PATTERNS IN NATURE

The Crystal Bridge at Myriad Gardens in OKC is a large tubular structure encased in frosted glass, contained within is a tropical atmosphere full of a wide variety of plants. I spent a couple hours looking for patterns in the growth of these plants. The garden is scheduled to be cleared of plants and replaced over the next year, so I wanted to take one last visit to record images. It was an overcast, rainy day with soft light filtering into the environment. To follow is a collection of images in color and BW.

Symmetrical Veins

Draping Leaves

Bursting

Pink

Repetition

Palm Trunk

Horizontal and Vertical

Orange on Orange

Delicate Highlights

Circles

Photographed with Fujifilm X=T2, Fuji 16-55mm, Fuji 55-200mm, Really Right Stuff tripod

Favorite Images of 2020

2020 has been an interesting and challenging year. After retiring from medicine last year, I was looking forward to more time to travel to do photography. But with limits on traveling, a lot of my images came from near home in Oklahoma. We were able to go to Alabama to visit my brother/sister-in-law, and while there toured the Sloss Furnaces Historic Site in Birmingham. Also in September I traveled with a photographer friend to SW Colorado for the fall colors. We experienced an unusual ice storm in Oklahoma in October and snow storm in early December. I have selected my favorite images from the year.

Powerplant near Luther, Oklahoma

Wildflowers at Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, Lawton, Oklahoma

Parallel Forest, Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge

Sloss Furnace, Birmingham, Alabama

Great Sand Dunes National Park, Alamosa, Colorado

Young Aspen among grove, SW Colorado

Backlit Aspen with black mining tailings

Aspen Grove on hill, Telluride, Colorado

Sunburst, aspen grove, Last Dollar Road, Colorado

Ice storm, Edmond, Oklahoma

Snow scene, near Guthrie, Oklahoma

Snow scene, near Okarche, Oklahoma

Looking forward to the new year, hoping to travel more and get back to some favorite places to photograph.

I plan to lead a small group workshop in the fall at Acadia National Park. Contact me if you are interested. Details will be posted soon.

COLOR at Myriad Gardens

This morning was well spent taking closeup and abstract images at the Crystal Bridge in Myriad Gardens. Here is a sampling of images taken. Equipment: Nikon D810, 105mm Macro and 70-200 lens with 1.7x teleconverter.

Banana plant flower.

A favorite!

And a series of flowers…

Enjoy!!

MONOCHROME PATTERNS IN NATURE.. Myriad Gardens OKC

I spent a couple hours this morning at the Crystal Bridge in Myriad Gardens, Oklahoma City. Patterns and light tones become the prominent feature in black and white images.

overlapping leaves

Next is a series of fern images…

Ferns behind a waterfall.

The garden has a variety of Cacti. A couple of examples…

Saguaro cactus.

Trunk of large cactus.

Agave plant.

SLOSS FURNACES - Birmingham, Alabama

A National Historic Landmark

Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham

Recently, Joyce and I went to Alabama to visit my brother and his wife. While there were toured the Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark. www.slossfurnaces.com

Sloss Furnaces was the largest manufacturer of “pig iron” in the world. It operated from 1882 until 1970. At its peak, it operated 5 blast furnaces and produced up to 900 tons of iron daily. The furnaces ran 24/7/365. The city of Birmingham was built on the iron industry and was a center of the Industrial Revolution.

The reason Birmingham had multiple pig iron furnaces was because of the close proximity of the materials needed to make the crude iron: iron ore, limestone, and coke (coal).

Large funnel

Control room where raw materials were brought in by train.

Furnace area - pipework

Pig Iron: solid form of crude iron obtained from smelting iron ore in blast furnaces. Pig iron is used as the raw material for cast iron products and steel manufacturing. The term “pig iron” dates back to the time when hot metal was cast into ingots before being charged to the steel plant. The moulds were laid out in sand beds such that they could be fed from a common runner. The group of moulds resembled a litter of sucking pigs, the ingots being called “pigs” and the runner the “sow”.

Furnace detail.

Furnace base.

Furnace towers.

The furnaces were a very dangerous place to work. Injuries included falling to the molten iron and being incinerated, carbon monoxide poisoning, bursting steam pipes, being pulled into massive gears/machinery.

The work was intensely laborious, hot, and dangerous.

Machinery in the blowing engine building.

Window and shadow in the power house.

Lift in the power house.

Furnace towers.

The images were taken while on a guided tour, with limited time, and were taken with hand-held camera. Fujifilm X-T2 camera with Fuji X 16-55mm f/2.8 lens used.

The facility offers occasional photography workshops which I hope to someday attend.

Check out their website (slossfurnaces.com) and other internet search for information if you want to learn more. Enjoy!!

Rare October Ice Storm in Oklahoma

We are experiencing a rare ice storm in October - our meteorologist says a “record” ice storm. Since our trees still have leaves, the ice accumulation is creating extreme weight on the branches, and unfortunately our large trees are breaking everywhere. While out walking with my camera, I heard what sounded like gunshots and then would see large limbs falling, Our trees are devastated.

I did, however, find beauty in the ice formation, and will share with you.

We are having some fall colors, which is nice with the ice.

Some B&W also…

After warming up my hands from the first trip out, I went back and got more images…

Please feel free to visit my other galleries on the website!

