This is a glorious, spectacular book.
Steinmetz's images from a paraglider provide a unique view of some of our planet's most beautiful landscapes, somehow a link between satellite views and "ground truth." I don't do commercials on this blog, but I can only recommend this - it's remarkably good value for the quality of the images and the stunning scope.
So what is this? Land-art on the moon? An alien landing pad in the Utah desert? The work of nocturnal new-agers at the beach?
The answer of course, is none of these - in reality more fascinating and bizarre. To find out, go to the "art and visual ingenuity site," Colossal, and Spoon & Tomago
Sometimes, the fewer words the better. The words of Russian photographer Andre Ermolaev, "...an inexpressible combination of colors, lines, and patterns," are sufficient to introduce his stunning images of Icelandic Rivers. The collection is highlighted on The Superslice site and elsewhere, including here and Ermolaev's own site (in Russian).
Kurt Meyer writes:
SHOOTING SAND
For the last 15 years, on and off, I have been collecting sand. The “off” times resulted from not having an answer to the question, ‘what do I do with all of this sand?’ I have tried various methods of displaying my sands as you can see below. Two-ounce bottles with overhead lighting being the best.
But the only people who could regularly view the display were my wife, the neighbors, some family and my dog, Zena, and she could care less. In fact, anything that draws attention away from her is not well tolerated.
Things got interesting again, however, when I decided to try my hand at getting pictures of my sands. At first, I tried a digital microscope and although it turned out to be an interesting exercise, the quality just wasn’t there. The edges, for example, are usually blurry, the definition is often lacking and the color is rarely true. These problems would even be too much for a Photoshop package. You can, however, get a good idea of what is lurking in your sand sample at 20x, as in this image of sand from Fintragh beach, but it is not suitable for framing.
Today I still use the digital microscope but only for screening sand samples. It is pretty good at predicting which sands will be “photogenic.”
My first foray into serious sand macrophotography began with my purchase of a used Nikon D70. The following picture was taken with that camera body and a 60mm 1:1 lens. Even though the sensor is only a 6.1MP it still provides a pretty good image. This photo is of one of the famous green sand beaches in Hawaii, Pocket Beach to be exact. The olivine, lava and coral make a striking image [at the head of this post - MW].
At any rate, this new photographic endeavor answered the big question, ‘what do I do with all of this sand?’ Answer, SHOOT IT.
There are a number of photographers who do outstanding sand photography. I would like to showcase several of them. This is, by no means, an exhaustive list. This only reflects the photographers that have posted images on my website, Tropics of Sand. I will attempt to compare and contrast their styles. As you will see, the top photographers all have their own style. Over and above the camera equipment used, the thing that defines a photographer is their approach to getting the shot. All of the images that you will see below are unique to the photographer. I can tell a Heider photo from a Couette and a Sepp from a Kenney in the blink of an eye. I am sure that you will, too.
SAND PHOTOGRAPHERS
(click images to enlarge)
Leo Kenney: Large field, great clarity
Leo is a veteran of creating outstanding sand calendars and posters. He has a prodigious collection thanks to the fact that he has a legion of former students who dutifully send sands to him from their travels (cheater). Leo tends to zoom out a bit which produces a larger field than most. He uses a Canon 1-5x lens that allows him to get that clarity. Leo’s Picasa Web albums are here.
Clockwise from top left: Miller’s Point, Cape Town, South Africa; Monticello, Corsica; Jeffrey’s Bay, South Africa; Rye, New Hampshire. Center: Cap Lardier, France.
Siim Sepp: Great definition of full field shots and individual grains.
Siim also uses the Canon 1-5x lens although Siim does more close up work. He uses a full field for some of his photos but he also shows exploded views of individual grains of sand elements. Siim has a “how-to” on the mechanics of getting a sand photo on his website, Sand Atlas. On that site, he also provides geological information on sand composition that is very informative.
Clockwise from top left: Diamond Head, Hawaii; Sapphire crystals, Songe, Southern Tanzania; Zakynthos, Greece; Waddell Sea floor (-3500m), Antarctica (Globigerina forams, yellow circles); Center: Glass Beach, Kaui, Hawaii.
Alexander Heider: Tight shots, great color.
Herr Heider gets excellent close ups of his sands without sacrificing detail. As you can see in this series of sands from Ireland he is able to keep detail at close range. He also agonizes over white balance which gives very exacting color to his images. His tight shots and true color make his photos stand out.
