[Note: I want to give a special thanks and update to the folks that have bought puzzles in the last year. This past year Nature Of The Wild reserved 12.5% of the puzzle purchase price, then I personally matched that, and then a third party matched both of those contributions to the Sierra Club. The bottom line is that for ever dollar that you spent towards a puzzle 50 cents were contributed to the Sierra Club. ]
[Note: On February 1st at 6:00pm I'll be giving a presentation for the Festival of the Arts in Big Rapids at the IRC Auditorium in Ferris. The presentation is free of charge and should be of interest to nature and photography lovers alike. I'll be talking about what makes Michigan one of the most precious places on earth, showing photographs of an animal that was once thought to be extinct, introducing a collaboration with the National Palace Museum in Tiawan and we'll also talk about a new technique that I've developed in the last couple months.
In conjuction with the Art Festival I'll also be exhibiting at the Blue Cow for the month of February. On Sunday there will be an opening reception at 2:00 at the Blue Cow. Hope to see you there!]
These images are from the Jade Mountains in the southern central area of the island of Taiwan, off the coast of China. In this area there is an interesting phenomena called cloud seas. Valleys will fill up with low clouds, and if you are standing at the right spot on a mountainside the tops of the clouds will appear at your feet and fill the valleys below for as far as you can see.
The fog moves incredibly fast here. I would see landscape in the gaps between the clouds and fog, and I might only get off two or three shots before the mountainside was covered again in the shroud of the cloud. Other times I couldn't set up fast enough to set up a single shot.
My favorite, fleeting moments were when the crest of a mountain would appear, surrounded by clouds. They would look like islands floating in the sea of clouds, like a fantasy scene that could only exist in my mind. Sometimes it would seem like the fog was alive, swirling sinuously around the land, and then there were times when it seemed like the fog was holding still and it was the fleetingly visible land that was on the move. The temples in this area are adorned with dragons, and watching the mist around me, and the jagged edges of the islands in the clouds it was easy to see where the dragons entered the landscape of the mind in local cultures.
At the end of the day the sun sometimes sets over the top of the clouds. While watching this I realized how odd that was for me as a photographer. I've spent the ends of many a day trying to be in the right place at that magic moment when the sun sets under a plane of clouds and the last vibrant colors of the day are reflected on the belly of the clouds. Here, half way around the world, I was watching from above as the light was soaked up into the cresting waves atop the sea of clouds.
