Before we say our goodbyes to Winter 2010 (which I’m sure we are all looking forward to doing), I wanted to share my favorite images captured during the season of cold and quiet and subdued light. Locations photographed and shown within this online gallery include Dayton and Hocking Hills, Ohio and Zion National Park, Utah. Gallery – The Best of Winter 2010.
Also, I’ve created a short “Pictures You Can Hear”slideshow presentation to accompany the Winter 2010 web gallery.
Almost always the best nature and landscape photographs are captured in what I like to call “the margins of the day,” that being dawn and dusk. Even an hour before sunrise and an hour after sunset, when most photographers aren’t up or have packed away their gear for the day, the beauty of gradual light enhances the natural subject.
The following Pictures You Can Hear video and images were captured on the morning of October 20, 2009 at The Inn at Cedar Falls, in Hocking Hills, Ohio.
The sacredness of the light. To crunch about in the woods. To take in sunrise on the hilltop and then marvel at the sight of the Milky Way after nightfall. These are the visual gifts that feed the spirit and move the soul.
When all else in the “outside world” is ripping at the seams and falling in tatters, it is comforting to know that all is well, and right, in nature and at The Inn at Cedar Falls.
While most people celebrate the end of summer with back to school and Labor Day activities, I prefer to take notice of the turning of the season, a turning toward what I like to call the “good light.” Softening sunlight and lengthening shadows and fields that turn to gold. This is the nature photographer’s best season when capturing images of the Ohio landscape. It’s also the primary reason I’ve scheduled my first, full-day photography workshop for the weekend of September 26th.
The End of Summer on the Ohio Landscape by Jim Crotty
It is also with some melancholy that I say farewell to the summer of 2009. Back in May I made a goal of making this past summer one full of positive experiences from the limited time I have available to spend with my daughters, Emma, age 10, and Chloe, age nine. Making this my goal was in response of regretting not doing such during the summer of 2008. You see I am a single, divorced dad of two very special little girls. During the school year they live with their mother in Texas. Emma and Chloe are my everything, and I’ve made it no secret that there is NOTHING for me in Ohio that comes close to being worth the pain I go through when I have to say goodbye and put them on that American Airlines flight back to Texas.
I mean it – NOTHING, especially Dayton. I don’t think I need to explain that point further for most regular readers of this blog.
I succeeded in accomplishing my goal for this past summer, so much so that the pain of the goodbye (at least for me) was as sharp and searing as it has ever been.
And it’s with that emotion of love and commitment to my children that I present the following video and images, most of which were taken during my daughter’s last week with me in mid-August and going through the lonely days following to the beginning of September.
The visual artist creates what is discovered in the light from that which is felt within.
