2017
Dubrovnik’s long history of survival
For more than 3,000 years, the Adriatic has been the most practical trade route between Europe and the East. And for centuries, Croatia has been a buffer zone between east and west and between north and south.
Recorded history in Croatia starts with the Illyrians, a group of tribes that shared building and funeral techniques. By the 7th century BC, the Illyrians were trading with the ancient Greeks, and within two centuries the Greeks had established colonies in the area, notably Pharos (now Stari Grad) on the island of Hvar. By 229 BC, the Greeks were calling on Rome to help them in their quest to dominate the region.
In 1205 Dubrovnik came under Venetian control in the Adriatic, remaining under their sovereignty until 1358, when it became part of the Hungarian-Croatian kingdom. By then Dubrovnik was also becoming a trading state of increasing importance. Capitalizing on its fortunate position, Dubrovnik developed a strong seafaring tradition, eventually establishing trade routes all the way to Spain, Portugal and England.
In the early 14th century, after a huge fire destroyed most of Dubrovnik, a new urban plan was developed. At the beginning of the 15th century the remaining wooden houses in Dubrovnik were demolished and rebuilt in stone, in order to prevent fires from spreading.
By that time, Dubrovnik flourished as a haven of liberalism, allowing Dominicans and Franciscans within the city walls and offering asylum to refugees, including Jews, when many other cities turned them away at the gate. Dubrovnik abolished slavery in 1416, more than 400 years ahead of Britain (1833) and America (1863). Many slaves subsequently had their freedom bought for them by Dubrovnik nobles. The republics’s wealth was put to good use in a major building program.
Tragically, an earthquake destroyed most of the city in 1520, and the plague returned in force in 1528, killing more than 20,000 people. By the end of the 1520s, the Turks had pretty much defeated Hungary, and Dubrovnik was quick to change its allegiance from the Hungarian king to the Turkish sultan.
In 1588 Dubrovnik joined the Spanish in their ‘Invincible Armada’, losing a dozen of its finest ships and interrupting trade with Britain for nearly two centuries. New trade routes across the Atlantic made Britain, Spain and Portugal into wealthy nations; Mediterranean shipping was never to regain its former importance.
Disaster struck again in April 1667, when a massive earthquake destroyed Dubrovnik, killing more than 5,000 people, including the entire Minor Council and more than half of the Great Council. Dubrovnik’s massive rebuilding program continued through the early 18th century. By the end of the 18th century, Dubrovnik had regained a considerable amount of its wealth and standing.
Unfortunately, however, on May 26,1806, Napoleon broke a month-long siege by Russian and Montenegrin forces, and the republic allowed a French garrison to enter Dubrovnik. Once installed, the French didn’t leave. In 1809, Dubrovnik was absorbed into the newly created French ‘Illyrian Provinces’ stretching up the Adriatic Coast to Trieste. When Napoleon was finally defeated, Austria sent troops south and took control of Dubrovnik in 1814. A century later Dubrovnik became part of Yugoslavia.
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2017
An Alive Mountain. One of the more compelling landscapes I’ve encountered.
I must return to make more images.
2017
A Visual Feast of An Alive Mountain
Water constantly bubbling up out of the ground — everywhere — then rushing down the mountain, forming hundreds of waterfalls throughout the surrounding forest’s beautiful autumn colors. All of this being the result of complex underground karstic limestone dissolution occurring since the end of the last ice age 12,000 to 15,000 years ago.
How then, to capture this unceasing bubbling motion against the otherwise still mountain?
2017
Continuing our wandering along Venice’s wonderful waterfronts…
2018
Now winter — the Aspen leaves all gone — the rapidly fading sunlight settles so, so briefly on the fading Aspen forest of trunks before disappearing too, into the night…
2018
Still up on top of Santa Fe Mountain, as Autumn temperatures continue dropping, the aspen leaves achieve their spectacular golden yellow peak just as their tall, slender stems take on a contrasting palette of various shades of a grey-to-taupe.
By adding further contrast with my camera strokes, I’m able to blend these elements and colors, backed by the intermingling evergreens.
