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The West

I remember the huge fields in my backyard where the grass got so tall that a little crouching could hide you completely. The large Jacaranda tree whose branches seemed to reach out impossibly from its trunk hovering above. Forests of Ivy marching over our fence from the over-infested neighbors yard. These images are reflections of these and other memories of nature collected mostly from my own backyard paradise as a child. But all collective of the westerly feeling under which I grew. And that impressed upon me its sense of aesthetics as part of my own.

Sprawling coast live oak with twisting limbs above a boulder-strewn garden slope of ferns and grasses — Botanical Tree

Wind-shaped cypresses along a steep hillside of pale dry grass under a dark clear sky — Chaparral

Cracked dry lakebed with a sailing stone and its long track, dark mountains and streaked cloud above — Racetrack 2 Death Valley, CA

Grassy rolling hillside with a jutting rock outcrop and one small tree on the slope below — Figuroa Mountain 3

Rusting hull of a beached shipwreck on a cobble shore, birds perched along its rail and wheeling overhead — Baja Shipwreck

Low sun flaring through leaning oak trunks, misty rays crossing an open grove floor of fallen leaves — Toro Canyon Oaks 1

Small rock rising from surf smoothed to mist by long exposure, dark sand berm sweeping across foreground — Oregon Rock

Five coils of black corrugated pipe stacked against a peeling clapboard shed on gravel under grey cloud — Santa Barbara Coils

Three small blossoming trees on a grassy bench below a towering layered sandstone canyon wall — Three Siblings Springdale, UT

Wooden plank swing suspended from a bare oak limb in a hazy backlit field ringed by hills — Trees Wing

Weathered white boulders rising from a still shallow pool, dry brush and brooding cloud above — Piedras Blancas

Steeply angled view up a cracked empty swimming pool wall, ladder and painted depth marker ten — Mexico 1

Concrete silo lit at night in weedy field, power lines overhead and short star trails streaking the sky — Apple Valley Silo

Sea stack framed between dark headland rocks, long exposure smoothing surf and streaking cloud overhead — Big Sur 1

Empty floating docks on a calm lake at dusk, banded cloud above distant ridgeline, long exposure — Lake Crowley

Solitary bare oak on a grassy ridge below piled cumulus, bald hillside falling away to the right — Figuroa Mountain

Narrow dirt trail winding through dense rainforest of sword ferns and moss-hung conifers in low light — HOH Path Forks, WA

Weathered clapboard barn with sagging shingle roof beside wooden stock corrals under wispy cirrus cloud — Montana Barn

Dead bare trees and pale reeds standing in still water, snow-capped mountains behind under dark sky — Owens River Lone Pine, CA

Cluster of jagged tufa spires on a dark desert flat, dirt tracks curving through scrub in foreground — Trona Pinnacles Trona, CA

Large parabolic radio dish on sagebrush plain with smaller dishes in a line beneath heavy storm cloud — Owens Valley Radio Observatory Big Pine, CA

Rocky cove opening to a distant sea stack, long exposure blurring surf into mist and streaking cloud — Bigsur

Dark conical peak above pale eroded badland ridges, desert scrub in the foreground under a heavy sky — Death Vallery Sunset

Pale multi-trunked tree beside a still lagoon fringed with reeds, wooded shoreline soft in the distance — Bird Refuge

Gutted military transport aircraft with severed fuselage and towering tail fin on dry desert ground, more wrecks behind — Airplane Graveyard

Infrared-white cottonwoods below a sandstone canyon rim, long exposure smearing lenticular cloud across a dark sky — Southern Utah

Broad backlit leaves filling the frame beneath a dark tree canopy, bright specks of sky between branches — Alice Keck Park Santa Barbara, CA

Concrete heron statue on a stump in a suburban front garden beside a clapboard house, palm and shrubs around — Protector Stork

Freestanding stone wall pierced by three arches on a clipped hillside garden, storm cloud massing behind — Tea Bowls 1

Single shaft of sunlight breaking through overcast onto the sea, windblown trees on a grassy headland at left — Beam of Light

Weathered cylindrical fuel tank on cracked ground with scattered debris and dry brush, long exposure streaking cloud — Gas Tank

Moss-draped branches hanging through dense temperate rainforest, ferns sprouting from a cut stump in soft light — HOH Rainforest 2