Postcard from Oxford

This photo shows the chapel at Keble College, part of the Oxford University System. It is one of the largest colleges in terms of students. However, there are only around 700 undergraduates and graduate students enrolled. It is also one of the youngest of the Oxford Colleges…founded in 1870.

It was built as a monument to John Keble. He was a leading member of the Oxford Movement, which sought to stress the Catholic nature of the Church of England, which probably explains the ornate nature of this chapel, compared to others at Oxford. Consequently, the College traditionally placed a considerable emphasis on theological teaching, although this has long since ceased to be the case. 

After the WWII, the college started emphasizing scientific courses. Originally for male students only, Keble became coed in 1979. Its somewhat controversial architecture led many scholars to proclaim that is was the ugliest college in all of Oxford.

One story claims that a French visitor, on first sight of the college exclaimed, "It is magnificent but is it not the railway station?"

It is a beautiful church and I was lucky to get this shot. I was using a film camera back then and I took this photo without a tripod. Needless to say, anti-shake lenses had not been invented then. I have a great many happy memories of my times at Oxford. I would love to go back again.

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com…or visit my Flickr Page.

Postcard from Tubac

This image is far more about style than place. Although I took the original photo in Tubac, AZ, the finished product here is a digital sketch done in the style of Japanese woodblock printing.

The term for this style is “ Moku Hanga” (木版画).  Although similar to woodcut in western printmaking, the Moku Hanga technique differs in that it uses water-based inks—as opposed to western woodcut, which often use oil-based inks. The Japanese water-based inks provide a wide range of vivid colors, glazes, and transparency.

Before the invention of moveable type, Moku Hanga was also used to print books in China and Japan. The first printed books were seen in Japan in the 8th century in Buddhist temples. Much later, around the 17h century, woodblock printing was used to create works of art…and like Western painting techniques, there were many schools and movements based on style.

Here is how it works: The image is first drawn onto paper, then glued face-down onto a plank of wood, usually cherry. The wood is then cut away, based on the drawing outlines. A small wooden hard object called a baren is used to press or burnish the paper against the inked woodblock to apply the ink to the paper. Although this may have been done purely by hand at first, complex wooden mechanisms were soon invented and adopted to help hold the woodblock perfectly still and apply proper pressure in the printing process. This was especially helpful with the introduction of multiple colors that had to be applied with precision over previous ink layers.

Of course, my version of Moku Hanga is all done using digital computer software…and like the Japanese schools, I can create several different styles. I am having fun experimenting with this new software. This image is of large metal flowers so prominent outside Tubac craft stores and is one of my very first attempts at creating Moku Hanga drawings. You will see more in the near future. All comments on my work, good or critical, are gratefully appreciated.

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com…or visit my Flickr Page.

Postcard from Yosemite

…How boundless the day seems as we revel in these storm-beaten sky gardens amid so vast a congregation of onlooking mountains! Strange and admirable it is that the more savage and chilly and storm-chafed the mountains, the finer the glow on their faces and the finer the plants they bear. The myriads of flowers tingeing the mountain-top do not seem to have grown out of the dry, rough gravel of disintegration, but rather they appear as visitors, a cloud of witnesses to Nature's love in what we in our timid ignorance and unbelief call howling desert.

The surface of the ground, so dull and forbidding at first sight, besides being rich in plants, shines and sparkles with crystals: mica, hornblende, feldspar, quartz, tourmaline. The radiance in some places is so great as to be fairly dazzling, keen lance rays of every color flashing, sparkling in glorious abundance, joining the plants in their fine, brave beauty-work, --every crystal, every flower a window opening into heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator.

From garden to garden, ridge to ridge, I drifted enchanted, now on my knees gazing into the face of a daisy, now climbing again and again among the purple and azure flowers of the hemlocks, now down into the treasuries of the snow, or gazing afar over domes and peaks, lakes and woods, and the billowy glaciated fields of the upper Tuolumne, and trying to sketch them. In the midst of such beauty, pierced with its rays, one's body is all one tingling palate. Who wouldn't be a mountaineer! Up here all the world's prizes seem nothing.

The largest of the many glacier lakes in sight, and the one with the finest shore scenery, is Tenaya, about a mile long, with an imposing mountain dipping its feet into it on the south side, Cathedral Peak a few miles above its head, many smooth swelling rock-waves and domes on the north, and in the distance southward a multitude of snowy peaks, the fountain-heads of rivers.

excerpted from, “My First Summer in the Sierra”

by John Muir

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com…or visit my Flickr Page.

Postcard from Kodachrome Basin

I took this photo near the entrance to Kodachrome Basin in Southern Utah. It is a unique state park filled with with strange chimney rock formations. In fact off in the distance, you can see one of the white chimneys that inhabit this area.

I like this photo as it contains the three elements a good landscape photo should have: a foreground: a middle ground; and a deep background. If you count the sky, it actually has four elements. The flowers in front are the focal point of the photo. From there, your eye travels across wide open spaces to the red rock formations that also inhabit this region.

But, the Pièce de résistance are the orange/pink mountains in the distance. That, my friends, is Bryce Canyon National Park. As you can see, it is not a canyon…but mostly incredible rock formations that run north to south for several miles. Bryce faces almost due east. Behind those pink rocks is just forested land.

As I said, Bryce itself is not a canyon…but when you get close, you see it consists of many small canyons (or basins) surrounded by fantastic rock formations. I always thought Bryce Canyon should be called Bryce Canyons. But, what do I know?

Kodachrome also has its own unique beauty that I have shared here before. So how did this park get its name? In 1948 the National Geographic Society explored and photographed the area for a story that appeared in the September 1949 issue of National Geographic. They named the area Kodachrome Flat, after the then relatively new brand of Kodak film they used.

In 1962 the area was designated a State Park. Fearing repercussions from the Kodak company for using the name Kodachrome, the name was changed to Chimney Rock State Park, but renamed Kodachrome Basin a few years later with Kodak's permission.

So the point of all this is to show how close Kodachrome Basin is to Bryce National Park…so if you visit one you should make a side trip to the other. And while you are in the neighborhood, make a stop at Red Canyon. All of this is part of Utah’s magnificent Highway 12 country…one of the most beautiful highways in all of America.

(To see a larger version of this photo, just click on the image)

To see more of my work, both in photography and digital painting, please visit my website, www.corkrum.com…or visit my Flickr Page.