I spent this past Saturday photographing at a farm. This year seems to be the year that I have spent the most amount of time photographing outdoors. Never before has the landscape had so much meaning to me. To stand on land that’s barely excavated and to feel the air unobstructed by buildings is a transcendental moment. F/29, ISO 200, 15 sec shutter speed and the light fading into a kaleidoscope of color…this is painting with light.
The farm location is a couple of miles away from the town of Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania. This is where the plane crashed on 9/11. From this farm you would have been able to see the plane on its descent before the crash. The sky is so vast on this land, clear and unobstructed. To say that the sky is big is odd, simply even a dumb thing to say, but it was. The land seems so tiny as compared to the domed sky. There I stood, the horizon at my feet.
In all this natural splendor of land, the land stood as witness to the evil of humanity. Evolution or creationism perspective, land gave birth to us. From the dust that created Adam or the life before that brought us out of the sea. I walked back to my car.
The night autumn wind was cold, the sky was filled with stars and my thoughts were sad for what this land must have felt. If these trees could talk, would they invite us back?
“When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
'It is done.'
People did not like it here."
- Kurt Vonnegut
The farm location is a couple of miles away from the town of Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania. This is where the plane crashed on 9/11. From this farm you would have been able to see the plane on its descent before the crash. The sky is so vast on this land, clear and unobstructed. To say that the sky is big is odd, simply even a dumb thing to say, but it was. The land seems so tiny as compared to the domed sky. There I stood, the horizon at my feet.
In all this natural splendor of land, the land stood as witness to the evil of humanity. Evolution or creationism perspective, land gave birth to us. From the dust that created Adam or the life before that brought us out of the sea. I walked back to my car.
The night autumn wind was cold, the sky was filled with stars and my thoughts were sad for what this land must have felt. If these trees could talk, would they invite us back?
“When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
'It is done.'
People did not like it here."
- Kurt Vonnegut
