Rocks and Minerals – Michael Stephen Wills Photography

Above Muirthemne Plain

Romance of Ruins

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There is an connection between Proleek and Slieve Gullion. Cycles of Irish Myth place a boy named Sétanta living on Muirthemne Plain, of which what we call Proleek Townland was a part. One day, the king Conchobar was passing his kingdom, Muirthemne, on the way to a feast on the slopes of Slieve Gullion hosted by the blacksmith Culann when he stopped to watch boys playing hurling, Sétanta among them (it is ironic the Proleek Dolmen is surrounded by a golf course in modern times).

Impressed by the Sétanta’s skill, the king invites him to the feast. Having a game to finish Sétanta promises to follow. As evening falls the boy approaches the smith’s house to find himself attacked by a huge, aggressive dog. Acting in the moment, Sétanta dispatches the dog with the hurley and ball he had at hand, driving the ball down the hound’s throat. (In another version he smashes the hound against a standing stone.)

Feeling Culann mourn the loss of his beloved animal, Sétanta promises to raise and train a guard dog equal to the one he slew. Until that time he also pledged to guard Culann’s home. From that time Sétanta was known as “the hound of Cullann”, Cú Chulainn in Irish.

References

Wikipedia articles “Slieve Gullion” “Cú Chulainn” and “Conaille Muirtheimne.”

Wilderness Textures

Abstract Beauty of the Superstition Wilderness of Arizona

October 15, 2018 MichaelStephenWills14 Comments

These abstracts are some of my photographic output from four days and nights spent alone in the remote eastern Superstition Wilderness. For the first three days I met not a soul, all these images were captured on a single afternoon spent in the canyon below Reavis Falls, a jumble of landslides, flood debris and boulders. There is no trail. The few people who enter the canyon must negotiate around boulders, crossing Reavis Creek many times.

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My backpack kit included a full sized Manfrotto studio tripod with hydrostatic ball head. The benefits more than outweighed the effort (I was a lot younger in 2008) when the Canon EF 100mm (macro) lens is mounted on a Kodak dSLR body, allowing me to take crisp shots. The tripod legs can be adjusted to precise positions for stability.

I can feel the bright afternoon desert spring sunshine in this photos. It was after the spring floods, the flow of Reavis Creek and ample still but slow. Gathering in pools over the rough stones of the creek bed, the water absolutely clear.

I held the shot over many minutes, capturing ever changing diffraction patterns.

We see in all these photos, not a homogenous blend of stones from a shared geology. Reavis Creek washes over diverse geologies: volcanic, ancient igneous extrusions, sedimentary and metamorphic are jumbled together.

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This is a series of photographs of smooth, white igneous boulders with shadows of still leafless sycamore and cottonwood trees.

Graceful shadows

Strong, demonstrative shadows.

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A leaning cairn, not a trail marker….

A 15 foot high jumble of stones piled at the bottom of Reavis Falls, carried over by the floods.

A metamorphic conglomerate stone….

Another metamorphic conglomerate.

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Here’s another of my Arizona wilderness adventures, “Racing the Sun.”

Indian Summer Afternoons

October 12, 2018 MichaelStephenWills6 Comments

Each year I make a point of walking Cascadilla Gorge at least once in the fall. This week on a 84 degree October 9th afternoon Pam was too busy with chores, I parked in “downtown” Ithaca and stopped by the grandchildren’s. They were hanging out with Mom and were “just too tired” after school to do anything. Well the middle child, 4 years old, was open to visiting the skate board park and ,for me, that was not going to happen. I ambled from there, up Court Street, past the Buddhist monk residence at the entrance to Cascadilla Gorge.

The gorge is part of Cornell Botanic Gardens (until recently it was called the Plantations), the organization of the university bureaucracy responsible for elements of the campus. Cascadilla Gorge, running from Ithaca and through the campus, is one of those elements. Today, the traffic of people going into and out of the gorge was light and a sign provided the reason: the path was closed at Stewart Avenue, there the bridge crosses above the gorge. Instead to passed by the Christian Scientist Church on the north side of the gorge and walk up the winding Cascadilla Park Road to the gorge rim trail that climbs East Hill to the Cornell Campus.

