Seeing and Sharing Beauty

Year: 2014

Tree-riffic!

Light Swept
Light Swept

If you’d like to experience a Magic Kingdom, but don’t have the time, money, or patience to fly to Disney World, then this is for you — the TREE ILLUMINATION display at Morton Arboretum in Lisle IL.  See their website to order tickets online.

For sharp photos, I’d recommend using a tripod, especially since your shutter speeds will be longer than usual.

And no need for “light painting” — the arboretum supplies all the lighting and music!

Click on the thumbnails below to see full-size images from this enchanting photo shoot.

Majesty Doubled

Majesty Doubled

Majesty Doubled, Sierra Nevada mountains near Bishop, california

This photograph could have been called “Persistence”.

Not the persistence of mountains, not the persistence of trees, not the persistence of water and clouds.

This location is not in any Guide Book or Google Map.  It’s not on anyone’s GPS tracking device.  This location — the place where I was standing to make this photograph — was discovered through Persistence.

And it was not discovered by MY persistence but by my friend Steve Ornberg‘s persistence!

After a long day of mostly cloudy skies, the sun came out and we wanted to drive around and see what we could find.  I hiked into a field for an hour and had a really mediocre composition of a cotton wood tree from a really bad angle.  I was fed up and wanted to quit for the day.

Then good old Steve, as we were driving back to our hotel, said “Hey, I wonder what’s up this way.”

We followed a nondescript dirt road for about a hundred yards and came upon an irrigation pond that served as a perfectly positioned reflecting pond.  It doubled the majesty of the Eastern Sierra mountains in the west.

Majesty Doubled!

North Lake Sunrise

North Lake Sunrise

Sunrise on North Lake, Eastern Sierra, Near Bishop, California

“My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.”

– Michael J. Fox

I could have become very unhappy on this trip because of a certain expectation — that the aspen leaves would have been present on the trees, creating a bright yellow band on the distant shoreline.

Instead, the leaves were gone, wiped away by a winter storm the day before.

Instead, an even more glorious show of yellow beyond my expectations appeared, reflected in the icy covering on North Lake.

Instead, I experienced and accepted this marvelous morning with great gratitude and happiness.