Cheap Art

 

My regular readers know that I love photography. I’ll never be an Ansel Adams or a Dorothea Lange, but I enjoy taking pictures and seeing what I can do with them.

Over the years I’ve used my images for jigsaw puzzles, placemats, note cards, mugs, and, of course, wall art. My office is decorated with photos from my travels and our dining room has a wall of Lake Michigan lighthouses, but my most recent venture is our newly remodeled bathroom. Instead of re-hanging the art we had before, Roland suggested using some of my photographs. And since the predominant color in the bathroom is now grey, I suggested using black-and-white images.

After going through some of my photos, we decided on a waterfall theme and selected three images to enlarge and hang. The one at the top of this post is Multnomah Falls in Oregon, which I took while on a cruise of the Columbia and Snake Rivers in 2025. The two that follow were both taken in Minnesota during a 2015 research trip. The first is the High Falls at Pigeon River, and the second was taken somewhere along Minnesota 61.

The title of this post is a little misleading, though. By the time I paid to get the images blown up to 20 X 16 inches, bought three nice frames, and replaced the original plexiglass in the frames with a non-glare version, it wasn’t cheap art. Still, I’m happy with the result and prefer what we have to something we might have bought “off the rack.”

It’s nice to have a hobby that I can get some use from.

Waterfall Shopping

I shop for waterfalls like some women shop for clothes. Since I live in the Chicago area, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, and Nordstrom aren't novelties.

Waterfalls are.

So when I was in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina several weeks ago, I went waterfall shopping. With my camera as currency and photographs as merchandise, my shopping trip was successful and satisfying. Except that I didn't bargain for the sunburn I also picked up.

Joyce Kilmer said:

          I think that I shall never see
          A poem lovely as a tree.

          . . . .

          Poems are made by fools like me,
          But only God can make a tree.

I feel the same way about waterfalls.

I'm awestruck by God's creation. Man can plant trees, but only God can make them grow. Man can build miniature waterfalls in parks or back yards, but the gravity that makes them work comes from God. And the large, awesome waterfalls like the ones I saw in the Blue Ridge Mountains would be unmanageable and expensive for man to build. Not so for God.

My shopping trip started at Yellowstone Falls in Graveyard Fields, where I made a new friend. We hiked first to the Lower Falls and then to the Upper Falls.

From there I went to Looking Glass Falls, which is a mere 60 feet high. But the rocky mountain setting is totally awe-inspiring. That's Looking Glass Falls in the photo at the top of this post.

Then I went to Hickory Nut Falls and travelled quite a ways to get there, only to find that I would have to travel even farther to see it up close and personal. Since I would have missed the beginning of my conference, I chose not to continue on. I did, however, get a glimpse of the 400-foot waterfall high up in the mountains. I used a telephoto lens to take this picture.

But no picture can truly express the wonders of God's creation. You have to be there.

That's why I go waterfall shopping.