Waterton Lake Eclipse

Explanation: Recorded on April 15th, this total lunar eclipse sequence looks south down icy Waterton Lake from the Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada, planet Earth. The most distant horizon includes peaks in Glacier National Park, USA. An exposure every 10 minutes captured the Moon’s position and eclipse phase, as it arced, left to right, above the rugged skyline and Waterton town lights. In fact, the sequence effectively measures the roughly 80 minute duration of the total phase of the eclipse. Around 270 BC, the Greek astronomer Aristarchus also measured the duration of lunar eclipses – though probably without the benefit of digital clocks and cameras. Still, using geometry, he devised a simple and impressively accurate way to calculate the Moon’s distance, in terms of the radius of planet Earth, from the eclipse duration. This modern eclipse sequence also tracks the successive positions of Mars, above and right of the Moon, bright star Spica next to the reddened lunar disk, and Saturn to the left and below.

Image Credit & Copyright: Yuichi Takasaka

RainBow Over Two Medicine Lake

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.

Photo by: Frank Krahmer
Quote by: John Muir
Quote provided by: CZ
Location: Glacier National Park, Montana, USA

A Magnificent Construct

What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

Photo by: Peter Eck Brasil
Taken on: November 15, 2009
Quote by: Albert Einstein
Quote provided by: CZ

Fire Of Fall

Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies,
Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:
The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays,
On ev’ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays;
Harmonious lays the feather’d race resume,
Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume.

By John De Bord Photography
Taken on: October 2, 2011
Location: Autumn sunrise over Lake Estes, Estes Park, Colorado
Poem by: Phyllis Wheatley, A Hymn to the Morning
Poem provided by: CZ

Reflected

A lake is a landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

Photo by: m-eralp
Location: Ladun Maja, Jyväskylä Finland
Quote by: Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Quote provided by: CZ

Paulk Lake SunSet

And yet day and night meet fleetingly at twilight and dawn. And their merging sometimes affords the beholder the most enchanted moments of all the twenty four hours. A sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.

WallPaper
Quote by Mary Balogh, A Summer to Remember
Quote provided by CZ
Location: Georgia, USA

Lake Natron Turns Animals To Stone

calcified fish eagle, lake natron, 2012
image © nick brandt 2013 / courtesy of hasted kraeutler gallery, NY

While traveling northern tanzania for a pictorial journey of east africa, british photographer Nick Brandt unexpectedly came upon a number dead birds and bats that appeared to be made out of stone. the animals had washed up along the shoreline of the lethal lake natron, a salt lake located near the kenyan border. the waterway contains a deadly chemical composition — a very high soda and salt content — which causes any creature who dares to dip in to die, calcify, and remain perfectly preserved as they dry. brandt notes that the chemical level was so extreme, that while he was capturing the images, the ink stripped off his kodak film boxes within just a few seconds.

The mummified species are the eerie aftermath of nature’s nightmarish unpredictability. for his monochrome portraits, brandt carefully removes the found birds from the water and places them in living positions, perching them on branches, and arranging them as floating figures on the stagnant shore. the posed compositions reanimate the lifeless animals, alive again in death. brandt has sent designboom images of the series of inanimate animals, which you can see below:


calcified flamingo, lake natron, 2010
image © nick brandt 2013 / courtesy of hasted kraeutler gallery, NY


calcified dove, lake natron, 2010
image © nick brandt 2013 / courtesy of hasted kraeutler gallery, NY


calcified bat II, lake natron, 2012
image © nick brandt 2013 / courtesy of hasted kraeutler gallery, NY


calcified songbird, lake natron, 2010 
image © nick brandt 2013 / courtesy of hasted kraeutler gallery, NY


calcified swallow, lake natron, 2012
image © nick brandt 2013 / courtesy of hasted kraeutler gallery, NY