Category: landscape

Tyler Nordgreen

Tyler Nordgreen, “Old Faithful and Night Sky”

Tyler Nordgreen is an astronomer and professor of physics at the University of Redlands, California. He earned a BA in physics from Reed College and an MS and PHD in astronomy from Cornell University. Before joining the University of Redlands in 2001, Nordgreen was an astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station and the Lowell Observatory.

Nordgren has helped document the parks’ night skies with photography that has been on display in galleries from New York City to Flagstaff, Arizona, and is on display in a number of national parks.

The Log Bridge

Photographer Unknown, (The Log Bridge)

“Houses built on bridges are scandals. A bridge wants to not be. If it could choose its shape, a bridge would be no shape, an unspace to link One-place-town to Another-place-town over a river or a road or a tangle of railway tracks or a quarry, or to attach an island to another island or to the continent from which it strains. The dream of a bridge is of a woman standing at one side of a gorge and stepping out as if her job is to die, but when her foot falls it meets the ground right on the other side. A bridge is just better than no bridge but its horizon is gaplessness, and the fact of itself should still shame it. But someone had built on this bridge, drawn attention to its matter and failure. An arrogance that thrilled me.”
― China Miéville, The Census Taker

 

Torii Gates

Photographer Unknown, “Torii Gates, Fushimi Inari Shrine, Mount Inari, Japan”

In the seventh century the Hata family began construction of the Fushimi Inari shrine. A shrine dedicated to Inari, the god of rice and sake. Over the centuries, as Japan slowly transformed itself from an agricultural nation to an industrial one, the shrine became important for providing luck in business. It is now one of Japan’s most visited shrine.

One of the main attractions is the climb to the top of the mount which is lined with over 4000 Torii gates. They form a glowing red tunnel that winds itself up the narrow mountain path. The oldest gates are from the 8th century, and new ones are added constantly. Each of the gates has been donated by a Japanese business to insure them luck.

Winter’s Snow

Photographer Unknown, (Winter’s Snow)

“I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal