Revisiting Images from Loring Site 15

Back in May of 2011, I shared some of the details of my search for Loring site 15.

http://thenarrativeimage.blogspot.com/2011/05/sound-of-one-hand-clapping-loring-site.html

By Loring site I mean one of the rock art sites documented in J. Malcolm and Louise Loring's two volume monograph called Pictographs and Petroglyphs of the Oregon Country. 

In that post, I noted that, "Many of the paintings seem worse for wear when compared to the Loring drawings…to the degree that my identifications are not always certain."

Since that trip, D. Russel Micnhimer, of Oregon Rock Art (http://www.oregonrockart.com/index.html), has introduced me to a specialized bit of software called DStretch by Jon Harman (http://www.dstretch.com/). As Micnhimer said to me in a Facebook message, "It's the closest thing I know of to absolute magic; (it) will make the invisible appear."

So what follows is a series of my pictures from Loring site 15 that I've enhanced with Jon Harman's DStretch plugin for the graphics program ImageJ (http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/index.html). I hadn't posted them previously because I couldn't really see anything. In each case, the original picture is presented with its enhanced version for comparison purposes.

Seriously? I thought there might be a ray-arc here,
but a trio of little crew-cut guys was kind of unexpected.

Mr. Harman's vast experience with documenting rock art has allowed him to find optimal settings for an algorithmic procedure called decorrelation stretch. And I have to admit I'm pretty impressed with the detail Dstretch can pull out of ordinary digital images.

Wouldn't have seen the figure to the left without DStretch.

Well, I wasn't sure what it was before...
...but now I'm sure I don't know what it is.

A bomb landing on someone's head?

O.K., I'm going to stop guessing because it only displays my ignorance.

Tammy Baker

John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Oregon - Painted Hills Unit

I walked into a valley of time.
pages of time written by volcanoes
a table of contents set down so long ago

I would have thought it was forever

ice, rain, sun and air – like a plague of mice
nibble at the pages
precious stories preserved in earth
washed away forever

heirs to life
we who still exist
winding through an intricate unbroken plot
always at the right place at the right time with the right skills

a churning molten core
birth pains
a hundred miles westward
earth breathes, breathes - ash into the sky
time and again
Technicolor vomit
or the afterbirth of a mother’s creation

Earth opens herself
we glimpse long hidden words
there is revelation here

the ancient sun
peers over a hill
illuminates the past
“I remember you”, it says
“when you were younger”
“you look different now”

As for man, his days are like grass:
He flourishes like a flower of the field;
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
And its place knows it no more.*

*Psalms 103: 15-16

standing on a cusp of time
forwards and backwards bending out of sight
making as much sense as
a calendar to a mayfly

a graphic message in a bottle

cast adrift on the green waves of a continent

pretty good painting
for a painter with no eyes

waves lined up to the horizon
arrive at the shore endlessly
an essential pattern

Apply, lather, rinse, repeat

quick look close

too late...it's gone

For detailed information about the Painted Hills, visit the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument web site: http://www.nps.gov/joda

ADDENDUM:

I followed the URL (that Cynthia posted) to June Underwood’s gallery of Recent Work and had a wonderful experience seeing the Painted Hills through completely different eyes - acknowledging sights I missed or overlooked and adopting metaphors I never would have made. Mrs. Underwood’s hills are crazy-colored animated landscapes rendered with a refreshing childlike exuberance and originality that makes the mechanical act of photography look as creative as a copy machine. Perhaps it would be better to hear the artist’s own words, “. …the Painted Hills seem to me to be great primeval creatures, stretching and reaching out and rolling under and along the earth's surface. They are spectacular in part because we don't usually come into contact with the actual contours of the earth's flesh -- usually the "flesh" is covered with soil and grass and trees and roads and culverts and fences. To return to that primeval vision, earth in all its rawness, without clothes, without cover, is astonishing.”

