Haiku Poetry and my Photographs of Waterfalls.

yostopia (64)in #photography • 8 years ago (edited)

Today we celebrate waterfalls, symbols of endless renewal.

Here in Northern California we don't get rain for 6 months of the year so when the first rain comes in the autumn, it's a huge event. Yesterday we got a few tenths of an inch, a harbinger of what we hope is to come.

In honor of that special occasion here are a set of photographs I've made of the waterfalls in my town, Mill Valley (with one exception, noted below). One of them is just 100 meters from my house, and the others are above me on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais, my spiritual home.

Haiku poetry speaks deeply to me in that it encapsulates feelings in the briefest of forms. I've captioned these images with my favorite waterfall haikus from the internet (authors noted).

Great cacophony
When water touches the cliff
Infusing, cojoined

– Michelle Liew

Mountain-rose petals
Falling, falling, falling now...
Waterfall music

– Matsuo Bashō

A great waterfall
its steady roar joined
by autumn’s voices

– Shinoda Teijirō

suddenly we stop
for we see the waterfall
innocence of birth

– Michael Jordan

Alamere Falls in the Pt. Reyes National Seashore is a "tidefall" -- a waterfall that flows directly into the ocean. There are only two of these waterfalls in this part of California.

my voice is silenced
by sound of waterfall's pure
sweet acapella

– Cynthia Alvez

Happy solitude.
Waterfall of dreams crashing
upon my heart's gates.

– Vassilis Comporozos

Off the weathered rock,
The water softly tumbles,
Again and again.

– Charlotte Pinkney

Rushing white water
Crashes down with lethal force
Beautiful to see

– Gage Hudak

And perhaps my favorite of all waterfall haikus ever, by the great poet Gary Snyder.
(This is so wonderful that it doesn't need an image.)

pissing
watching
a waterfall

Thanks for watching.

I have a long history of inventing tools for animators and also making films and photographs. My wife, daughter and I live at the foot of beautiful Mt. Tamalpais on the San Francisco Bay and I've been using technology to tell complex stories for a long time. My biggest claim to fame? Leading the team that created Autodesk 3ds Max... the most popular 3D animation tool of all time. When I sold the Yost Group to Autodesk at the end of the last century I jumped headfirst into pursing my original love... photography and filmmaking. Now I spend all of my time exploring the mysteries of my world with my cameras, and revealing what I find in my images and films.

You can find my verification post here.

#waterfalls #poetry