Accepted in the Beloved

To any who venture this way, the Welcome Home Celebration for my Mother - Miss Ellie, will be held at Liberty Church (Tulsa), this Sunday December 6, 2009

Miss Ellie April 23, 1938 -- December 3, 2009

Mammatus Chariots

More pics: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/album.php?aid=78478&id=48393207996&ref=share

Double Crescent

The Moon, like an acorn in its luminescent shell. (Or Venus, like the bellybutton of the world.)


The Moon is a flying fingernail, a sail on an unseen boat, a secret code I am sending, the message of which I am sending to you... the moon is encoded "Say Cheese."

Venus, in crescent stage.

All pics, Earh Day April 22, 2009, 5:45AM and 6:30 AM.

The Mighty Works Project exists to harbor the thought: I wish today that I might be like the moon revealing His glory.

Dear Friends of the Mighty Works Project - If you haven't seen much activity here, its because the spring has kept me hopping on my sister blog, ID Arkansas. But more than that, I'm planning a total revamp of the Mighty Works Project, to make it more like its inception (and with bigger pictures.) When I first started sending out the MW email (April 2003) I sent a photo a day to a small group of friends. Then I started adding more photos. Then I had less time. Then I started the blog. Then I had less time. Then I lost most of my email addresses so stopped sending out the email version.

Now I am going to start a new Mighty Works Project in a couple of weeks that will feature one large picture, and a Bible verse or quote per day. I tried making my pictures bigger on this site, but found it threw everything else out of whack, so I will start afresh with a modified blog address. More later.

Drip

We got hit with a hard rain the other day. I liked it. Now spring is everything it should be: wet, flowery, chaotic with color and slightly out of control.

The Mighty Works Project exists to celebrate the rain, which God causes to fall on the just... and the unjust.

In Pursuit of Minimal Form

Winged night in flight dots day!

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All pics, first week of March 09, Conway, AR

Deep crops of pictures taken with a 300 mm zoom.
This wouldn't do for a standard wildlife photo, but I am interesed in something other than what we see with our eyes..

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From the Journals of the Kirk, 1987(?)


Had an odd thought today. The birds are a swarm of peppercorn – long, like cirrus clouds or bunched long like floating Italian bread. Could these be the same birds that I’ve seen lift from the ground like little ball-clouds--all as one; Theyseem to be millions, traced by a membrane. They fly in unit, this time something like an undulating string of sausage. What kind of "brain" unites their flight – Who knows? I counted one bird-ribbon that must’ve taken ten minutes to pass. Maybe Tulsa is like a river-bed of bird flight …
Or could it be that if we saw our nation from above it would look like a damaged negative all scratched and spattered with bird stream. Deep grooves and gashes trailing north to south across the states.
This morning I lay on my back, and considered the birds as if underneath me, flying on their backs with bellies up. I lay on the ceiling of the world and saw the birds like swarming fish, deep within thin water. School after school of minnow-bird, all black in silhouette.
And then it struck me. I never saw a single bird!
In fact, what I took for bird, in flap and form, was really just where the sky failed to penetrate my eye. So what did I see?
All the sky not shaped like birds!
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If I were to project a slide of some really black birds in flight against a screen, the black forms on that screen would result in those places where no light fell. If I were to take a picture of the birds in flight, only the light around the silhouette of birds in flight would strike the film. As the birds were absolute black, no light sped from their form into my eye or camera. No light from any bird (except maybe a glint on wing or something) ever shocked a film grain -- or the rod or cone field in my eye. And as no light ever fell – for that brief moment – on the film plain of my eye – no message poured down the optic nerve to the brain. In fact, each time that a bird-shaped void passed across my inner eye, that section of retina got a brief rest from the act of seeing. So what do black birds do? They provide quick rest for rod and cones!
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Come to think of it, I’ve never read a word of type. As the black letters absorb light like a well and bounce none of it back at me (unless perhaps the ink is gray or has a gloss) no light from that letter ever stirs a cone to action. I only think that I am seeing the type, but I am really reading the white where the type is not. So all this staring at print is a sustained focus on peculiar shaped voids. And when we read a book, we really read everything but the book!

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If by "night" means not to see,
and birds of darker-blacken be,
Does their flight impress the eye?
Or is it only sky,
fleeing from...
or rushing to their Void that does?

The Big Pink

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The grass withers … the flower fades, but the Word of God endures forevermore. Isaiah 40:8

Those who have followed the Mighty Works Project will know these flowers. The Japanese Magnolia show up in the Project every year at this time. Last year's images featured the blooms covered in snow (March 6 and 9), while that year before that... newly open blooms dipped into freeze dried brown just hours after opening. This year the blooms opened early and were good for several days before temps in the twenties did them in. They are, as of today (March 6), still on the trees, looking like so many pink bananas gone bad. (or something like that.)

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Photo Buff stuff: I tried something a little new this year.. Overexposed images (there was color in the sky) combined with extra contrast in Photoshop. The images as shot were pretty pale. I kept the pale in the high-lights but added a little dark in the blown out darks.

To see more images check out the new Facebook gallery and/or look at a 5 year Japanese Magnolia retrospective. And if your are not a fan of the page, I'd appreciate your support.

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The Mighty Works Project encourages us to consider those things that last.

Odd Fog

A little late in posting, all pics Feb 12th off of Maumelle Blvd, Maumelle, AR.

What made this fog odd, is not so much the wonderful way in smeared the trees, but the fact (beyond easy recording) that it dismantled so fast. Just after taking these the sun broke the top of the tree line and kicked the fog right out of there.

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Deconstruction of the Calla Lily

On Valentine's Day I gave a small pot of Calla lilies to my wife. Two days later I started borrowing the blooms for photos! The pictures showcase a variety of approaches (Mirror, flash against light bulb, intentional blurs, etc, all with the goal of uncovering the essential essence.

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For a few more pics from this series see my new Facebook page. And don't forget to become a Fan of the Mighty Works Project.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=66700&id=48393207996&l=3ee94

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The Mighty Works project exists that we might be astonished in God, by the complexity of simplicity. Or something like that.

Ice cubed

During the last week of January, a tsunami of freezing rain slammed states stretching from Oklahoma to the Carolinas. Our own North Arkansas took it as bad as we have ever seen, with damage estimates even surpassing the infamous Christmas storm of 2000. Odd thing, we in central Arkansas hardly felt it. With temperatures just above the freezing we knew rain, while our northern neighbors were hit and such a way that every line and limb was lined in lead.

Sometimes my day job allows me special vantage. As is, our tour of storm damaged lands by helicopter (through glass) shows the scope, but not the real ravage of the storm. I hope, in the next days to publish some links of others that show the shock up close. Until then, you can see more storm damage starting here: http://governor.arkansas.gov/newsroom/gallery.php?do:showAlbum=1&albumId=5298958258642739649

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More ice:

http://enjoyarkansas.blogspot.com/2009/01/ice-storm-2009.html

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/23094967@N03/3277291863/

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A Story from Marvin, who weathered it all:

http://elmostreport.blogspot.com/2009/03/january-ice-storm-part-i.html#disqus_thread