Lava Stripe
I took this picture of a short length of what is surely Red Alder when I was taking long exposures on the Harling Point foreshore a few weeks ago. I did not know what to do with it until I saw The Lantern Room’s Lichen Stripe post – what a great shot that is. Anyway, it gave me the idea to crop the red into a contrasting stripe against the bark and rock and misty water in this long exposure. Its not nearly as good a photo as Lichen Stripe, nor even all that similar in composition. But I find it interesting, and I expect I will build on the idea as opportunity arises.
The colour is natural – Red Alder (Alnus rubra) is like this when bruised or bothered, and the sun had just come up and was still casting a yellow orange light that accentuates the red, probably the polarising filter is in play too.
My wife thinks it looks like a lava flow. Tempts me to put this into my Aerial Landscapes series of images that look as if they might be shot from an airplane.
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Canon 5D MkII, with Canon 50mm/f1.4 lens, polarizing filter, ISO 100, 4 seconds at f22.
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burnt embers 
Definitely looks volcanic, even the whiteness of the bark looks like an old cooled lava flow. Nature is a marvellous thing, full of unnatural looking sights!
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Hello Malcolm – welcome to my blog and thank you for commenting. The whiter areas are actually a bit of bedrock on the water’s edge. I agree that that part of the strip really helps with the effect.
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This is really, really cool, my friend! Great colors here!
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Thank you Toad. Gotta love alder, except perhaps when its in the form of a thicket between you and where you want to go. Then its just hell. I have worked in some groves of alder that must have been unusually old – at least a metre in diameter and very tall and straight.
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You do not only take beautiful photos, but you also have very interesting subjects!
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Thank you so much Background. My blog is really about my pictures, but sometimes a bit more creeps in; I am helpless to prevent it 🙂
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This works really well – I like it a lot! The red colour of the Alder is amazing – so bright and strong. It reminds me of lava too.
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Thanks Meanderer. The colour is great. Its actually a pretty interesting tree that had a lot of uses by indigenous peoples – for instance at this link.
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And Meanderer, I meant to say also and again, I love your lichen stripe shot and the way it fools the mind. And just the way it looks.
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Many thanks Ehpem. I’m so pleased that you like the image. It still confuses me also. Thank you for the link; it looks like an all-round useful tree. I’m off to check the types of Alder we have here in the UK!
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Stunning depiction of nature’s beauty in the unexpected, Sally
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Thank you Sally – the log-end is really not very nice, on first glance, so it’s great to find something in it like this.
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Wow, I absolutely agree, it looks like a river of lava with a mountain range behind it! Great job. 😀
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Hi David – it was a happy discovery within a photo of a partly red log on a beach. I like it when that happens. I took the photo because of the colour, but could not think of a good idea for the image. Glad I did not delete all 4 shots that I took.
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Very cool abstract image!
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Thanks David. That red is really quite startling to find in nature and not on a flower. Or volcano.
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