After driving by this decrepit, but rather cool wall covered with Virginia creeper vines, I ended up going back for several visits. The wall, on E. Washington St., runs east to west. As such, I found both early morning and late afternoon offered excellent light. The first image below was captured in the late afternoon. Here, I was attracted to the transition of sun to shade, the vine structure and the juxtaposition of the contemporary sculpture to the decaying old structure.
The next image is an interesting study of the contrast between sun and shade, or light and dark. This would be a good image to view in higher resolution by clicking on the image. You’ll better observe the styling approach – “what’s happening in the absence of light?”
The Virginia creeper is a woody, deciduous vine native to the southeastern United States. It is often confused with poison ivy, but closer inspection of it’s five leaf star shaped compound leaf structure makes it easily distinguishable. As an aggressive grower, it can quickly get out of control and is often thought of as an invasive species.
One desired attribute is the brilliant range of red, scarlet to orange fall foliage. It can also be used as ground cover to help control erosion. But one must be vigilant to keep it from climbing nearby trees. At least twice a year, I do battle with a Virginia creeper vine growing along my backyard fence.
Most of the color compositions were processed to emulate vintage Kodachrome slide film which compresses the saturation of yellow tones and leaves a bit warmer tonality. Shown below is the black and white version of the image above. I bumped up the luminosity of the reds a little to help create some separation of the leaf forms. Still, the foliage remains a bit abstracted and busy, but somewhat contained by the silhouetted foreground figure.
Thanks for stopping by today!
Cheers,
C. S.
Not so much creeping, as running rampant!
Wonderful shots, as always. I especially like the first one – – I’d hesitate to remove the vines, pretty sure they’re holding that building together.
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Thanks Robert! I suspect this vine will only come down when the building comes down.
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I like VA creeper, it never seems to overpower trees like bittersweet or other invasive non-natives. The fall color is excellent!
Nice series, my favorite is ‘Virginia Creeper Wall Composition 2’ with its range of colors and textures.
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Hi Eliza, always nice hearing from you. That is a really cool wall. I’ll be stalking it next year to get a better display of colors.
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Awesome gallery with outstanding images!
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Thanks for stopping by! Now that I’m off for the holidays, lm trying to catch up on great blogs like yours!
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