Whenever I am photographing something I like, I always take multiple shots from different angles and distances.  A pleasing subject is often pleasing in numerous ways.  Take the beautiful vase of flowers my husband sent me for Valentine’s Day this year.  It had so many different flowers, different colors, and different angles, I just had to take as many photos as there were flowers!

This is the arrangement far enough away to see all the flowers.  I can count at least five different kinds of flowers.  Since there are so many, it’s easy to compose shots from all angles, and get something beautiful.

Here’s a little tighter shot, where the predominant theme is “purple”.  There are at least three different shades of purple.

Finally, an entirely different way to look at the rose.  In black-and-white, and closeup.  This view really emphasizes the details and texture of the rose petals.

The next subject is a national monument which most of us can identify immediately, but not all have visited, since it’s in a rural area of a rural state.  Who doesn’t recognize:

Mount Rushmore National Monument?  It’s in the wilds of South Dakota, and if you are not going there specifically you would never see it.  The faces of four of our greatest presidents are hewn out of the rock.  The rocky slope just below the faces consists of the rock fragments that were chiseled away to make the faces.  But this isn’t the only way to see the monument.  You can walk on a paved trail all the way around the monument.

This shot is taken from a road through Custer State Park, a few miles away from Mount Rushmore.  The tunnel mouth makes a good frame.  The road winds around a lot, and you see new rock formations around every corner.

Finally, this is also Mount Rushmore.  From behind.  You would certainly never recognize it if you didn’t know what it was.  Rushmore is endlessly fascinating, especially if you are into geology at all.  Everywhere around the monument, you see the many layers of what used to be sediment at the bottom of a shallow sea, deformed and pushed every which way by the forces of plate tectonics and volcanism from millions of years ago.

Yeah, I know it’s only supposed to be three, but I just had to show you the detail of the rock layers at the base of the monument-you can easily see how the originally-horizontal layers of rock have been deformed and pushed up.

Here’s the link to Patti’s Original Post for this week.