See June's work in progress at: http://www.juneunderwood.com/workinprogress.php

See June's recent work at: http://www.juneunderwood.com/gallery-recent.php

Or, to feel the pulse of June's S.E. Portland neighborhood, visit http://southeastmain.typepad.com/southeastmain/ and be sure to check out the pictures of the John Day fossil Beds National monument scattered in the September archive.

The Japanese Garden @ Portland, Oregon

I should probably begin by telling you that about the only plant I’ve ever managed to successfully grow was a Chia Pet, so you can imagine that gardens and gardening are somewhat of an impenetrable mystery to me.



On the left is an example of Mt. Hood National Wilderness (From the Ramona Falls trail. See http://thenarrativeimage.blogspot.com/2007/05/ramona-falls-trail-super-sized-part-two.html). On the right is an example of Portland Oregon’s Japanese Garden. While I personally find both scenes beautiful, there are several aspects about the garden scene that show evidence of human tinkering. Some of the obvious signs are a human constructed concrete artifact, groomed bushes and trees, and a preponderance of plant varieties seemingly chosen for aesthetic purposes.

Just for the purpose of comparison, this corn is an example of a garden designed for the efficient production of a food crop. Curiously, I find this scene aesthetically pleasing also, but did not find any growing at the Japanese gardens.

It is tempting to get carried away and insinuate that the designed gardens are easy to recognize because of their obvious order.

But in the biggest garden of all, we often see that order and disorder go hand in hand. Great swaths of habitable ecosystem are swept away in the blink of an eye. A new niche is provided for some other opportunistic species (and if there are any favorites, it would appear to be the beetle family).

Japanese Garden - Portland, Oregon - Admission gate

After paying eight bucks to get in, I walk past the guardian lions and take a look at the Welcome Brochure I’ve been handed. The brochure informs me that, “Eastern symbolism challenges the visitor to reflect and be open to varying interpretations of sights and sounds.” Keeping this in mind, I take a second look at the guardian lion, and as the brochure suggests, I try to take a moment to feel the Garden’s mood of peace and harmony. The lion’s expression seems none too peaceful and I imagine it softly growling at me, “Stay on the path or this globe I’m standing on might as well be your left testicle.”

Japanese Garden -Portland Oregon - Strolling Pond Garden

It’s an overcast day so I set the White Balance on the Rebel to the cloud symbol. This may have been a mistake because later I will see that most of the pictures have an artificial looking warm yellow-green tint.

Japanese Garden - Portland Oregon - The Natural Garden

See what I mean?

Japanese Garden - Portland Oregon - Strolling Pond Garden

I thought the red in this tree would make a good complement to the predominate greens everywhere else. While I was trying to make the picture, I was also thinking that it would be nice (though not possible) to sit under this shaded canopy for awhile with a quality beer or two, watching the endless line of tourists stopping to pose on the moon bridge to have their portraits captured.

Japanese Garden - Portland Oregon - Authentic Moon Bridge

Here I try desperately to get some believable green colors, but end up using Photoshop’s watercolor filter instead.

Japanese Garden - Portland Oregon - Strolling Pond Garden

The water in the pools was muddy and unsettled. It provided good cover for the Koi until they neared the surface. At first, only a slow moving golden glow would diffuse through the suspended silt, like a distant lantern in the fog.

Japanese Garden - Portland Oregon - Strolling Pond Garden

I spent some time just watching the primitive looking fish moving in their world of water, patrolling the bank in front of the visitor benches just in case some of the bipeds proved to be illiterate (Please don't feed the Koi! - Throwing coins prohibited!) with a pocketful of crumbs. I thought about surfaces and boundaries, ripples and reflections, all between worlds and points of view.

Japanese Garden - Portland Oregon - Sand and Stone Garden

Maybe the attraction of gardens is that it gives us the illusion of control and a chance to feel like co-creators – super-hero sidekicks – helping to order and direct various manifestations of life.

For more information about the Japanese Garden, visit their website at: www.japanesegarden.com