Greetings, and welcome to my blog. Please check back occasionally to read my most recent musings. More from the mind of that mystical Celtic Bard of Maryland, “The Poet-Provocateur” ....
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The Influence of Ansel Adams
October 23, 2016
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Many nature and landscape photographers of today have been influenced by the images of the American West created by Ansel Adams (1902-1984). I too have drawn inspiration from Adams' works taken of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range and the Yosemite Valley. Adams most famous is an image taken in 1941 titled "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico", known to...
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The Ascent to Mt. Whitney
September 03, 2016
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"The best camera is the one that you have with you" are words of photographic wisdom that were never more true than on Labor Day weekend, 1970. On that bright Saturday, I was ascending the Sierra Nevada Mountain range on my way to the top of Mt. Whitney at 14,505 feet, the tallest mountain in the continental USA.
Mt. Whitney (Source cannot be attr...
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Maddie, Sweet and Loyal Companion
June 21, 2016
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She had me as soon as she flashed those beautiful baby blue eyes at me while curled up in my lap as a 6-week old pup. In two more weeks, I would soon begin a 14-plus year relationship with a special canine that only a few dog owners ever will truly understand. After decades of Weimaraner ownership, I knew instinctively that this pup had a very peac...
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The Consecration at Gettysburg
June 18, 2016
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On that crisp March day of 1967, as he looked up from the heavily wooded battleground of which he was traversing, a precocious college student, William Frassanito, could not believe what he saw. After five hard years of dedicated searching, the split rock he longed to locate stood unmistakably before him. This discovery would soon unlock an 104 yea...
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The Beginning of the End
April 27, 2016
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As I am writing this, I hear off in the near distance the roar of diesel engines from heavy duty machinery and the crashing of large trees falling to the ground. In my very first blog post, The Folly of Unchecked Development, I expressed my views on the importance of land conservation. Well, the inevitable is happening at this moment. The area that...
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The Bravery at Gettysburg
April 16, 2016
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General Cadmus M. Wilcox watched with pride as his Alabaman soldiers made their way down the slope toward a dry creek bed known locally as Plum Run. The Yankee-blue line was rapidly disintegrating before them and fleeing to Cemetery Hill where only Union artillery lay poised to defend the last stand of General Meade's Army of the Potomac (AOP). But...
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The Struggle at Gettysburg
February 13, 2016
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The 114th Pennsylvania Infantry, also known as the Collis Zouaves, were a distinguished Army of the Potomac (AOP) regiment with a long battle record during the American Civil War. They fought at all the major battles in the eastern theatre: Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Cedar Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg 1, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. The...
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The Honored Dead at Gettysburg
January 09, 2016
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Make no mistake, the Civil War era is filled with many fascinating military characters. The most gifted fictional writers could not have invented a more colorful character than the Confederate General, Stonewall Jackson. But for the Union, not many, if any, are more intriguing and compelling than the grim warrior, Edward E. Cross, Colonel of the 5t...
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The Devotion at Gettysburg
December 05, 2015
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Nineteenth century America was a nation of immigrants. This first installment of my five-part serial blog essay begins with the story of one of those ethnic groups - the Irish Americans. Orr is an Irish surname. My ancestor James Orr emigrated to the colonies in about 1758. At least three of my great-grand uncles and multiple cousins with that surn...
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The Gettysburg Address Preserved
November 19, 2015
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On that solemn November 19th day, as he stepped down from the dedicatory platform after the delivery of his three minute address to the people at Gettysburg, Lincoln had second thoughts about the adequacy of his words. From the perspective of exactly 152 years later, we now view that address as perhaps the greatest single speech ever given in the W...
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Fall in The Woodland
October 29, 2015
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I have spent the last several weeks exploring the banks of the Bread and Cheese Branch, a small stream that meanders through an eastern woodland here in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. My trek begins as a walk from the back of my home towards a grove of trees leading toward an area that I have earmarked as The Woodland. See my previou...
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That's a Big Twinkie
October 14, 2015
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During my impressionable years, the colorful, astronomical photographs from the pages of National Geographic Magazine, fed my keen interest into the mysteries of the cosmos. Just look at the deep space picture below. It has been described as the most important photographic image ever. It was taken using multiple exposures from the Hubble Space Tele...
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Supermoon & Coastal Storm Collide!
October 07, 2015
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In a previous blog, Shooting the Stars, I learned to always expect the unexpected. This was validated once again while on recent travel to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and anticipating the forthcoming lunar eclipse. Mother nature waits for no one and gives what it wants. As a landscape photographer, one must be prepared for anything that natur...
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Canines, Weimaraners, and Me
September 19, 2015
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You cannot understand a Weimaraner unless you have cohabitated with one for at least several months, even years. They are a breed of the canine family that is very special. Let me say from the outright that they are compatible with very few people. One must have great patience and forgiveness to share their domain with a Weimaraner. But in the end,...
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You Can Go Home Again
September 06, 2015
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Usually, the only gorging I become preoccupied with is that involving food. But this late August found us trekking through some of the most beautiful naturally carved gorges to be found in the eastern USA. Thirty-two years ago, after the birth of my first two children, we left the Finger Lakes region of New York state to begin a new life in Mason-D...
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The Poet-Provocateur
”The Man who sees well beyond the day-to-day Bullshit”
© D W Orr