When plants go bad...

So after my long break from posting on here I finally have found time to start back up again. I have recently gotten a hold of my pictures from my trip down to Oklahoma this past summer and so now I have a whole new set of pictures to draw from. In case you are wondering, the spiky palm tree thing in the picture is not native to Oklahoma, nor is it growing outdoors. This was found in an indoor tropical garden somewhere in downtown Oklahoma City. At first look I though this was a really evil version of Bamboo but it actually is a type of Palm tree that has decided to become no so friendly to tree huggers. Yes, those spikes are several inches long and no, I do not suggest touching them since they are quite sharp. However, this would probably be the perfect candidate for an ugly stick if you were ever in search for one.
Also as a side note, the spikes only seem to develop on the lower 20 ft. of this palm which seems to grow well over 50 ft tall.

Spring time in DC

So I've tried a few times this past week to upload something but it wasn't working so sorry for being so slow with it all. This is a magnolia flower from a magnolia tree in Dumbarton Oaks in DC.
Normally I don't like these trees very much because the giant but sparse flowers just seem to gaudy to me. In the spring time the tree looks like a bunch of twigs with a few giant flowers hanging off the ends of it.
However, with this picture it seems alright since you don't see the flower in its context. All you see is the lone flower in a world of Blue...no distracting bare branches, no competing flowers, not even clouds for the most part. Just the flower and the open sky. Now there is a lot of extra meaning that can be taken from this picture but I will hold off on talking about it for now and let you discover it for yourself.

Infrastructure

So I found this picture randomly in my archive and thought that it looked kind of cool. I don't really have much to say about it other than that in Japan they do not bury most of their electrical utilities. Basically, overhead power lines are just part of the everyday landscape unlike most of America. There are probably lots of reasons for this (possibly earthquake related) but I don't know them.
I don't know, there just seems to be a lot of contrast between the power lines and the cloudy blue sky that made this picture striking to me.

Morning Reflection

Well I just got back from the ASLA Expo in Minneapolis and just through that I should put up a few pictures from the trip. This one is from right outside of the convention center with a reflection of the church across the street. For some strange reason, when I look at this picture I always seem to see an eye in the reflection of the sky on the center-right side of the glass building. Some of the technical parts of this picture are not a great as I would like them to be but I took this while walking to the front door of the convention center so it didn't have time to set it up properly.

Strange plants in the grass

Ok so I have no idea what to make of this picture or what to call it so sorry about the odd name. While we were at the Olympic Youth Center in Tokyo we stopped by the garden there to sketch. Well, like a good student I am, I spent the entire time taking pictures which was quite nice since I didn't get very much time throughout the trip to really sit down and compose a few pictures. In this shoot of the garden I even was able to try out some time lapse photography which eats up a ton of time as the name implies. For this picture however, I was sitting down on the ground and found some really interesting plants growing out of the grass. I picked this picture from the set since it has the out of focus path in the background which gives that faint sense of destination. Well thats all for now so Enjoy!

Gravel Path

Why would I call this gravel path when the only element in the picture actually in focus is the rope fence? I'm not to sure but it felt fitting at the moment. Today I post an image I took at the Japanese garden of Murin-An in Kyoto. We were given time to sketch at every garden we went to and more often than not, I ended up spending most of that time taking pictures like this. It's times like these that I truly have the most fun. To me its my way of really discovering the world around me. At this garden I really fell in love with the interaction of all the materials that made up the garden from the gravel paths and their roped borders to the mossy groundcover with a sprinkling of leaves.
I chose this picture because there is a somewhat split focus between the detail of the rope and the gravel path on the left. I think that because of this mixed focus, the eye is constantly moving around the image as we try to make sense of this somewhat strange perspective of viewing the world. I think that this picture is probably best comparable to my ladybug picture that I posted a little while ago.

Who's ready for snow?

So who's ready for it to snow? Actually I really enjoy the fall but I found this picture in my archives from my old home in St. Louis and thought that it would make for a good picture to put up on here. I don't know if this picture is just right or a little on the busy side so I am putting it up to see what others think. I really like the branching pattern of the tree in the back ground and the broken down bench seems to just lean right into it. Not too much else to talk about so I'll just let you enjoy it now.

Elephant Camp

Hey everyone. It's been a little while since the last post. I just had my computer reformatted but I am back up and running now and all is well...for now. This picture I found in my picture archive while looking for a new background to replace the windows open screen. I took this in Thailand just outside the city of Chang-Mai. We are at the Mesa Elephant camp right now and I am standing on the bridge at the entrance to the camp. I think that this is the closest I have ever come to being in a tropical forest and it was just great. The painting elephant post that I put up a little while ago is from the same place. If I ever start designing zoos or resorts, you will definatly find a view like this somewhere in the plan because this is how they should look (if it is for an elephant exhibit or a tropical resort that is...)

It's Fall!!

It's Fall everyone.....well, not exactly. This was taken last year in the place where I always park my bike near studio. In about a month all the trees will be changing color in preparation for the coming winter. There is another picture up here that was from this set so check it out. I cropped the image a little since the big, pinnatly compound leaf (the big one with 7 leaflets all attached on the same stem in the center) was taking up the center of the picture and I wanted to move it to one of the corners. In real life the colors were this bright, though when I took the picture the lighting caused the original picture to fade them a bit. After a little photoshop though I brought them back up to their original color. This is one reason why I enjoy parking my bike in this particular place, the trees all around splatter it with the coolest colors in the fall.

Safety Cage

So how many of you know what this thing is? Well, the purpose of the pipe, now that I have though of it, is to keep the lake from rising to high and washing over the road that I am standing on. If that's it's purpose, why is that beg red metal cage sitting on top of it? Well from what I can figure out, the big cage is probably in place to keep big, floating objects like little children and animals from being sucked in when the lake is high. Also, I am betting that the reason it rises up in the center is to keep it a visible as long as possible for when the lake gets really high and the water is rushing in really fast, probably even making a whirlpool. It's on days like those that it's not so good to be swimming in the lake.
So talking about the picture now, this was taken shortly after a fish or something splashed the surface of the water and started the ripples. As soon as I saw it It struck me that this would make an interesting picture because of the ripples. I wanted to get the shoreline out of the picture as best I could but I was rushed on time since the ripples were fading fast.
This picture also comes from the weekend trip to Lebanon, MO and is from almost the same spot as the morning light picture below...Only looking the other way.