Posts Tagged ‘decay’
Ghost Leaves
On a walk through the woods with Delilah yesterday morning, my attention was grabbed by some disintegrating leaves that never fell from the tree. They looked like ghosts of leaves.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Why did they not fall to the ground?
Especially in the face of some wind gusts that were strong enough to break loose a roof panel on our wood shed. Yesterday, there was dead calm in the morning, so I took advantage of the perfect weather to work on replacing the busted section.
Learning from experience, I added some cross supports that will better hold the overhanging side from flexing, should future winds blow from that same direction.
That simple structure, built to store split logs while they dry for a year, has provided multiple lessons from failure.
When it blew over in a storm, I figured out a way to secure it to the ground by stringing some old fence wire over the cross beams and running it through the eye of earth anchor augers in three strategic locations.
With the help of my friend, Mike Wilkus, who came to my rescue when re-assembling the shed after it had overturned, I learned how to improve the diagonal bracing to stabilize the overall structure.
It leaves me wondering what the next failure will be that might teach me yet another lesson in the great world of being an amateur builder.
.
.
Photographic Decay
Something about the puzzle-like visual of decaying wood and metal really grabbed my attention last weekend when we were snowshoeing in the woods and came upon the trash dumps. So, naturally, I took a picture of it. I’ve noticed since, the photo has captured that same allure for me. I can’t stop looking at it.
I think that says a lot about the success of a photograph. If you find yourself wanting to look at it again and again, you must have done something right.
I can’t really grasp what it is that draws me to it. Maybe that is a part of the attraction, …the mystery of it.
Admittedly, the curious cutouts are attention grabbers, but I think the shadow plays a big part for me, maybe just as much. Throw in the clean-looking snow, the spindly branch above, and the bark-like appearance of the disintegrating wood, and you get a combination of features that keep my eyes coming back for more.
There is a juxtaposition that I like in the discarded item having been left for decay, now transformed to a new use as the primary feature of a photographic image.
Everything old is new again.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 