Clockwise from top left, an Irish selection: Ardmore, Waterford; Ventry Strand, Dingle Bay; Dooagh, Achill Island, Fanore, Galway Bay; Center: Fintragh Bay, Killybegs.
Alain Couette: Soft shots, great detail.
Alain will not reveal what he uses as a lighting source but whatever it is, it gives his photos a “soft” look and it is also rich in detail. Alain has numerous images on his website, Arénophile ou Psammophile? He has sand pix plus images of forams that are very interesting. Alain has a distinctive style that I would recognize anywhere.
Clockwise from top left: Boracay Island, Angol, Philippines; Nusa Lembongan, Ceningan Island, Indonesia; Rio Grande do Norte, Fernando de Noronha Island, Brazil; Luzon island, Nasugbu, Philippines; Center: Sanur, Bali, Indonesia
Carla Lagendijk: Daylight shots, great variety and picture perfect color.
Carla is one of the pre-eminent sand photographers today. As you can see her shots are very rich in detail. This is not due to the lens but the fact she shoots her photos in daylight, the sun illuminating every nook and cranny which in turn provides outstanding definition. The other thing that separates Carla from the pack is her prodigious collection. She has sand from anywhere you can imagine which greatly increases the chances of having outstanding material to work with. Below are 4 shots that typify her style, and of course, no examination of Carla’s work would be complete without a sample of one of her “selections”. These are selected bits of coral, forams, shells, etc., from various sand samples. I hesitate to use more than one for the simple reason that they are too awesome. If you can look at these all day, why would you look at anything else?
Clockwise from top left: Bahia de Samana, Dominican Republic; Myrdal, Vik, Iceland (olivine and obsidian); Al Bustan, Oman; Brétignolles, France; Center: Enubuj Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands.
Kurt Meyer: Exploded views, contrasting backgrounds.
I now use a Nikon d1500 with the same 60mm lens. What I like to do with my photos is create an edge where heavy minerals or carbonate elements can be isolated from the main body of sand allowing for a better view of the individual grains. This has been dubbed the “black corner” technique. The 5100 has a 16.2 MP sensor that will enable you to enlarge photos without losing definition. Also, I use black or other colored glass as a background to provide contrast.
Clockwise from top left: Cape Point, South Africa; Dondra Beach, India; Mardakyan, Azerbaijan; Grand Ile, France; Center: Point Reef, Vanua Levu, Fiji.
You can see more photos by all of the above photographers on tropicsofsand.com. I would love to add more images this weekend but Zena has other ideas.
[All images reproduced with the photographer’s permission, composite formats by MW.
Kurt is based in Pennsylvania, and writes that while he has been photographing sand for the last three years, he has collected it for “15 odd years.” Nothing odd about that as far as I’m concerned, but perhaps those years were odd in other ways, and sand collecting represented an opportunity for normality. Interestingly, he enjoys diving for samples. Anyway, thanks Kurt for all the effort in putting this together – and thanks to all the arenophile photographers who contributed to this piece.]
A while ago, I wrote a couple of posts on “the European sand belt, a great swathe of lowlands covered, more or less, by aeolian sand deposits originating from the chaos left behind by the retreat of the Ice Age glaciers,” the second with a focus on the Dutch dunes of Hulshorst in the Veluwe region. Recently, I was delighted to see a new comment on this post, from Francien Solitar, who wrote:
My stepdad was P.H.Mullaard. He lived in Ermelo and painted the Hulshorster zanddunes in more than one painting. (see: Mullaard.com) He spoke with a forest keeper there and he was told that, when there is a thunderstorm in the area, there seems to be an unusual amount of lightning flashes that hit the dunes and make craters in the ground.
I immediately went to the website that Francien is developing, showcasing Piet Mullaard’s works, and at the same time took the liberty of contacting her by email. This is yet another of those immensely satisfying “out of the blue” contacts that arise through the blog, and Francien responded immediately and graciously. She lived in the town of Ermelo (see the image below), and was a schoolteacher there before later emigrating to Canada in 1976.
As the website describes, “Piet Mullaard was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He lived and worked in Hillegersberg, Ermelo, Groningen and Bilthoven. He was an autodidact and worked as a painter and sculptor. He left a collection of about 150 paintings and 25 sculptures. Most of the collection is now in Canada.” Francien very kindly gave me permission to reproduce some of her stepfather’s paintings of the Dutch sand belt; the painting at the head of the post is Sand Dunes at the Veluwe (1947, oil on canvas, 126 x 100 cm). Below are Uprooted Trees in the Sand (1946, oil on canvas,88 x 64 cm) and The Small Drift Sand (1946, canvas, 60 x 40 cm).
