dorm room since her roomate was a no-show. A replacement is not likely and in 2 weeks she can call maintenance and have the extra bed and wardrobe removed which we will replace with a couch, coffe table and floor lamp.)

5 mph speed limit • click to embiggenEvery once in a while, when I check my web stats, I discover that visitors are flocking to The Landscapist in incredibile numbers. Yesterday was one of those days - over 1,000 first-time visitors and over 2,000 page loads.

As is always the case whenever this happens, the stampede is attributable to a mention (usually about something I have written) with a link to The Landscapist posted by one of the blog-o-sphere's 'biggies'. Yesterday's 'biggie' was Scott Kelby, the #1 Bestselling computer/ technology author (26 books on Photoshop, digital imaging, and technology) in the world for the past three years straight. Scott also is the editor/publisher of Photoshop User Magazine, Darkroom magazine (all about Adobe Lightroom), training director and instructor for the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour and President National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).

Scott's site is devoted to, you guessed it, all things Adobe Photoshop / Lightroom so it's was bit of a surprise to find the following sandwiched in all the PS/LR news, scoops and tips - I ran across this blog this past week, and I just really found the photography interesting. It’s called “The Landscapist” but it’s not your typical landscape photography site ... [T]here’s just something about their stuff I really like. Give it a look-see ...

Thanks, Scott (but you didn't say a thing about my brilliant PS work). Even more amazing is that not one of the more than 1,000 first-time visitors had anything - good, bad or indifferent - to say about anything. Not that I'm complaining. Just thought I'd mention it.

Life is like that sometimes • click to embiggenBeau Comeaux commented, on civilized ku # 54, that "...The far flung after-effects of the German coolness and detachment (as initially? proffered by the Bechers) has worn me down a bit as of late. The ironic pointing to empty, banal spaces has run its course for me, failing to interest or engage me."

I don't think that Beau is alone in feeling this way. While I don't think the 'coolness and detachment/ironic pointing' thing has run its course or that some very interesting work is not still being created in that genre, I have stated that "... I am emerging from a kind of modernist/postmodernist what-the-hell-is-what haze. After delving into the notions, it seems incredibly complex or equally simple depending on deep you want to go. I went deep enough to feel, at the extremes, like I was drowning in a sea of either simplistic sentimental dreck (modernism) or wretched intellectual/academic obfuscation (postmodernism).

A place where the denoted and the connoted co-exist on equal footing. A place where photography can both illustrate and illuminate."

Decompression chamber • click to embiggenAfter about 1,000 miles of weekend travels that included such highlights as 60 miles of stop-and-go traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, creep-and-crawl on a Philadelphia "express"way and 2 deja vu all over again visits - one with college boy, one with college girl - to 2 different but identical Target stores (hundreds of miles apart), I'm soooo happy to be back in the real world.

The trip did feature a good Philly cheesesteak and a very eclectic restaurant meal where we got my 83 year old mother-in-law rather toasted on fine wine. And, of course, the princess daughter is now officially a college girl.

It's official • click to embiggenThe only really disturbing experience of the trip came after the dorm move-in when we were walking about campus - a traditional picture-perfect ivy/brick/granite hallowed halls park-like campus set in a very tony urban neighborhood - and noticed that all of the parking lots were filled to the brim with SUVs. Of course, the plates indicated that most were from places that feature very rugged and challenging terrain and inhospitable weather - you know, places like Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maryland and the like, so I guess it's easy to understand why all these vehicles were so needed by their owners.

Actually, it's times like that that make me wish I were driving an 18-wheeler filled with the rotting carcasses of dead Emperor penquins (the ones dying as result of global warming) - enough of them to leave one on the hood of every SUV in the parking lots.