The trail is lined with homes, porches on the gorge side where the sounds of creek and falls can be enjoyed. I was not feeling ambitious, so took a few snapshots with my phone. Here is path approaches a porch build from the “bluestone”, a type of feldspathic sandstone, native to this area.

Click the photographs for my OnLine Gallery “Finger Lakes Memories.”

This pot is visible in the previous shot, here is a closer view of the bluestone.

The fall to the gorge floor is steep, several hundred feet in places. The barrier fence here appears solid, in places it barely exists. A few years ago a recent Cornell graduate, coming home late from a bar on this path, was found dead in the gorge the following day from a fall. I continued along the trail until the path fork over to the Ithaca City Cemetery where it is possible to climb West Hill to Stewart Avenue. Turn right to reach the bridge over Cascadilla Gorge, another right onto the Gorge Rim Trail and back down to Ithaca. I noticed at the bridge part of the work that closed the gorge was a repainting of the bridge and the suicide prevention fence below the bridge. On September 24, 15 days before, a senior year Cornell student jumped off the bridge into the fence and was rescued by the fire department.

It is possible to stand next to the concrete barrier of the above snapshot to see this view into the gorge. I enjoy the beautiful view, the sound of the water and leave the dark stuff where it belongs, at least until I notice the bridge and net are freshly painted.

Last year Pam and I walked Cascadilla with our granddaughter, here she is on that walk next to Cascadilla Creek. There are large and small waterfalls the length of the gorge trail.

I took this photograph in 2005, the September before my previous post, “Autumn Stroll in Sapsucker Woods” with the Kodak DSC pro slr-c, an ND filter, 50 mm lens and a tripod. It was a planned session, I work waterproof boots and was able to stand in the creek after a series of rain-free days. At this time of the year the gorge opens to the setting sun. I waited, taking a series of photographs for the perfect amount of light on the footbridge. The feature photograph (the header to this posting) is a detail from a shot with the bridge more fully lit.

We have this photograph print framed, I had it mounted as a gift to Pam on our first Valentine’s day. It will make an excellent Christmas or Birthday gift.

Click the photograph for this offering in my OnLine Gallery “Finger Lakes Memories”

A Visit to Proleek Dolmen

Romance of Ruins

October 5, 2018October 6, 2018 MichaelStephenWills6 Comments

I have an update to my post “Proleek, Grandfather McCardle’s home” where we explored the site of the boyhood home of my grandfather, Peter McCardle, on great grandfather James McCardle’s Proleek farm. Last April an email arrived from the brother of the owner of the house across the road. He recognized the property from the blog photography and reached out to introduce himself and share information. His own genealogical research suggested we shared a great aunt. We now work together to define this connection.

Our tour of Ireland was bookended by a visit to the farm site and, located little more than a kilometer away, a 5,000+ year old portal tomb, the last site Pam and I visited. We parked at the hotel / golf course built around the monuments. There is no fee to visit the site, number 476 on the list of Republic of Ireland National Monuments (Irish: Séadchomhartha Náisiúnta), protected at the level of guardianship by the National Monuments Act of 1930. The dolmen is named after the townland Proleek.

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Ballymascanlon House Hotel is on the R173, on the left heading from the M1 towards Jenkinstown. Path to the monument is marked here and there and requires attention. It helps to understand the general location of the monument on the property. The parking lot and hotel are on the southern end, the monument is on the north end.

The path leads through the hotel grounds….

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….and golf course…

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…and you first encounter the megalithic Gallery Grave of a type named “wedge shaped.”

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The 22 foot long tomb gallery supported stories of a giant burial. Pam poses for a sense of scale.

These are the only ancient monuments in Ireland were a stray golf ball may be encountered.

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A short way ahead is the dolmen, or portal tomb. The informational placard is in English and Gaelic. There is an illustration of the stones covered with earth with a stone façade.

Some describe the formation as a giant mushroom with warts. The posting feature image is of the same aspect as the next photograph, with me for scale.

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We are surrounded on three sides by the golf course. The “entrance” to the tomb, through the two upright portal stones, faces northwest toward Slieve Gullion, a mountain with its own Neolithic burial site next to a lake on the summit. The mountain and the flat land, such as Proleek township, feature in the story of how the Irish hero Cú Chulainn came by his name. To learn more, click this link for “On the Tain Way” the first of my posting that includes some stories of the hero.

