Two Hearts

Pink pterodactyl morning wisp
Salmon finless shark,
Gaping jaws attack

Mauve bonefish,
Bonefish, what’s a bonefish?
I don’t know, yet there it is,
Cutting blue with a razorback spine.

A spirit hawk made from reeds
Two disintegrating hearts,
Overlapped, but spreading
Dissolving.
Wait, no, they’re merging, and will be two no more. Full Post»

Superior Whale

I like the slurping sound that sometimes happens when waves lap against a large rock. When it does it sounds like a surfacing manatee or miniature whale. I heard such a sound once while walking a shore crest of Lake Superior. I turned to the lake and for an instant thought a gray rock ten yards from shore was some sort of non-existent Superior whale. If only. Full Post»

My New Logo

In Boquillas Canyon where ocotillo plants grow like dancing octopi and ochre rock slabs pile stacked like God’s dominos, I found my new Ryan Rodgers’ Photography logo. I got a webpage coming up see, and there should be some little image to stick in the corner. I spied my man from a trail that looks down on the Rio Grande, my cantankerous, stubborn, resilient son of a biscuit mascot. My Wilson. My bulldog. My Viking.

Why? Because, this stone face embodies the qualities it’ll take to successfully do, what I’m trying to do. First of all, Mr. Rock Face is around to stay. Granted, in geologic time he won’t be around forever, but it’s a pretty safe bet some human generations will quietly pass before weathering erodes this surly countenance. What better insignia for outdoor photography than a shape taken directly from the outdoors?

I could even derive a more interesting company name—Rock Face Photography, Stone Face Photography, but that’s probably stretching things. Rock Face implies climbing and Stone Face a sort of weird toughness. Besides, I’m a believer in, at least in a few things, waiting for the solution to present itself.

Back when I was starting the Appalachian Trail (people who know me are saying, oh no, not that again) I had to wait a while to get a trail name. Some less romantically inhibited hikers, chose their own. Some good and funny, others quite self-complementary—Lone Wolf, Iron Man… I wanted mine to be given, but six weeks into the hike I was still waiting. Finally I got it one day at a swimming hole in Virginia. Three other hikers and I were drying off on little sand beach when a local woman showed up with her daughter from a nearby road. She turned around and drove to a store to bring us Coke’s and cantaloupes. The daughter asked our names, and after the others rattled off their colorful monikers (Midnight Moon, Happy Feet, Appalachian Yankee), I spit out my regular name. “You should be Cantaloupe,” the little girl said, and for the next three years, I was.

So after brainstorming for months on a logo, I walked right by one, and ain’t he a beaut, straight from the land. How perfect for photography composed of just that.

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