southern China

a single blade of grass supporting 3 drops of rain

home grown soda bottles? well, not quite. laying across the bottom of the photo is the edge of a daisy's stem, and the 'bottle' is a single hair/fuzz (1/60 of an inch in height) protruding from that stem. daisy plants have bristly stems (in between soft and prickly) so the fuzz has a larger diameter making it more stiff, and as we recently discovered... it's also hollow and uniquely shaped. to add a little colour, we placed a small piece of yellow tractor-feed paper as a background, so that the out-of-focus hole created a nice glow on the horizon.

the extremely popular Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge happens to be the second tallest in the states, and is very easily accessible - just off the highway. This convenience allowed me to return many times to study how the moving sun dramatically changed the whole area's appearance. Most of the time, part of the falls are very brightly lit with direct sunlight and other parts are in significant shade, which makes for a terribly unbalanced exposure. Persistence paid off one day, when i arrived and the trees had a lovely pattern of light shining through and the entire upper & lower falls were evenly illuminated.

vertical blade-like mounds of sandstone in eastern Utah

i was lucky to have an ash tree growing right outside the studio. On one rainy day, i stepped out on the 3rd floor balcony and could look straight across into the branches holding countless drops of rain. It's a gentle misty-rain, so the drips grow, drop, and start again every few minutes. This gave me little time to set up before the scene would change and i'd have to recompose for a different shot.

Multiple storms and patches of sunlight just off-shore of Guam.