Similarities
Like other places with dunes, Monahans Sandhills State Park let me play with natural abstractions. Two days later, on May 15 at Caprock Canyons State Park, I looked up rather than down when photographing some mammatus clouds, which now strike me as looking similar to the undulations in the sand.
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Racial discrimination, though banned by many American laws, is entrenched—actually enshrined—in academia. I call to your attention Aaron Sibarium’s disturbing exposé in the Washington Free Beacon, “‘A Failed Medical School’: How Racial Preferences, Supposedly Outlawed in California, Have Persisted at UCLA,” with subtitle “Up to half of UCLA medical students now fail basic tests of medical competence. Whistleblowers say affirmative action, illegal in California since 1996, is to blame.”
© 2024 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
Thank you, Steve, for the wonderful photos, so well observed the similarities between the sand and the clouds!
Joanna
gabychops
May 27, 2024 at 5:24 AM
I was particularly happy with the way the first portrait caught the longer sand forms surrounding the “tighter” ones.
Steve Schwartzman
May 27, 2024 at 7:46 AM
Perfect, Steve!
Joanna
gabychops
May 27, 2024 at 7:47 AM
Though I don’t often have time to comment, Steve, I appreciate very much your beautiful views of the natural world. I continually find myself amazed at nature – it’s a time and place for us to slip into what is good about life in the Midwest. I also enjoy very much, your “extra” at the end of each post.
Littlesundog
May 27, 2024 at 10:19 AM
Hi, Lori. Good to hear from you. Over the past two years I’ve often wondered how you’re making out. I hope Forrest recovered quickly from his mishap.
Yes, nature continues being a consolation for us in what has increasingly seemed a crazy human world. I’ve treated the former in pictures and the latter in words.
Steve Schwartzman
May 27, 2024 at 10:57 AM
Although we “look” at natural scenes and appreciate their singular beauty, it take a special talent to “recognize” certain aspects of those scenes.
Your unique ability to “recognize” similarities such as today’s offering is quite a gift. One which we appreciate and celebrate that you choose to share.
Wally Jones
May 27, 2024 at 10:41 AM
Thanks as always. I find the first picture something special—and it also happens to differ from other dune pictures I’ve made. At the time I took the picture I wasn’t thinking of clouds at all; that likeness occurred to me only back home days later.
Steve Schwartzman
May 27, 2024 at 5:18 PM
These two photographs work really well together. The shapes in the sand are especially appealing – makes me want to walk along a beach!
Ann Mackay
May 27, 2024 at 12:59 PM
I grew up spending a lot of time at beaches on the Atlantic Ocean, and in my early years that’s what I associated dunes with. Later I got to experience inland sand dunes, including the ones at Monahans, of course. From there you’d have to walk about 500 miles to get to the nearest coast.
Steve Schwartzman
May 27, 2024 at 5:31 PM
Repetition in nature!
Eliza Waters
May 27, 2024 at 2:22 PM
Patterns and forms do tend to repeat in nature, sometimes in seemingly very different phenomena.
Steve Schwartzman
May 27, 2024 at 5:32 PM
Sky echos Earth, echos sky. Nice!
Tina
May 27, 2024 at 7:28 PM
Nice way to put it: I’ll echo your thought.
Steve Schwartzman
May 28, 2024 at 5:47 AM
Great couple! 🙂
harrienijland
May 28, 2024 at 2:21 AM
The wind left a common trace in two media—sand and water vapor—on which it worked its way.
Steve Schwartzman
May 28, 2024 at 5:54 AM
A fine pairing. I often think of such things as ‘nature’s analogies.’ There were dramatic mammatus clouds over Houston today once the storm rolled through, but by the time the system creating them reached us, they’d lost a bit of their form. Still, they were attractive. The patterns in the sand are especially interesting. If I’d seen them in isolation, I might have seen the deeper indentations as leaves.
shoreacres
May 28, 2024 at 9:17 PM
The deeper indentations as leaves: that hadn’t occurred to me. At one point the idea of partly effaced footprints crossed my mind, and indeed plenty of those exist in the area from the many visitors who walk through the dunes. But here I dismissed that speculation because there no trail of footprints leads out of that little group in the center.
“Nature’s analogies” is a good name for similar forms in different things. A photographer might do a whole exhibition or book with pairs of such pictures.
I’m sorry the mammatus clouds had lost some of their drama by the time they reached you. Your note that that were still attractive leaves open the possibility you photographed them anyhow.
Steve Schwartzman
May 28, 2024 at 9:30 PM
Yes, quite similar … great comparison!
denisebushphoto
June 1, 2024 at 3:00 PM
Thanks. This pair would lends itself to a “compare and contrast” essay on a college exam.
Steve Schwartzman
June 1, 2024 at 4:38 PM