Every other day, Jeanne and I go for about a 2-mile walk on the mountain. It’s so been beautiful this summer. Every summer is, really. That’s what makes the winter bearable. We enjoy the fresh mountain morning air and the cool temperatures. The high temperatures are in the 70s (F)/23C and lows are in the high 40s (F)/9C and 50s (F)/12C. It’s sunny in the mornings and it rains almost every afternoon. It makes the wildfire danger almost nonexistent. We are very grateful for that.
Sometimes, the mountain storms can really pour - a lot of water comes down very fast. That’s created a lot of washes and it reveals a lot of different rocks and minerals. Some that have caught my eye are the mica and the quartz. This is muscovite mica and white quartz. You can read about them in the cutline under the image.
I wasn’t sure how I wanted to photograph the material. First, I tried to mimic Andy Goldsworthy and stack the rocks and lay the mica on them. It didn’t work. Then I thought, why not use L. Posey’s piece - the Ute pot. It’s obvious, but we get stuck in a one-track mindset and it becomes difficult to think about the obvious. That pot is not just for plants, it’s for anything I want to photograph. So that’s what I did.
I didn’t see the gift that was about to be handed to me, I was concentrating on the light and the reflections. I get preoccupied with exposure time too. Since I’m working with the north light, it changes rapidly in the morning, so I was playing all of the technical scenarios and not really looking at the ground glass. I use a 10x loupe to look at the image and then try to see the composition. This gift snuck right past me.
This image is so full of metaphor I can hardly get my head around it. The darkness that the face is peering into is telling, and the face itself is mind-blowing. We are designed to see faces wherever we can. This is super obvious and it makes me wonder how it came to be.
I’m finished for today, but I left this still-life setup in my studio. I’m going to make another negative of it tomorrow and set the focus on the face. I would have done that with this, but again, I didn’t see it until I printed it.
MUSCOVITE MICA
Native Americans used it for ornamental and ritualistic purposes. Sacred birds, dancing bears, and serpents with horns were crafted from sheet mica.
It is common in igneous and metamorphic rock and is occasionally found as small flakes in sedimentary rock. It is particularly prominent in many granites, pegmatites, and schists.
As a naturally-forming silicate mineral, mica occurs in igneous rock, which consists of layers of volcanic material. At this stage, mica is crystal in form and is mined to extract it.
QUARTZ
The Ute made Buffalo rawhide ceremonial rattles that were filled with quartz crystals. The rattle produces flashes of light (mechanoluminescence) created when quartz crystals are subjected to mechanical stress when the rattle is shaken in darkness.
You can see it here, but the print really brings it out.