Photos

To Sotmg,

I have just joined TrekEarth specifically because of seeing this photograph. I saw it the other day when looking for photographs of Afghanistan. My initial search turned up pictures of mountains and deserts with a strong military influence, until I found this site and a gallery of pictures showing the people and city and country life of Afghanistan that I was wanting to see.

This photograph stood out for so many reasons. I cannot forget it and only wish I had the technical skills to tell you why, but I'm ignorant of photography. I try anyway. It is like a painting, an abstract of all the different colours, shapes and textures of stone. It's like a bird’s eye view of Afghanistan's mountains and country side, except that it's in a miniature form.

To a foreigner it tallies with the harshness and ruggedness of the terrain that we usually see, but it has the most incredible surprise embedded in the scene - like a stone flower - hardly differing from the shale because it is so understated in colour, but if you look closely you see it, almost like a chameleon, fitting in with its surrounds, but not quite, growing out of them, with a pale dusty pink tinge to its mimetic, stone petals - so hardy, to grow amongst sand and rock - and not garish or gaudy. As you have described it so well - "a strong flower".

To me, this picture symbolises the spirit of the people of Afghanistan that survives all, and blooms in the harshest environs which it in turn, reflects .... like, a ‘rock rose’.

I would love to have a copy of this on a wall, to be able to enjoy.

Sotmg, I think you have a marvellous eye and that this picture is masterful in its composition – of a real scene – that goes beyond the real into a world of abstractions of the infinite variety of shapes and colours of stones and pebbles – that seem to swirl like a frozen river around that little flower ....... the one you didn’t miss.