Chasing Light: Backyard

There’s no place like home, right? So the last few days, I did all of my photography within a few miles of our house, including some fall foilage shots taken right off the deck. Then the cheerful songbirds showed up, plucking tiny insects from the yellowing aspens, at times trying to hover like a hummingbird to sip raindrops from the leaves.

The landscape shots in the set were all taken from along the shore of the Frisco Peninsula near the U.S. Forest Service Pine Cove campground … snow on the Grays and Torreys and cloudplay over the town of Frisco. Look closely and you’ll see the town — in one of the shots, you’re looking right up Main Street. All the shots were taken with one of the original Canon EOS Rebels and a 75-300 mm Tamron zoom.

Looking at my home town from this perspective makes me realize how closely connected we are to the mountains around us. It’s really quite a precarious spot, perched right in the apron of those rocky folds, on the frontier of high mountain living — only a tiny percentage of the world’s population lives at 3,000 meters elevation.

I see a need to strengthen our commitment to stewardship of the Earth and its resources in a sustainable way. I see the water cycle in the slabs of steam rising from the drippy forest. I see the fungi on the forest floor connected to the leaves that provide food for the birds. I see the cycles of the seasons in the snow on the distant peaks.