Category: Nature

Image Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA

My friend Gil sent me this exquisite image from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, which includes the following description:

“Deep shadows create dramatic contrasts between light and dark in this high-resolution close-up of the martian surface. Recorded on January 24 by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the scene spans about 1.5 kilometers across a sand dune field in a southern highlands crater. Captured when the Sun was just 5 degrees above the local horizon, only the dune crests are caught in full sunlight. With the long, cold winter approaching the red planet’s southern hemisphere, bright ridges of seasonal frost line the martian dunes.”

Add the influence of scale to perception of curving organic forms defined by light and shadow.  For comparison, two steps down in scale from my Form:Convolution series: First, Last Judgment fresco detail designed by Georgio Vasari, inside the cupola of Florence Cathedral, Rome. The second image, a withering croton leaf.