An aspen "tree" ARE some of the largest, heaviest living organisms on the planet. Just one can cover an enormous area.Originally Posted by h2oman
An aspen "tree" ARE some of the largest, heaviest living organisms on the planet. Just one can cover an enormous area.
OK, I had to look it up. Apparently aspens have ceded their spot as the largest living organisms, at least as far as area is concerned: https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ism-is-fungus/
I'll bet aspens may have the fungus on mass, though! In the article they estimate one at over 6600 tons!
There is a famous place in Death Valley where rocks move on their own. So you never really know what a rock is thinking, and if it decides to shift around its pose between the time you've focused your composition and when the darkslide is actually removed. No different than girlfriends.
h2oman - there will never be an end to that, what constitutes the oldest tree nonsense. I'm still of the camp that a tree is a tree, not an interconnected grove where multitudes of trees have replaced each other every few decades for thousands of years on end. Give me a particular bristlecone pine any day of the week instead. Where this really gets complicated is how aspen groves actually communicate and time things like color fall change synchronistically, via electrical signals from fungal mycelia in the soil. So if that counts for the single "oldest organism", what doesn't? Everything is basically interconnected in one way or another.
And maybe rocks are sentient organisms too, but just speak to each other at such a low geologic frequency we can't hear them. That's why I like rocks. They mind their own business. Certain underwater rock-like stromatolite colonies might have lived hundreds of thousands of years; but is a "colony" a single long-lived "organism"? Just more fighting over terminology definitions. And I studied all of the above - geology, biology, and paleontology. Now I'm joining the actual club, and gradually becoming a fossil myself, and someday might actually speak the rock and boulder dialect myself.
I wasn't going to drag that fungus into this "discussion" for fear it might go off-track -- but apparently it's too late for that.
I like the light and tonality on the rock and the trees - but not the very bright grass at the bottom. It would be interesting to see a different relationship between the rock and the trees via camera position and/or focal length selection.
I like the tones but the lighting could be better. It's very flat. Maybe come back at another time of the day when the cougars aren't out. How about a view from inside the woods through the tree trunks framing the rock. Right now it just looks like a documentary of a rock with a busy background. It needs some "oomph". At least the focus is sharp and crisp unlike mine.
Flickr Home Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums
Coastal redwoods can live a couple thousand years, clone themselves and live for a couple thousand more using the same root system. And perhaps even another round, I have no idea. But it is fun to find a tight circle of 12+ foot diameter 'sprouts', with the center 'mother tree' completely gone.
They figured out how the rocks move -- too bad...I love a little mystery in life.
"Landscapes exist in the material world yet soar in the realms of the spirit..." Tsung Ping, 5th Century China
Lot's of RECENT research on the '3rd' realm of Fungi
It crushed rock to MAKE soil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGEdHxiWo_Y
Tin Can
I like it as it is. This is what you saw, this is what touched you and inspired you to make the photo. Having said that, it certainly looks like a subject that could be mined for other angles, other times of day. It kind of reminds me of some of Michael Kenna’s and more recent Robert Adams’ work. Keep at it.
I really like it, although I think it's crying out to be 4x5 or square, and paired as a diptych.
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