2012
Photographed during a Monsoon just south of Santa Fe in the Galisteo Basin.
Mid-New Mexico monsoons typically occur during July and August, and are generalized by sporadic, intense thunder storms, lightning, a whole lot of rain, and beautiful rainbows.
It’s not uncommon to hear the refrain that Santa Fe only gets 7-8 inches of rain a year, usually in about 45 minutes!
2013
The initial challenge for me was to compose vertical slices of landscape within the camera vs. carving a vertical image out of an existing horizontal image. Either way though, it causes me to see differently, which is my objective. Limiting much of the surroundings enables me to emphasize verticality.
These eight totems, drawing from both approaches, are meant to provide a different perspective on one of New Mexico’s truly beautiful locations.
2013
The Rocky Mountains’ north-south Teton Range includes 9 peaks in excess of 11,000′ elevation, with Grand Teton being the highest at 13,770′. Beginning just south of Yellowstone National Park, the Teton Range is situated primarily on the Wyoming side of the state border with Idaho, with most of the range’s east slope located in the Grand Teton National Park.
This area, 2.5 billion years ago, was an ancient ocean that gradually filled with sand and volcanic debris. As additional sediment deposited over millions of years, heat and pressure metamorphosed this sediment into gneiss, until eventually magma was forced up through the cracks in the gneiss to form granite, anywhere from inches to hundreds of feet thick.
Then, 6-10 million years ago, stretching and thinning of the Earth’s crust caused movement along the Teton fault: as the fault line’s west block rose to create the Teton Range – the youngest of the Rocky Mountains — the fault’s east block collapsed forming the valley called Jackson Hole.
While the west side of the Teton Range appears as high rolling hills transitioning smoothly into flat pasture, the Teton’s spectacular east-facing granite slope — too young to have eroded into soft hills, and without lower peaks to obscure it — rises dramatically 5,000 to 7,000′ above the valley floor.
Looking at a book on Alaskan Totem Poles a few years ago got me thinking that totems were panoramics turned on their end. (more…)
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2011
Spanish for ‘Woods of the Apache’, the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1939 to help protect the endangered Sandhill Cranes. Situated on the Rio Grande in south-central New Mexico, 90 miles south of Albuquerque, this tiny high desert wetland serves as a crowded migratory rest stop for thousands of snow geese and 10-15,000 Sandhill Cranes heading down the continent as winter approaches, and again on their return north for breeding season.
Though it’s been eight years since I moved from Maryland’s eastern shore to Santa Fe, I still marvel at the contrast between New Mexico’s high desert wetlands rimmed by 6-7,000’ mountains, to the eastern shore’s low country wetlands surrounded by the Chesapeake Bay. Even more profound, however, is the contrast between the moisture-laden eastern shore light and New Mexico’s high, dry, ever clear atmosphere.
To view more images of Bosque del Apache, see Bosque del Apache II and Bosque del Apache III
2007
Pacific NW Coast III
This is my third series captured during my 2010 roadtrip along the northern California and Oregon coasts. Though rarely blessed with optimal light, I was able to take the time for moments of sun to break through. From the cliffs along the Lost Coast in northern California, to the many rivers flowing into the Pacific, to the wonderfully wide and empty Oregon beaches, to tidal Netarts Bay just north of Cape Lookout contained by a five-mile stretch of beach, the Pacific NW coast is rugged and varied.
The south-flowing Pacific current along the NW coast and the weather, both constantly in motion, offer the perfect foil for overlaying my images with a sense of the passage of time.
2007
Santa Fe sits on the windward side of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) mountain range. This southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains extends from Southern Colorado to Glorieta Pass southeast of Santa Fe.
Immediately northeast of Santa Fe, Santa Fe Mountain’s (10,350’) west face is blessed with an enormous aspen stand. Lit by the evening’s last light, they glow atop the mountain for all of Santa Fe to see.
Amongst the Aspens’ beautiful taupe trunks are the occasional aberrant blood-orange boles. Standing out like sentinels, their contrast is truly magical.
