To Lie Down in Green Pastures

IMG_4861BethChurchSheepPan480We’ve enjoyed the sunshine this week more than we might have, had not all of last week and most of the week before been so mercilessly gloomy and threatening.

Even so, normally I would not have pulled over on Bethlehem Church Road to photography the sheep. But I’d had a request for just such a shot. I forgot to bring a camera other than my iPhone, but a panorama is what this scene called for.

I’ve recently given up on Flickr after failing to get any tech support from the behemoth of Yahoo, so have started moving images over to Smugmug, where you can see a larger version of this image.

And for landscapes, you really have to look large. Tiny images just do not convey the sense of depth and dimension necessary to give the image any kind of scale.

What a day. I’d been in meetings for four hours and came out into the daylight to discover the perfect sky to go with green pastures. And dirigible white clouds. And white-ish sheep.

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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  1. I have tweaked the smugmug settings and hope this opens up viewing of the image. The great thing and the downside of SmugMug is that it is highly customizable by gallery. 2015_10_08 10:31 AM

  2. All 4 of the Smugmug photos are gorgeous. The second sheep meadow is even better than the one in this post.
    I still think the “Journal” format on Smugmug is the easiest for visitors to navigate. Scrolling down is so well known to everyone, while the arrows on the side, although visible for a few seconds, disappear, and the novice may not realize there are other photos to see.
    The fallen leaves on the road photo is worthy of a blog post, too.