These are wonderfully atmospheric paintings in the great Dutch tradition, and a very satisfying link between landscapes, geology, sand, and art – thanks, Francien, for drawing our attention to your stepfather’s work!
[Photo with the Google Earth image from the Ministerie van Economische Zaken, Landbouw, en Innovatie website.]
A few weeks ago, Chinese New Year was being celebrated. In Indonesia it’s known as “Imlek,” and Jakarta certainly celebrated. For us, this was truly remarkable since, when we were last here 20 years ago, you still had to vouch on the immigration form that you not only were not carrying explosives, but that you had nothing with Chinese writing on it. Some things have improved in the intervening years.
We are now in the Year of the Dragon – the Water Dragon to be precise; I was born, with no choice, in the Year of the Dog – but at least it was a Fire Dog. Dragons were everywhere for Imlek – especially in commercial locations where they might induce a level of exuberance that would lead to purchasing stuff. The absurdly (and, given the overall social context, disturbingly) ritzy mall in our building complex was no exception. And, along with the dragons, came events. My eye was caught by a small item on the poster announcing these, between “Fiddle with 2 Strings,” and the “Dainty Lotus Dance” - “Grains of Sand.” Mystified, I hurried along one lunchtime, and watched a performance by “Indonesia’s only sand artist.” This is the art of telling stories via continually changing hand-sculpted images in sand on an overhead projector. One of its celebrity proponents is Kseniya Simonova, who won “Ukraine’s Got Talent” with her work a couple of years ago. It may not be “great art” in the traditional sense, but it’s compelling to watch, it’s highly creative and requires impressive skills – I certainly couldn’t do it.
The Indonesian artist, “Denny Darko,” performed wearing a blindfold, and his story, topically, was “The Legend of Lotus Flower and the Dragon King.” You find your attention switching from the artist to the screen, watching his hands moving, pouring, scattering, and sculpting the sand, the grand sweeps dramatic, the small details meticulous and mysterious, images appearing and dissolving. And one of the compelling aspects is the expectation – a scene begins to take shape, but you have no idea what exactly it will be, until a detail begins to emerge and all is revealed. No, it may not be “great art,” but it’s really impressive, fascinating to watch, and a great way of visually telling a story.
A couple of images and a short movie:
Each year, Nikon holds its Small World microphotography competition and the results can always only be described as stunning. This year is no different – but with the added element of sand appearing as the 14th place winner, the image above by Yanping Wang of the Beijing Planetarium.
Browsing through the galleries of winners, Honorable Mentions, and “Images of Distinction,” one of the (many) things that is striking is the art of nature’s patterns and designs, a theme superbly covered in the books by Philip Ball, Nature’s Patterns – A Tapestry in Three Parts. Scale has little role in all this, and I found it entertaining (not to mention awe-inspiring) to flip between the microscopic and the huge – specifically, the glorious gallery published earlier this year by Time, “Our Beautiful Planet: Images from Space by an Astronaut Photographer.” The images were taken by Paolo Nespoli:
European Space Agency Astronaut Paolo Nespoli — who first traveled to space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 2007 — photographed a unique and stunning image of the space shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station on a recent Soyuz mission. During a 159-day mission aboard the International Space Station, Nespoli managed to find time, despite his full schedule of duties, to capture footage for a documentary film, First Orbit. Combining historic voice recordings of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first manned spaceflight, the documentary charts the view that Gagarin saw during his historic mission. In addition to this footage, Nespoli also took many still images of Earth. LightBox presents a selection of these photos that show our planet as a beautiful abstract canvas.
“A beautiful abstract canvas” indeed; but then put some of these images together with the Small World – the viewer can be hard-pressed to determine scale at all:
Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, Mar 2, 2011; Douglas Moore, University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point, Agatized dinosaur bone cells, unpolished, ca. 150 million years old (42x)
Dr. Juan Carlos Izpisúa, CMRB - Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona, Neurons growing over astrocytes in a human stem cell embryo body (20x); Desert, Somalia, January 30, 2011
And then the “abstract canvas” is on display in quite extraordinary ways in the microscopic world:
Dr. Michael M. Raith, Steinmann Institut, University of Bonn, leucite crystal from volcanic rock showing polysynthetic lamellar twins formed by the cubic- tetrago (40x); Dennis Callahan, California Institute of Technology, Department of Applied Physics & Materials Science, Cracked gallium arsenide solar cell films (50x)
But, this being the blog that it is, I shall finish with the following image of sand dunes in Saudi Arabia – or is it actually a biological photomicrograph?
