Eagle Marsh
This is the Eagle Marsh lookout at the Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge .
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The Experience of Waterfalls
This is Majestic Falls, in the McDowell Creek Falls area, taken on a morning that was supposed to be cloudy but turned out sunny. Fortunately we made it there before the sun became a problem. Taken with a long exposure, the falling water appears silky smooth, almost like a wisp. This photographic approach is very…
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Concepts | Essay | Photographs
An Example of Local Wonder
This is a picture of a dandelion, taken along a small lake at a local state park. I’m not sure why it caught my eye. After all, it’s just a weed, something that is generally not thought about much except as a problem, or perhaps occasionally for making tea. For whatever reason, I took this…
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Thoughts on Change
When I first published this picture, I described it as “The process of change”. Very simply, it was because that captured the process of the leaves changing from green to red. At the time, I didn’t have any particular ideas of what it illustrated about change, but I think one can see various possibilities in…
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Concepts | Essay | Photographs
Seeing Past Bias
We all have biases that affect how we see the world. As a photographer, one of the things I strive to learn is to see beauty in the world even when it’s not obvious. For example, my bias may be to see the obviously ugly, natural appearance of something, but I will choose to seek…
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Perhaps Art Can Help Explore Consciousness
It often seems as if science has explained the basics of how the world works, and the remaining mysteries are interesting details that aren’t directly related to daily life. Questions about the very beginning of the universe or what’s going on in black holes may be interesting and fundamental to an ultimate theory of everything,…
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Concepts | Essay | Museums | VR Photographs
VR Photography and Museums
For a recent 360 photography project, I took a VR photograph inside of an old, water-powered mill that has been turned into a state park: Thompson’s Mills in Shedd, Oregon. The purpose was to make a picture for the Worldwide Panorama Project quarterly theme of “Museums”. The picture here is a “little planet” view of…
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Concepts | Essay | Photographs
Clear as Glass (part 2)
In the previous essay, I discussed the possibility that the brain is necessary to consciousness, but that it is not sufficient. In other words, there seems to be something needed beyond just material structures. We explored these ideas by considering the metaphor of a stained glass window, illustrating the possibility that we need to continue…
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Concepts | Essay | Photographs
Clear as Glass
This picture of a stained glass window is from a spherical picture taken in the sanctuary of a church. This particular church is filled with similar windows, and they are seen as one of the defining characteristics of the building. Stained glass windows are also interesting topics/objects with which to explore the implications of necessity…
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Concepts | Essay | Photographs
It’s All Relative
This is a simple picture of a gear with the most distant portion blurred. When I posted it on Instagram, I described it as “Emerging from the mists of time.” The idea was that this obviously old mechanism was present as a display, somehow representing its use many years ago. The description was meant to…