The fifth hole.

We had a beautiful day, so I took time to capture all aspects. The hedge is the northern property border.

The “warts” are stones. There is a local saying that success in placing three stones on top will give a wish or lead to marriage within the year.

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Abstracts: graceful shadows

Shadow and Rock

October 3, 2018 MichaelStephenWills5 Comments

Two Nature Abstracts, macros of Reavis Creek below the falls

The light of a early spring desert afternoon on a broad rock shelves along the creek.

I spent a day hiking in, two days hiking out and a day of canyoneering to the foot of Reavis Falls. The featured (i.e. “header”) photograph is a view of the inner canyon, the raw material for these abstracts.

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Click this Link for a Superstition Wilderness Adventure

Waterfall Textures

Unrestrained chaos at the foot of Arizona’s highest waterfall

March 20, 2018 MichaelStephenWills18 Comments

I received notice of IStock acceptance of select photographs from my last posting, “Wilderness Textures”, was accepted. Click to view my IStock Portfolio, including photographs from today’s posting included in the acceptance notice.

In this post I move up the Reavis Creek canyon from where the last posting, “Wilderness Textures”, was sited to the foot of Reavis Falls. With the first photograph you look up at the falls from the head of the canyon carved by the creek over eons. The rock wall, the canyon “head”, is thick with microorganisms, fungi, mosses.

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In the foreground is a jumble of boulders, some washed down at flood time, spread wide at the bottom of the falls, piled to a jumbled height of 15 feet.

Talus is the geological term for this formation. Derived from the Latin word for slope (talutum) the definition, from the Oxford English Dictionary, is “A sloping mass of detritus lying at the base of a cliff or the like consisting of material fallen from its face.”

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The ankle bone is also called talus, from the French word for heel, I bring it up because climbing this chaotic, unstable jumble is a way to break your ankle. The route to Reavis Falls, a climb up one side of Lime Mountain then down the other on a non-existent (lightly marked) trail, is rated difficult and impossible with a broken leg or ankle. I was alone and very careful to check each rock for stability before putting my weight on it.

A climb of the talus pile was necessary to view the pool at the waterfall base, for this photograph.

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A more artistic vertical format version, below, captured with the Canon EF 100mm “macro” lens. All shots are using the Kodak DCS pro SLR-c (the “c” designated Canon lens compatibility) and a Manfrotto studio tripod with a hydrostatic ball head. The horizontal format shot was captured with a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens. I prefer the vertical version, artistically, because the talus jumble is all but cropped out while the upper corner of the angular basalt boulder is left as an interesting focal point. The boulder, not being in the spray, is in focus to contrast with the basalt wall behind the water.

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I captured a series of shots from this precarious vantage point, working up from the pool to the brim of the waterfall.

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My goals was a composite photo of the falls. I have yet to succeed with this project. Maybe I will give it one more shot in spite of having learned the hard lesson the best photographs are a single moment captured in a single frame.

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I find in this series the vertical aspect is more artistic. The water volume, of the falls, at this time of year offers only the finest of sprays with most of the basalt rock wall only moist. The 100mm “macro” lens allowed me to include only the falling water with a bit of the moist wall for contrast.

In the following version I experimented with color, moving from the narrow range of hues, to more contrast.

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Here’s another of my Arizona wilderness adventures, “Racing the Sun.”

Wilderness Textures

Abstract Beauty of the Superstition Wilderness of Arizona

March 17, 2018 MichaelStephenWills20 Comments

Click Any Photograph for my Fine Art Gallery

I held the shot over many minutes, capturing ever changing diffraction patterns.

Click Any Photograph for my Fine Art Gallery

This is a series of photographs of smooth, white igneous boulders with shadows of still leafless sycamore and cottonwood trees.

Graceful shadows

Strong, demonstrative shadows.

Click Any Photograph for my Fine Art Gallery

A leaning cairn, not a trail marker….

A 15 foot high jumble of stones piled at the bottom of Reavis Falls, carried over by the floods.

A metamorphic conglomerate stone….

Another metamorphic conglomerate.

Here’s another of my Arizona wilderness adventures, “Racing the Sun.”