Great Salt Plains State Park, Oklahoma

I got up early this morning and made a trip to the Great Salt Plains of Oklahoma, near Cherokee, OK, to be there for sunrise. This first image was taken about 15 min before sunrise, with some decent color in the horizon. This road leads to the crystal-digging area where one can find selenite crystals. The particular crystals found here are clear with an hourglass shape in the center. This area is reported to be the only place in the world where the selenite crystals appear with this formation.

Simple, but interesting landscape.

Dawn on the salt flats.

On the salt flats, patterns develop in the salt.

Salt patterns

This reminds me of the salt pan in Death Valley, although the patterns are more elevated and polygonal in shape.

It was a good morning, although a bit cold as a cool front had arrived with 30 mph N winds.

Check out information on the Great Salt Plains and Selenite crystals by internet search. Interesting!!

Pagosa Junction, CO ghost town

Situated near the San Juan River in southern Colorado are the remnants of a lumber mill community. Developed in the late 1800’s, Pagosa Junction was a railroad town through which the Denver & Rio Grande serviced Pagosa Springs.

Station house, Pagosa Junction; the yellow flowers are Rabbitbrush.

The town, according to history, reached a population of around 450. It included a lumber mill, hotel, restaurant, post office, boarding house, general store, stables, station house for the narrow gauge railroad, pump house, and a church. Several buildings, railroad trestle, pump house and rail car still exist.

Railroad trestle and spur.

Pumphouse detail. It appears that the boiler provided steam to run the pump, which pulled water from the nearby river and filled the water tank, which was used to fill the steam engines. The wooden water tank is present, but has collapsed from aging.

Narrow gauge freight car on rail spur; station house in distance.

On a nearby hillside sits the community’s church, St John the Baptist Catholic Church. Built in 1927, the church still holds Mass once a year.

St John the Baptist Catholic Church, Pagosa Junction, CO.

Iglesia de San Juan

St John the Baptist Catholic Church

The community began to lose viability in the 1930’s, the post office closed in 1954, and the small school lingered until the early 1960’s.

A nice find along a beautiful river valley drive!!

DEATH VALLEY PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKSHOP - NOTICE

Due to the uncertainties of this year regarding Covid, I have cancelled the workshop in November 2020.

I AM PLANNING TO RESCHEDULE FOR APPROXIMATELY EARLY MARCH 2021; DATES TO BE DETERMINED.

CANCELED DUE TO COVID-November 2020 Death Valley National Park photography workshop -

Join me in exploring and photographing our most unique National Park. Death Valley is the “lowest, hotest, driest” and strangest national park in America. We will spend 4 days capturing images from the best locations in the park, such as Badwater saltpan (lowest point in US), Zabriskie Point, Dante’s View, Devil’s Golfcourse, Mesquite sand dunes, Cottonball Basin, 20-mule team Canyon, Ubehebe Crater, and more. Outside the park we may visit Rhyolite ghost town and grab a bowl of chili at the Happy Burro Chili & Beer in nearby Beatty, NV.

Mesquite Dunes at sunrise

We will meet on Wednesday afternoon, November 11 in time for a sunset session followed by dinner. The next three days will be packed with multiple locations, determined by the weather and light. A sunrise shoot on Sunday morning, November 15 will conclude the workshop. The workshop will be small, 4-5 participants, allowing for more guidance and personal help. A block of rooms has been reserved at Stovepipe Wells Village, which is near the center of the park.

Death Valley has become my favorite National Park to photograph, and have been there ten times, which has allowed me to become very familiar with the park.

Panoramic view of Zabriskie Point, Manly Beacon and the badlands.

Spring-fed stream in Cottonball Basin

During the time we will be there, the moon phase will be New Moon, so very dark nights, making it possible to do Milky Way photography in a “dark sky park”.

Milky Way at Harmony Borax Works; 20-mule team wagons.

For details, contact: Merrill Thomas - merrill.thomas@sbcglobal.net, through my website www.merrillthomasphoto.com, or message me in FB.

Dates: November 11-15, 2020

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

In October I assisted professional photographer John Barclay in leading two photography workshops in Acadia National Park, Maine. The fall colors were spectacular and we also visited the lobster fishing villages of Bernard and Stonington. We felt the workshops were very successful and I met many excellent photographers, who were wonderful people. Now that I’m retired, I hope to also lead a few small workshops of my own.

Here are a few of the images from the trip:

Duck Brook Marsh

Along Canon Brook Trail

The Tarn

The fishing village of Stonington, ME is one special place. It is my favorite fishing village to photograph. This location harvests the largest amount of lobster annually in Maine.

Stonington, Maine - at the blue hour.

Stonington harbor, afternoon light

Union Pacific "Big Boy" 4041

Union Pacific recently restored this magnificent steam engine to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of The Transcontinental Railroad. Recently it traveled the Union Pacific railroad circuit and made scheduled stops in multiple locations for the public to view. The nearest location for me to see it was in Salina, KS, where I went the evening it arrived and again the next morning for its departure. I wanted to see the power and hear the steam drive the wheels. This engine was one of twenty-five delivered to Union Pacific, and only two are still in operation. The locomotive is 132 feet long (with tender) and weighs 1.2 million pounds. It was in service 20 years before retiring, and traveled 1.03 million miles. Restoration took several years and was done in Cheyenne, WY.

Amazing!!

Big Boy 4014