The Aerial Horizon
Forget where your feet are and simply enjoy the view.
The Embrace of an Appalachian Dawn
Along the Appalachian Mountains the heavy humid air that fills the narrow valleys captures the glow of sunrise long before the rays of direct sunlight reach them. The Appalachians always stir something in my soul when I descend across their long smooth contours…the warm glow tells a story of our home and the thick sultry appalachian embrace of a late Summer morning that lives in the moments before the day rudely cuts in and shatters the mood with its harsh white streams of light. As I revisit this moment and linger in it, I feel its warmth return as momentary and delightful as a first embrace. The glowing surface of West Virginia’s Storm Mountain Lake backlights the smoke plume from its power plant and creates a crisp image in the midst of twilight. As we advance along the ridges, lines of wind turbines appear, their white vertical shafts or stanchions illuminated with the first rays of daylight. While these features may appear as imperfections in the light of day, they are beautiful details that add dimension in the predawn glow.
The Epochal Stonecutter
The landscaping of our planet happens in two ways…one way is additive while the other is subtractive…the additive process can be observed daily in the slow but constant violent molten churn of minor volcanoes along the Pacific Rim, but a more subtle and slow subtractive process is at work in the heart of North America. No Man’s Mesa in southern Utah provides us with a glimpse into the process. This great mesa stands out from the high desert with its steep cliff faces and deep shadows providing a sense of its dimension. The San Juan River runs around it to the north and from its path we can imagine the historic flow of water acting on the landscape to trim and erode the face of earth and stone…turning mountains to mesas to buttes to lone pinnacles…patiently carving and crafting…the ultimate epochal stonecutter practicing its art on the irregular plain. Wind and gravity also play their parts, but water is the master of this patient evolution.
Tumult in the Troposphere
Most of my time in the sky, of late, has been spent avoiding thunderstorms and high intensity precipitation…it’s still Summer, so this is the name of the game. The funny thing about thunderstorms is that, for all their beauty, they are dangerous living things…they start out as soft billowy cumulous clouds and as they gather radiant energy and rising water vapor condenses, they grow up and take on their mature form. While on their way up, they are volatile and turbulent. As their growth comes in spurts, they flatten and expand with each invisible boundary they encounter until the latent heat released by the condensing vapor provides enough energy to continue their upward momentum toward the Tropopause and their natural limit. While this storm is off the Florida coast and tops out at about 45,000 feet (note: this photo is from 38,000 feet), closer to the equator, the Tropopause is higher and storms may reach closer to 60,000 feet. We look for the direction of the “anvil top” that blows off downwind from the cell and fly upwind when possible…Not only is the ride rough in the turbulent shadow of the storm, but nasty stuff like hail can be thrown downwind as far as 50 miles…the ride is smoother upwind and we all like that. In broad daylight, the danger of these cells is somewhat insidious as they don’t look threatening until you get up close…at night, we can see the lightening and the danger is more obvious…In the black and white photograph, the tumult of the cumulonimbus cloud appears more dramatic and its nature is better revealed.
Reflections of the Calm Before…
Soft images of small billowy cumulous clouds reflect on the calm surface of the Atlantic Ocean as the sun gradually warms the ocean and the morning’s weather builds. Soon this innocuous looking line of clouds will shatter their reflections as they churn the water beneath with their downdrafts as they grow into nimbus clouds. Behind this nascent line, a towering cumulonimbus cloud forms it anvil top and unleashes its energy on the airmass below.
Chasm in the Desert Plain
Glen Canyon cuts a sprawling path through the high desert plain that spans southern Utah and Arizona. In the name of progress, the Colorado River was dammed in 1964 to form what is now Lake Powell. The dam spanned the chasm, not to create a path, but to alter it and to store water for the population of the southwestern United States. It’s the second largest man-made reservoir in the U.S. In the black and white image, the dark hue of the lake’s surface creates a sense of the canyon’s vastness. Lake Powell and Glen Canyon is a story of man containing and shaping the natural world for his own benefit, but in so doing, creating an environment that draws myriad admirers into the landscape to appreciate the beauty of the desert lands.
