Mother Nature’s Tattoos…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

If you have been following my blog for any length of time at all you will know that I like to take photographs of very ordinary things, extraordinary things (when the opportunity presents itself) and everything in between.

I’m a detail fanatic, possibly to the point of perversion on occasion (Yes, I did draw a portrait built up entirely of minuscule dots from a 1 millimetre fine-liner black pen once many moons ago) and I’ve been known to embroider on 120 count  (that’s the number of threads to the inch) silk gauze too.

Small is often very beautiful… so it’s no surprise that I’m the idiot photographer who, when there are stunning views to be had within Singapore’s Rasa Sentosa hotel, is the one who’s pointing my camera lens towards the floor.

There’s a good reason for this… (well in my little tiny mind there is at least LOL)… the paving stones in the floor have fossilised plants in them and I find them stunning, intricate and beautiful.

These little plants may have had the misfortune to get trapped in layers of mud instead of falling from their trees and contributing to natures compost but their mud pack served to keep them preserved for millions of years, or at least if the organic contents is long gone, the detailed outline of what they once were remains.

Whilst some resemble what the Amazon river must look like from space, I think others look like Mother’s Nature’s tattoo’s … this is rock formation  ’body-art”,  the detailed artwork that adorns the greater body of nature for millennia and in the kind of tiny detail that human tattoo artists can only dream about achieving.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Attempting to Capture the Elusiveness of Light…

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

Sometimes ok, Often, I wish I was better at photography.

I’m an unashamed point-and-shoot photographer and often get snap happy in the front passenger seat of the car as we travel from place to place,  and usually there just isn’t time travelling with young kids to “set up” shots and get arty-farty over angles, light,  apertures and focal points.

Actually if I’m honest I could write my complete knowledge of apertures and focal points on a postage stamp…and for the most part it doesn’t bother me.

This is one of the rare occasions when we are on the road and see something with our eyes that I just wish I could have recorded better with my lens.

Yes, the van is moving…  the clouds that have rolled in  and daylight is fading  fast as we head home  when suddenly a stream of light that fans out  through the clouds into distinct bands…think Biblical effect… or Old Master technique and you are heading in the right direction. In this instance the bands of light are one of the most well defined I have ever seen… and the “rays”are evenly spaced and the contrast is rather good. The “halo” of light extends out all the way out in front of us and is impressive to say the least. What was particularly amazing was that the rays spread out further than the camera could zoom…  and it was very three dimensional, think of the rays of light being similar in shape to an old fashioned lampshade, we drove towards the middle of it and the rays were around us even behind us to some degree. (sadly I think only the first photo shows this a bit , along the top edge).

Like many of natures wonders it didn’t last very long and so I rattled off as many frames as possible before the road took turns that obscured the best of it.

I know that I really  didn’t do it justice because in real life it was in-your-face-stunning, and produced a “wow look at that” moment in the van, Kiwi Daughter even looked up briefly from the game on the borrowed MP3 player she was playing. Little Mr and our friend’s four year old  completely missed the action because they slept all the way home and Himself concentrated on the road, but my friend and I marvelled at the beauty of  it and did our best to capture the image.

I’m certain that someone more skilled in the art of photography could easily have made a postcard perfect shot of this…  sadly I’m not a skilled in the art photographer. I’ll just show you my efforts and hope that you use your imagination to see that bits that Nature put in that I didn’t manage to capture.

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)

(photograph © Kiwidutch)