Landscape and Earthworks.

This picture was taken in Puerto Rico, in a cave called "Cueva Ventana," or Cave Window. This picture is of the end of the cave, where it literally opens up like a window in the side of a mountain, looking out over the landscape. It was an ab

solutely incredible view. I spent about 45 minutes there just taking pictures and reveling in the glory of God's creation.

This is one of the pictures from our Earthworks project. We were toying with the concept of being "wired" in nature and also the idea about preferring the tree or a picture of the tree. In this picture Mitchell is sitting up against a tree, but is basically ignoring it because he is so engrossed in his technology and the picture of the tree that he is looking at.

The difference for me between working on the landscape and Earthworks projects was that when taking my landscape picture I was focused on capturing the earth, whereas during the Earthworks project I felt we were using the earth as just another prop, like the laptop or the shirts in some of our other pictures. In the landscape photo I was trying to take in all the natural beauty and take a photo that appreciates nature. For the Earthworks pictures I felt like I was trying to manipulate the earth, not appreciate it. I think that the landscape picture is much more representative of my relationship with nature/creation. My preferred relationship with nature is when I can just be in it and take it in and appreciate it. I like to think when I'm nature, but I don't like to try and understand. I love the feeling of knowing that I am in something that is way too big for me to comprehend, and so I don't try. I just let it be this monumental mass in my mind, and I respect its complexity by remaining relatively on the outside, like I did when I took this landscape photo. It was me observing this space and trying to fit as much beauty into the frame as I could, knowing that there was so much that I couldn't fit in my predetermined number of pixels. In the Earthworks pictures I was really trying hard to make something out of nature or to use it for a specific purpose, which is just not how I relate to creation.

This is the picture we had in mind when we were coming up with our concept for Earthworks. It's a great example of the contrast between preferring the scene or a picture of it. If I were in this frame, I would be on my way outside to walk around in it instead of sitting there painting.