I look upon the canyon and its dark waters and I am reminded of Will Allen Dromgoole’s poem, “The Bridge Builder”
An old man going a lone highway,Came, at the evening cold and gray,To a chasm vast and deep and wide.Through which was flowing a sullen tideThe old man crossed in the twilight dim,The sullen stream had no fear for him;But he turned when safe on the other sideAnd built a bridge to span the tide.“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,“You are wasting your strength with building here;Your journey will end with the ending day,You never again will pass this way;You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,Why build this bridge at evening tide?”The builder lifted his old gray head;“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,“There followed after me to-dayA youth whose feet must pass this way.This chasm that has been as naught to meTo that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”
Cloud Surfing
As the day fades away and evening thunderstorms continue to blow on the horizon, we are left with our imaginations to experience a little cloud surfing. The storms provide the rip curl while, below us, the earthly shadows assume the depth and darkness of the ocean. The soft rumble of light turbulence slapping the underside of our wings reminds us of our motion through a fluid atmosphere and connects us to the aerial landscape. The waves fade into darkness and we continue to ride through the night on the rolling sea.
Head-on Into Night
Flying head-on into night, the last sliver of daylight illuminates the eastern sky as the terminator slips toward us from beyond. We are in the midst of an abstract dream as it is both night and day. The darkness emerging from the aerial horizon is more distinct and defined than the fading light being consumed by the shadow. From behind us, the low sun casts the shadow of our jet on the horizon directly in front of us and the light scatters back at us in radiant shadowy rays as if some dark sun were peaking out of the twilight. This fleeting view into the twilight zone lasts for a long moment before being consumed by the darkness and leaving us to reflect on our wakeful dream.
Appalachian Highlights
I am haunted by the image that greets me each time I cross the Appalachians in the twilight. The sun has not yet touched these rivers and minor valleys, yet the fog that fills them consumes every bit of available light and glows in the indigo of twilight with a luminance that calls out like a soft voice in the darkness luring into its heart. The mist highlights the edges of the hidden landscape, clutching and pulling itself along each ridge and crevice as though tendrils of ivy creeping toward sunlight. This scene repeats itself each morning as the moist summer air lingers in the landscape lending an air of mysticism to these remote paths.
Skimming the Edge of Reality
When we see things through a black and white lens, our perception of reality is skewed by the distance between the extremes…But when we perceive the broad spectrum of gray variations that truly define our world, we begin to understand the values of warmth and contrast. These values exist in delicate balance and bring beauty to a monochromatic landscape…Not unlike the balance between opposing viewpoints or human personalities. When balanced, we see the whole picture and approach one another with a sense of fairness that allows the grey values of our world to gradually transition between the spaces we occupy. These transitions fill the chasm that divides us in our polarized perspectives and remind us that we are more similar than we are different. As we skim our way across the troposphere and take in the view of Sedona and Sycamore Canyon, we feel as though we are watching the earth from afar and this distance allows us to see the transitioning grays of the landscape as a single varied tapestry. The detail of the transitions between black and white adds richness to that tapestry and challenges our minds to understand something greater than ourselves.
Luster of Power in Twilight
In the twilight of the Mojave Desert, the Ivanpah Solar Power Plant glows with a reflective luster as it collects the last of the day’s light. The boilers glow red at the center of these thermal generators. Whether this glow is the result of heat, or light, or fire is impossible to perceive in the faint light of the shadows, but the hot color at the heart of the solar arrays conveys a sense of power and energy lying passively on the desert floor.
Seeing Fire and Rain
Following the smoking trail of a meteor
Two thunderstorms light off
Awaiting Orion’s appearance as we follow Taurus’ ascent, storms hover on the horizon covering Oklahoma’s landscape. First we see a meteor and its swirling smoke trail as it flames out near the horizon. The meteor is close enough and big enough that it appears as a burning smoking projectile rather than the sharp white line of light we are accustomed to seeing as meteors glance off the atmosphere. Moments later in the same quadrant of sky, two cells light off and send lightning bolts to earth amid their showers. Fire and rain falling to earth at once triggering memories of old songs… Lest we be lulled into a false sense of security by the otherwise starlit night, we are reminded to keep a weather eye on the horizon and to watch the heavens for their competing light show.
Light on the Blue Ridge; Fog in the Valley
As the sun peeks over the cloud covered horizon, the peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains are gradually illuminated while the Shenandoah Valley remains in their predawn shadows. Clutching to each valley and hollow, fog flows through the narrow lowlands of Southwest Virginia like silver filigree tracing the Appalachians waiting for sunlight to reveal its bright luster. In stark contrast to the brilliant colors of dawn above the horizon, the earth below appears in the monochromatic tones of night…
Pilot Magic…Flying Through Ethereal Hoops
In my previous post, I wrote about chasing sunset and the magical scene that the rays of light and persistent sundog created…This is the corollary to that scene…We are in it…We live here…We work here…We persevere here…We laugh here…We dream here. Our essence is consumed by the world that surrounds us and the manner in which we interpret its beauty as we cruise along at 40,000 feet. A passing aircraft performs pilot magic and flies through our sundog…his ethereal hoop…and his contrail is illuminated with a pink-golden luster as he touches the rainbow and becomes part of the scene. Did you ever dream of touching a rainbow? The funny thing is that you probably do it all the time and never know it…When the gloom lifts from any storm that surrounds you, just as the sunlight hits your face amid the last drops of water and mist, you are standing in the rainbow…You are just too close and too involved to see it. Get a little distance and have a little faith that for every storm you weather, you end up awash in the light of a rainbow. It’s not really magic, but it is a good secret. Share it with your friends.