As I was browsing the stunning website of Elvira Wersche, whose installation and performance art works were the subject of the guest post by Carla Lagendijk earlier this week, in the “press” section I came upon a piece by Christine Gruwez. It struck me as lyrical and poetic, words responding to the art, and a reminder of the roles that sand plays in the symbolism of our imaginations. Here it is:
Sand is hushed earth. Earth, purified and refined. Refined by wind, sun, and rain. Refined by sweat and by the tears of those whose feet have trodden on it. And refined by every hand that has turned it over, grasped it and returned it to itself. Sand is also liberated earth. In sand, the earth is released from its lassitude. At last.
Sand is the earth’s memory. In layer after layer it preserves the traces of ephemeral human existence. It is the sand that remains and offers enduring little signs, like a panoply of stories: countless fragments, occasionally a jewel or a sun-baked tablet bearing an inscription, or the dust-decayed remains of an addition to some grave that has long since vanished. Only an imprint remains.
How fragile is human existence! How enduring is sand! Also: how selfless it is. It absorbs everything, down to the minutest impression. For everything – without exception – a place is found, within its multiple layers. Sand stores and preserves while transforming itself at the slowest imaginable pace. And it becomes colour, in crystal landscapes.
Sand can assume any shape while remaining itself. Sand is pure potential. In the words of Aristotle, matter is nothing more than the infinite potential for acquiring form.
With sand that has come to her from all parts of the world, Elvira Wersche makes this boundless receptivity visible. Long before she stoops over a designated surface to map out the initial contours of a vibrant geometrical pattern, others have stooped to collect sand for her.
Their names are called as in a never-ending litany, and as a hymn to the earth, they reply:
Finely-ground desert sand from Mongolia, the Sahara or the Thar Desert.
Heavy earth from England, Poland or Kazakhstan.
Volcanic earth from Iceland, Pompeii and from Sicily’s Mount Etna.
Red sand from the ruins of Jordan’s holy city of Petra.
Sand from the Machu Picchu Inca temple in Peru.
Sand from a Zoroastrian fire temple in Iran.
Sand from Srebrenica, Vietnam and Korea.
Sand from Uganda, from Israel.
Sand from Ground Zero in New York.
The instruments used by Elvira Wersche possess the same simplicity and clarity as sand: a piece of chalk attached to a length of string, a small tea-strainer, a little piece of cardboard to designate boundaries. With these rudimentary means she creates a marvellous whole, in which each shape responds to each other shape − just as in music, every sound mingles to produce and to express a whole. Every proportion bears the mark of the most perfect of all proportions: the ‘golden section’.
In an act that retraces the elementary principles of creation, the sand, silent and at rest, is stirred into motion and made to sound. It is lifted up and renewed in its own nature. The sand has had to travel a long way – quite literally – until it could express itself in a new composition in this place, in patterns of near-magical colour and form. What follows is an act of consecration to the sand.
Then comes the moment at which it must move on. And so Elvira Wersche proceeds, in a vigorous, dazzling ritual, to erase the patterns again, and to reduce colour and form to a single mixture. After which small portions are dispensed to the visitors, who take it away with them to their destination, wherever this may be.
The journey continues.
[This was written in August 2009. Christine Gruwez studied philosophy and Iranian studies. Her work focuses on dialogues between religions and cultures. She has published on Christianity, Islam and manichaeism. The images at the head of the post are taken from Wersche’s Qutri, a 2009 work at the Pergamonmuseum, Berlin; the image above is from De transformatie, Helmond, Netherlands, 2003.]
Tibetan sand mandalas, powerful images of ephemerality. Gathering, design, and dispersal, the never-ending journey of Buddhism and sand grains.
And recently, thanks to my arenophile friend, Carla Lagendijk, I have been alerted to a modern exponent of the sand mandala. Elvira Wersche’s works are faithful to both the art and the spiritual symbolism of the traditional mandala, at the same time created through dramatic modern designs. Carla was fortunate enough not only to witness one of these extraordinary performance art events, but also to meet and talk with the artist. It seemed natural that Carla should write of this herself – all that remains for me to do is to exhort you to watch the video she links to – it is compelling and hauntingly beautiful. Over to Carla:
During a few cultural weeks in June in Leiden, the Netherlands, I had the pleasure to watch a sand artist creating a sand mosaic, named “Shamseh”, on the floor of the “temple hall” in our Museum of Ancient History. Creating the mosaic should take her 3 weeks after which a special final performance with dance and music was going to follow.
