There are many religions around the world, including many that are little known, such as Baha’i. The Gardens in Haifa are some of the most beautiful in the world, and dedicated to the Baha’i faith. Open to the public, these gardens serve to remind us that peace and tranquility can be found in the outside world, and within ourselves.
I hope you enjoy these photos from my visit there in 2012.
To learn more about the Baha’i Gardens please click here.
Ever since I began delving into photography as a hobby, I’ve been most attracted to taking shots of nature. I find great pleasure in finding out-of-the-way locales like this one:
The really amazing fact about this – I wasn’t in the middle of a park; I wasn’t in the middle of the country. This is a picture of the West Fork Trinity River in the very heart of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. I love finding places like this, even in the heart of a sprawling urban environment: places totally devoid of signs of civilizations – no power lines, no roads, no airplanes in the sky.
As I continued learning more about photography, I absolutely fell in love with back & white shots as well. There is a timeless quality that taking a B&W shot adds – and this quality adds quite a bit of serenity to the scene laid out in front of you:
I think I like photography as much as I do, not just for the art I can create, and the fact that I can share the results with others, but also because I can find unique vistas like this. I can travel to places I’ve never been hidden just past places I frequent, and still find something new. Finding places like this is like winning a scavenger hunt that Mother Nature set before you.
I hope you enjoy looking at these as much as I enjoyed finding them, and sharing them.
“By all these lovely tokens September days are here, with summer’s best of weather and autumn’s best of cheer”
– Helen Hunt Jackson
Please feel free to link this little writing of mine, but remember to give proper attributions. 🙂
The sun was shining brightly – the sky empty of any clouds. By all accounts, including the ones of the two children jumping on the trampoline, the day was magnificent. Clearly the children believed the day to be nearly perfect, but what the day really needed to reach that perfection was rain. And not just any rain, no. The day needed a downpour, a true soaking was called for! Being children, they had the answer. An Indian rain dance. They were 6 at the time, and had been taught about how the Native Americans would dance when the crops needed watering, and so that the crops would grow tall and strong. Being children, a downpour would make them just as tall and strong as the crops. So they danced. In circles they moved, bouncing on the trampoline. Hollering and laughing and dancing.
At first, the sky refused to acquiesce. In truth, though, who can deny a happy child? The sky, being tolerant of children (in truth is was much more than just “tolerant”,but the sky didn’t like for anyone to know), eventually gave in. At first, it was a single cloud on the horizon. Then, there were more and many. Clouds of all shapes and sizes. Suddenly, the children are met by the blazing thunder and the deafening lightning.
The rain had come.
For hours in child-time, the rain came and showered them with happiness and joy. They were happy then, these children. A boy and girl. Cousins destined to love each other as brother and sister. They were closer than most, and they were innocent of everything that happened around them. They lived, and they laughed, and they loved. And they were drenched.
As a writer, I draw a lot of inspiration from nature. When I look around and see everything that there is to see, I can’t help but be in awe. When I discovered photography, I realized that I had the perfect opportunity to capture images that I can later use as source material for my writing.
While the following pictures are not the source of anything I’ve written so far, they are very much examples of the type of inspiring sights I search for.
I almost always take both a color and a black & white shot when I am out and about for two reasons:
This was an occasion where both are beautiful, and both convey the majesty of a small river in Texas.
the dingo was here 