by from the garden
Recently, when pruning some shrubs in our garden, a tube-like piece of bark slipped off one branch. The curl of the bark, the almost transparent parts, its textures and colours all appealed to me and I brought it indoors to play with.
The results from the scanner were not good as there is too much depth, so I left it on the windowsill. The next day when I walked past it, I was struck by the bright sunlight on it and decided to try the camera. The extreme contrasts were challenging to work with, but I think these images capture some of the beauty and intriguing shapes and textures.
April 24, 2015 in Nature, Photoworks, Textures by Marja-Leena
Oh, I can imagine your excitement. How joyous and frustrating such finds are. Joyous because of the inherent beauty, and frustrating until one can see how you can exploit the qualities for your own expression.
I probably should have set up the good camera on a tripod and tried for some macro photos. Maybe I will still do that though the bark is drying and darkening. I do love to look closely at things like this.
It never seems to be possible deliberately to create such beauty; it just happens, whilst at the same time successfully hiding the complex processes that nature employs to create it. I wonder if She knows.
It’s that mystery that makes it all so wondrous, isn’t it?
It strikes me as strange and very nice that the piece of bark gave itself to you. It really is lovely and I do hope you’ll be able to set up the macro camera so we’ll be able to see more.
Susan, a gift it was. Thanks for the encouragement – I may try that mcaro yet! It’s been a while since I’ve used it so Imay have to relearn it after too long away!
beautiful..and interesting seeing the woodgrain for scale
Thanks gz, and welcome to my site! I’ve seen you somewhere before and look forward to visiting your blog.
Long time ago we saw a historical program in our TV. It handled Novgorod and the time of “Rus-brothers” (no proof if such brothers ever existed!), as they suspect that the old strata is so old in the bottom of the city. There were archaeological diggings and they found earliest writings there, maybe in some grave, with birch bark and scribbling, which seem to be done with sut or ash.
Perfectly clear waiting. I just can’t now remember was it in runes or what. And have they managed to decipher the language, maybe they had just found the bark. Could’ve been some uralic old version of Finnish, as slavic people were not there yet, it would’ve been in Viking era.
I wish that all this stupid aggressions would stop, and that there would be peace, not threats.
Ripsa, that sounds familiar, perhaps I’d seen something about it. I wonder if we can find that information again.
I agree, I too wish everyone would calm down and get along! There are so many places with strife around the world.
I agree. Life is hard enough without dreaming up all these fake conflicts. I really do like these photos! Remarkable, really.
Glad you like these, Hattie! I know how you like strong textures just as I do.
Sometimes I think if women ruled the world there would not be so many conflicts, but then I realize there are some war-like women out there as well … perhaps trying to be man-like?
I can’t help thinking that something strove hard to break out of its egg-case or weird chrysalis or some such. And I wonder whether it crawled away, or whether it waited for wings to dry and then flew.
“Stupid aggressions.” Yes. “Love one another” seems to be a very difficult injunction.
Marly, the fact that this bark stayed together except for the split down one side is what intrigued me so much – I’ve never seen this before. You’ve described it beautifully, thank you, I love the idea of this being an egg-case or chrysalis.