Boulder closeups, whose galleries are designated “BX” to save space, are an opportunity and challenge for the serious artistic photographer. Even with fairly routine boulders, there may be sections of visual merit that can be selected and emphasized. So many possibilities, so many choices—what criteria can be used?
I have divided these close-ups into groups I have termed abstracts, colors, mosaics, on (subdivided into mosses, lichens, and worts; pebbles; shadows;), shapes, striation, surficial (subdivided into characteristic; contrasting; ferrous; granular; and varied terrain), and geological. It’s been said that there are no straight lines in nature; similarly, there are no clear dividing lines between these categories. I hope they help.
In all art, selection is significant. When I was teaching poetry-writing to elementary school students, I would have them staple and tape together pieces of cardboard to form frames, then take them outdoors to look through them at things they may have taken for granted, to see how separating the visual elements from their surroundings gave them emphasis, partly because they related to each other more strongly.
With older students, I would have gone on to point out that evolution, in contrast to entropy, depends on making selections whose results indicate the decisions are coordinated better with nature. With the most thoughtful, I would have discussed the possibility that nature includes symbiotic, synchronistic, and synthetic conditions that can make the whole greater than the sum of the parts, grouping selections together in a way that led one scientist to say “Chance favors the prepared mind.” One philosophical work speaks of “the third order”; beyond the world our sensations and perceptions render, there is a more accurate and logical world revealed by science; and beyond that is the third order, in which metacontexts reveal further meanings.
All of mathematics begins, it has been said, with “Draw a distinction.”
Thus endeth this sermon on the texts of textures. Go thou and loveth thy rocks.