The artist was Elvira Wersche (German/Dutch). Her website: www.elvirawersche.com
She was creating her sand project of 6x7 meters in front of an ancient Egyptian temple, a very appropriate location. The inspiration for her kind of work she got many years ago during a visit to the Friday Mosque of Isfahan in Iran were she studied the fantastic designs on the walls.
About 10 days before the final performance I visited Elvira twice while she was working on her design. About 600 bags and bottles of sand were lying around and I could see how, sitting on her knees, she was carefully filling up the triangles. The geometrical pattern looks simple but at a closer look it has a very intricate, dynamic design of circles and triangles, which had been drawn on the floor beforehand.
She showed me the several kinds of sand. Some she had collected herself, most of it had been generously given by known and unknown travellers, sometimes combined with information about the origin of the sample: historical/ archaeological sites, holy places, deserts, sand from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel, etc.
She sometimes examines the content through a magnifying-glass but the structure of the sand is more important for her work. It is the history of mankind behind the location of the sand that fascinates her most and fits to the underlying idea for her projects. Sand is not only a product of natural geological processes but also a silent witness of the long development of the human race. It reveals a piece of earth history but also hides a lot of secrets. This is the mystical side of it.
But….. however fascinating this all is….. what about the grains??
I saw a lot of sandstone sand with lumps in it which of course needed to be sieved. Sand of volcanic origin, dark reddish sand which looked like laterite, desert sand from Mongolia, carbonate sand, even the snowy white powdery dolomite stuff with pyrite from the Lengenbach quarry in Switzerland. She also showed me some sand which was useless for her purpose: an Asian beach sand which almost completely consisted of larger foraminifera. Of course these little critters roll to all sides. As I was very interested, she gave me half of this material.
The third time we visited the museum was for the final performance.
That evening the mosaic should be wiped out, following the idea of the Tibetans with their mandalas (nothing lasts forever). However, the way it had been done was not at all Tibetan like, but probably more impressive. It made me feel a bit sad to see Elvira’s work being destroyed, knowing it took her 3 weeks on her knees to create this stunning piece of art but I must confess, it had been done in a delicate way by 2 young good-looking girls (twins), light-footedly dancing over the pattern and mixing the sand with their long black skirts (later with their hands) accompanied by dark tones of a strange musical instrument. It fascinated all the spectators. They were dead silent. Needless to say that the dust, hovering in the hall, partly contributed to the strange atmosphere!
website museum: www.rmo.nl. YouTube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfGQhT0ZFTI
At the end of the performance we all received a bit of this mixed “world sand”:
It is clear that this sand contains a combination of grains, impossible to find together in nature. At first sight it already has too many different colours. Second: the shape of the grains is far too varied: angular, rounded, etc. Looking closer you can start an imaginary world trip through volcanic fields and over beaches, pass colourful sandstone areas and find yourself back in quarries or sandpits.The pyrite is down in the middle. And even a white foram is in the right hand corner.
[The illustrations above are from Elvira Wersche's website, but are not from the performance that Carla describes; they are of Taqsim - Teilung, a 2009 work at the Landesmuseum fur Natur und Mensche in Oldenburg, Germany. The video is of the Leiden work, including the recycling by the twins. World Sand photo by Carla - thanks to her again for everything.]
Just what exactly is going on here? There is, as far as I know, no answer to that question – and that simply adds to the sense of wonder, of mystery. I first used this image in Sand, as an illustration of the intricate and unfathomable artistry of nature and sand; it came from Martyn Gorman who has the good fortune to live close to a wild stretch of dunes on Scotland’s east coast. His photographs are spectacular, and showcased on his site, where he writes that:
I am fortunate to live within sight of the fabulous Sands of Forvie on the northeast coast of Aberdeenshire in Scotland; a complex of mobile sand dunes and beaches of great beauty and scientific interest. I never cease to be fascinated by the constantly changing forms and patterns to be seen in the sand and by the plants and animals that live there.
This particular photo was taken in 2006; recently he wrote to me with the words “They have returned!” and attached this image:
So this is clearly not a one-off phenomenon: something is going on, a conspiracy of sand and physics - and maybe a little chemistry - that inevitably results in these complex and compelling sculptures. But I can only repeat the question – what exactly is going on here? Isn’t it wonderful?
{Images copyright, and reproduced with thanks with the permission of, Martyn Gorman; make sure you visit his site.]
