Tiki by photosynthesis

Photography • Flowers/Plants • posted on Mar 25, 2014

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Description

Just back from visiting my brother in southern California. This photo was taken at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, which is a beautiful 127 acre garden located in Arcadia (right outside Pasadena). Lots of exotic tropical trees & plants & dozens of peacocks wandering around, quite unafraid of human visitors (peacock photos to follow). This was the only tiki we saw there. Tikis have become a very kitschy pop culture icon, but they have their origin in Polynesian mythology. From Wikipedia: "In Maori mythology, Tiki is the first man, created by either Tumatauenga or Tane. He found the first woman, Marikoriko, in a pond—she seduced him and he became the father of Hine-kau-ataata. By extension, a tiki is a large wooden carving in humanoid form, although this is a somewhat archaic usage in the Maori language. Carvings similar to tikis are found in most Central Eastern Polynesian cultures. They often serve to mark the boundaries of sacred or significant sites."

Comments (9)

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pimanjc

1:32PM | Tue, 25 March 2014

Beautiful capture.

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Faemike55

2:02PM | Tue, 25 March 2014

Great capture and cool information

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jayfar

2:26PM | Tue, 25 March 2014

A lovely shot and interesting info.

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UVDan

2:33PM | Tue, 25 March 2014

Cool shot! I think there is a movie some where about one of these coming to life at night.

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auntietk

7:06PM | Tue, 25 March 2014

He looks terrific amongst all the plants, especially those gorgeous brugmancia. (Brugmancias? What's the plural of brugmancia?) And is that another carving behind the tree? Gosh ... what a marvelous place that must be to visit!

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SunriseGirl

9:26AM | Wed, 26 March 2014

Looks like a gorgeous place.

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MrsRatbag

12:11PM | Wed, 26 March 2014

What an amazing garden, and a beautiful capture of this spot.

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anahata.c

10:39AM | Fri, 28 March 2014

You captured the spirit of the tiki with your approach to everything around it. It all feels ancient and very alive. Even the heavy accentuated features of the tiki (the enlarged eyes, the big lips, the stylized thick hips, etc) are harmonized by your vivid and almost fairy tale way with the plants and flowers around it. It's a painting, almost, with very vivid colors. And the sky gets pink on top, which suits the paradise-feeling of the image very well. Intense and harmonizing work, Claude. I'd love to see you photograph the ruins and ancient temples of the world... (And thank you for your comments, and don't worry about when you get to my old gallery. I still haven't commented on your other gallery either, though it's calling me. I've been scrambling to catch up with everything too.)

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