Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Chinese Landscape in Alaska

Last March, I found myself with in Valdez with a van full of architects and engineers and six hours to kill. It was also one of those rare sunny days in Valdez. So we drove around site seeing and taking pictures.

We headed up Keystone Canyon and I took this picture of a frozen waterfall at Bridal Veil Falls. I liked the shot but it wasn't until afterwards that I noticed the ice climbers. Can you spot them? Then I really liked the shot because it reminded me of Chinese landscape paintings, especially those of the Song Dynasty.

In the Song Dynasty (960-1279) Chinese landscape paintings often represented people in ant-like fashion against wild, exotic landscapes. This suited both the Taoist and the Buddhist philosophies of the time. Toaist with their focus on the natural instead of the man-made or Wu Wei. Buddhists with their focus on the realization of emptiness or Shunyata. I think Song painters would have liked this photo too.

P.S. I have added about 25 photos to my Flickr site (see right)

7 comments:

Melanie said...

Wow!! That is beautiful!

Anonymous said...

That's a frozen waterfall right?

Anonymous said...

That's cool, what is it?

FatBlokeThin said...

Wow, I had no idea of the scale until I looked for the climbers - awesome. What a beautiful place to kill 6 hours in!

Happy WW.

Anonymous said...

That is a fantastic picture. Can you imagine that slowly melting? I bet that's quite a sight.

It took me a bit, but I finally saw the climbers. What a wonderful surprise!

Aisling said...

WOW that is awesome!

Anonymous said...

很好看!
你喜欢宋朝的画家吗?

I assume you speak Mandarin... might be wrong though ! :D

Life in Alaska looks great anyway. The landscape reminds me of New Zealand a bit...