Bloomsday Spectacular

                                God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.

                                                                                                              -- Martin Luther

Last Tuesday, June 16, was Bloomsday, the 101st anniversary of Leopold Bloom's odyssey through Dublin chronicled in James Joyce's Ulysses.  And here in Corrales, the Universe celebrated with a bloom of cumulonimbus clouds at sunset.

It all started as it usually does:  in the afternoon, the land warms up and moist air begins to rise, generating a large cumulonimbus formation . . . in this case, not one, but two adjacent to each other.  Here's how they appeared looking east from our back yard.  One cloud stack is in the foreground in the center, the other in the background on the right.

7:28p MDT

For scale purposes, the top of the mountain in the background is about 5,000 feet above the average terrain, which is already 6,000 feet above sea level.

Instead of growing primarily vertically, these stacks began to blossom as if the center were being pushed down and the clouds on the circumference were being pushed up and outward:

 

8:03p MDT

Sunset this evening was at 8:22p.  As the sun neared the horizon, the color began to emerge . . .

8:19p

And then, for a few minutes after sunset, the clouds were still catching direct sunlight, and the color simply exploded:

8:30p

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Fifteen minutes after official sunset, the underside of the clouds began to fall into shadow while the upper levels still blazed:

8:37p

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Twenty minutes after official sunset, the color was almost completely gone:

8:42p

But even after the color disappeared, the clouds continued to evolve:

8:54p

In addition to the large-scale grandeur, there was also great beauty in the details:

8:24p

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A beautiful ending to Bloomsday in Corrales!


If you would like to see these images in a larger format, visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.


Enjoy!

Listening for the Whispers of Truth

                                                     It is only when we silence the blaring sounds of our daily existence

                                                     that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, 

                                                     as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.

                                                                                                         -- K.T. Jong

For the past year I have been working on a thematic photography project as part of a program that I direct for our local camera club.  The goal of the effort is for each participant to create a series of no more than 12 images that illustrate a single concept, topic, or idea.  And, over time, as new images are made, stronger images can replace weaker ones, creating an increasingly robust series.

Each photographer also writes an "Artist's Statement" describing the topic and its motivation.  My project is entitled "Solitary Journeys: Listening for the Whispers of Truth."   Here's my Artist's Statement:

There is virtue in solitary pursuits.  They provide redemption and renewal.  They incubate the spirit and restore the soul.  They create a space for personhood and purpose to unfold and emerge.

These benefits do not come from group activities; they arise from being alone: 

 “It is only when we silence the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.”  (K.T. Jong)

Here's another image from the series:

You can see all twelve of the images in my project at my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!