 |
| Banana Yucca, Cedar Mesa, Utah. |
Late summer in the high desert of southeast Utah. Cedar Mesa, to be more exact. I am exploring some ancient ruins perched on the rim of a side canyon of Mule Canyon.
I pause before a yucca plant, admiringly. The late afternoon sunlight has the dagger-like leaves and their curly fibrous tendrils aglow. For a brief time my mind is distracted from ancient adobe ruins, and what the people who lived there were like. The Anasazi, or Ancestral Puebloans. The ancient ones. I have no doubt they would have admired this plant, too. They used this species for a number of things, but certainly would have also admired its beauty.
 |
| Cave Towers Ruin setting, Mule Canyon |
Yucca blades to the upper left, blades straight up. A photographic compositional candy store. I trigger the camera and move on. Much to try to notice here on this peaceful summer evening.
Back at home, doing the so-called "post processing" work of the images on my computer, I decide that the yucca image would make a lovely black and white image. Also called monochrome. Back in my darkroom days it would have been called a silver gelatin print, or something similar.
Whatever. The point is to admire the photograph well done, the composition and control of values as seen in the mind's eye at the time of exposure. Portrayal.
 |
| One of the tower ruins. |
© Copyright 2015 Stephen J. Krieg
