I am beginning to think that I need to rent an excavator. The HOA rules say nothing about digging a trench into the side of the mountain, nor do they address construction of a full-size Camera Obscura. They seem to be obsessed with sheds, chicken coups, gazebos and the like. But that is another story.
Anyhow, my affair with the feldspar, quartz, and mortar that makes up my fireplace continues to be a good subject for ICM photography as exemplified in this post's image 'Approaching singularity'. It aolso keeps the HOA away. After all, who wants to interact with someone who spends the afternoon in conversation with a chimney.
All that aside, one of the things that I have enjoyed about the ICM photography is the curiosity factor. I started wondering how all the rocks that make up my fireplace came to be and it is an interesting story. Turns out that I am photographing some of the oldest rocks in North America.
A gazillion years ago North Carolina was largely under the ocean and the rocks I am now photographing were initially sedimentary muck. Then the earth's crust shifted and pushed up from underneath the muck to elevate everything into mountains that are now called the Appalachains. But that's not the whole story. These mountains then settled back down into the big basin that is North Carolina and created great pressure that resulted in all sorts of rocks, some gemstones, coal, and the common rocks that make up my fireplace. These stones were oliterally 'hard pressed'.
So it turns out that my fireplace is comprised of something that was millions of years in the making. I feel so honored to be able to interpret it through ICM photography. I have so many good images from this adventure right now that the rocks will soon be in a portfolio here at D'Day devoted just to them. Stay tuned, and please subscribe to get periodic updates. I promise I won't badger you to death with emails or give your email address to others. I do not care for overly aggressive promoters either.