Ryan Jordan

Simple Wood Tells a Story

Recently, I found myself hiking in the Hyalites searching for midday beauty where none seemed to exist, at least from a photographer’s eyes. Hiking was certainly more inspiring than picture-taking in the harsh midday light.

So I turned my attention to the forest floor, where I found this long-dead snag. I couldn’t figure out how to fit the whole snag into a photograph without cluttering up the image with lots of background noise, so I instead focused on a small bit of it – a bit that seems to tell the life story of the snag: the storms it’s seen, the winter’s it’s weathered, and perhaps, the bolt of lightning that ultimately spelled its demise.

Sometimes, we look for grand landscapes to inspire us, when instead, the inspiration can be reflected in the smallest, and most mundane, of places that provide windows into the grandeur of ages gone by – you know, like that toenail that is about to fall off…

Photo: Olympus E-P1, m.Zuiko 17mm, f/9.0 1/125 sec.