Suspended and Timeless
Suspended and timeless in a misty dream, we coast along in a thin veil of water vapor as we stare at the frozen sun and wonder at the sundog that surrounds it. We left the East Coast at sunset, traveling at eight miles a minute, and witnessed a sunset that lasted from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Sierras. The persistent light on our nose refracted through the mist and, for much of our journey, presented a faint but distinct sundog encircling the sun. The rainbow effect of the sundog and the streaming light from the low sun created a magical scene as we traced the path of light across the clouds beneath us.
Wandering the Maze
The Green River wanders the maze of the Canyonlands, the highlights of its brushed smooth banks revealing where the river crept out of its bed to peek at the path ahead. In this part of the Canyonlands of Utah, the colors of earth are deep and dusty tones of burnt orange and red. In black and white, we feel the severity of the landscape through the multi-tonal grays and the texture of the desert is revealed to our perception as its colored mask is lifted away.
Rising from the Cascades
As we work from the snow-covered peaks of mountains, downward into the steep ravines and narrow valleys, we wander through the jagged landscape toward the horizon where Mount Rainier emerges as if rising from a white-capped sea of stone. I enjoyed the depth of this photograph in color, but the black and white rendering is hypnotizing and I am drawn into each crevice with a greater appreciation of the hues and subtle gradients that are hidden in the greens and blues of reality.
Olijeto Mesa – Red Earth Yielding to Black and White
I’m going back and working through my aerial photographs looking for powerful black and white images. Capturing the aerial horizon and working backwards into the landscape of the American Southwest provides an opportunity to look closer at the tonal variations in the landscape. Here, Olijeto Mesa stretches across Monument Valley and dwarfs the other massive mesas and buttes that comprise the landscape. I’m going to take some time to share some of the black and whites, interspersing them with the color photos that I routinely share. These will be posts that are more about the visual image than the thoughts that I seek to communicate through the photographs. Please let me know what you like about these images and if you share a sense of the power of the black and white image.
Wisps of Sand
A scumble layer painted across the landscape of Idaho dulls the landscape and mutes the contrast between the burnt sienna of grasslands and the bright green shades of cultivated lands. The curved strokes of cloud mimic the flow of Sand Mountain’s “French curve.” A graceful introduction to the landscape, the wisps of cloud are drawn across the earth like drifting sands whose paths we follow through the scene. This expression of harmony between earth and sky has a mystical quality that hints at the interconnectedness of the elements among which we travel.
Twisted Spires
Storms develop over the Gulf of Mexico as they twist and turn in a rapid, graceful and violent thrust of vertical motion. Below these twisted spires of cloud, showers move in sweeping lines as if they are dragging the tails of heavy curtains across the surface of the gulf. The dynamic motion of these cells gives us a clue as to the immense forces that drive them. We watch the effect of water transitioning between states while being acted upon by the sun’s radiant energy, the earth’s gravity and Coriolis forces…Though their composition and circumstances may be similar, no two storms are ever the same. To comprehend the simultaneous creative and destructive power of these systems is beyond our grasp and we are left to admire and revere them…from a respectable distance.
Veiled Beauty
Even in the darkest of storms there is beauty and light. Every storm grows vertically, becoming a threatening, life changing force of stratospheric proportions until it runs out of energy and, exhausted, bounces off the tropopause and falls back to earth in a fury only to begin the cycle again. But the beauty lies in its nature, in the foment of its lifecycle, and in the light that diffuses through its veil of showers. In our darkest moments, if we look at the opportunities that arise out of momentary misfortunes, we can see light through the storm. We appreciate its beauty and imagine away its dark edges…They are only dark because we fail to see the light through them… As we persist in looking for the veiled light beyond the storm, we ignore the darkness, and we eliminate fear…then on the sunny side of our storms, we look back at billowing white clouds as rainbows hang on curtains of rain…the dark edges fall away and this becomes our memory of the storm.
The Aerial Horizon – Photography
The Aerial Horizon 
