Sometimes, its the small scenes that really grab you, draw you in, and move you.  Indeed, the intimate landscape is often the grandest.  I made August’s photo in Nevada’s Valley of Fire State Park, where a tiny mineral deposit in the sandstone stopped me in my tracks.  It took a few different exposure settings to get the effect I wanted: to really accentuate the fine lines in the deposit, making them prominent in the frame.

Dendritic Connections, April 2011

At the time I made the image, as well as now, this little pattern reminds a neuron–our brains are made up largely of billions of these cells, each one connected to the other by thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of other connections.  In this way, information travels in the form of electrical impulses from cell to cell.  While biologists understand the basics of how information is transmitted, they do not understand completely how information is perceived and interpreted.  It is clear, however, that perception is an incredibly complex trait.

Although the basics of perception are probably quite similar between individuals, we only have to look around to see that everyone is different–we’re all uniquely us.  As such, it is logical to conclude that our brains all interpret scenes, beauty, differently.  If you’re reading this, you probably agree that art is subjective, but rather than simply accepting it, I find great joy in knowing we all see the world differently.  There are so many ways of seeing; that’s a fact worth celebrating.