Only one owl chick this year. I got there at 7am on Tuesday with the hope of seeing the male adult bring in food, but I never saw him. It was 27º and windy and I didn’t anticipate such weather the day before Spring. The sun cooperated providing excellent light. After about 2 hours the chick was hungry and I got these shots.

20240319_Great Horned Owl_Lancaster County_8677pr4 by Elliott Cobin, on Flickr

20240319_Great Horned Owl_Lancaster County_8996pr4 by Elliott Cobin, on Flickr

20240319_Great Horned Owl_Lancaster County_9412pr4 by Elliott Cobin, on Flickr

20240319_Great Horned Owl_Lancaster County_9827pr4 by Elliott Cobin, on Flickr

20240319_Great Horned Owl_Lancaster County_9239pr4 by Elliott Cobin, on Flickr

Two images, the first shot and processed yesterday, the second shot and processed today. I was not especially pleased with yesterday's attempt --due mainly to difficulties in composition--, so today I set off to try to rectify that. What resulted better conforms to how I view and attempt to utilize composition, but it's still not quite what I want.

Both are multi-image conglomerations made of stacks of layers with variously reduced opacity levels with each layer utilizing diverse blending modes. Aspects of these were 'inspired' by the Pep Ventosa manner of circling a subject and shooting from multi-angles, other aspects were 'inspired' by other photographers/photographic artists who shoot multiple images from different angles then stack and blend accordingly. Still further aspects of these are hopefully my own, while I seek to find the changeability of permanence in impermanence.

Why the title? It's from William Wordsworth. I chose it because Wordsworth wrote that, for him, writing was a matter of 'memory reflected in tranquility'. Which is essentially much the same as how I view the processing of an image.

Here's a couple of pictures I've taken out at the Rocky Mountain National Park and the Grand Canyon. Taken with the Nikon D700, which by the way is an awesome camera because of its sensor's color rendition. It was one of those times when smoke was in the air from all the fires out in California in 2015. At least something good came out of the smoke.

I've waited hours in the cold at Rocky Mountain National Park for the sun to get down to a low angle, just before blue hour. I've tried to take this shot again recently but traveling with friends sometimes results in them not having patience to wait for that shot. I think their stomachs had other ideas and is more powerful than the brain. I'll try again later when I'm alone.

The Grand Canyon shot was another one of those where I had to wait for the sun to go down. But having a folding chair and a glass of wine made that quite pleasant. Plus the air temperature was quite comfortable.

The last shot was taken just west of Cheyenne Wyoming in the Sherman mountains. Again waiting for the sun to go down and plenty of smoke in the air to give it that effect.

Chris

I have long been intrigued by the paintings of Z.Z. Wei. He is an artist from China who some time back set up shop in Washington State and began painting his minimal impressions of eastern Washington wheat country. Several times I have taken a stab at copying his painting style in my digital world. Each time I have given up. But this one I did over the last week may be worth sharing with you. While clearly far from perfect, I see it as a step in the right direction. Here I present two versions; the first is just the barn, wheat fields and and poplar trees. In the second I decided to park my Cadillac in front of the barn. In my view it made the whole scene instantly better. This was all done in Adobe Photoshop starting with a blank file. What are your thoughts? Chris