civilized ku # 1

click on photo to embiggen itI am surrounded by landscape. After all, I live in a park which is the largest wilderness in the eastern US - bigger than the state of Vermont, bigger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, The Grand Canyon and The Everglades parks combined. Traveling by car from the NE edge to the SW edge of the park, the trip takes 3.5-4 hours. It's big.

It's also diverse; 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, 3,000 lakes and "ponds", 46 mountains over 4,000 ft., as well as being home to approximately 120,000 humans who are spread out in 100 small villages and hamlets. About half of the park is protected as "forever wild" public land. Private lands/development are strictly controlled by the Adirondack Park Agency.

Needless to say, there are about one zillion photo opportunities. For most of the last 4 years I have been scratching the surface of the natural landscape photography-wise, that is, if you can call my ku body of work comprised of over 450 photographs "scratching the surface" (and I do). Recently, I have felt compelled to photograph more evidence of the hand of man in the Adirondack landscape in order to illustrate man's relationship with the natural evironment here in the park. These photographs are being created under the name of "urban" ku, although the word "urban" is not really very apt. Perhaps "civilized" ku would be better.

In any event, I am now expanding my idea of landscape to include photographs such as the one posted here. There is just too much life going on to create photographs that only play only to a particular audience or genre. This relates to my previous post wherein I asked, what kind of photographer are you? As I slip slowly from Landscapist to Documentarian, I think that I will slip a little further and become simply an Observationist.