The photographs that make up Half a Chisel to the Earth were taken between 2011 and 2022 primarily in various Western ecosystems of the United States. Inspired by the geology and isolation of western landscapes, the photographs hint at entropy and fragility. The images depict the landscape burning and eroded yet resilient and stoic. By removing the landscape from familiar perceptions of reality, it allows me to present the Earth’s psychology in the scale of geologic time beyond the human experience. The form of the waves crashing against a dark rugged coastline reappear in the form of a monolith of 160-million year old Entrada Sandstone. Light makes its way through the frame as the reflection of the sun off of a desert river in the same way as a fire burning a grassy hillside. In these images there is a persistent conflict between the polars of light and dark, and the images sit on the edge of night, perhaps just before the scene is engulfed in the negative space. Some of the subjects are presented in a manner akin to archetypal symbols, giving significance to otherwise overlooked objects. A solitary human figure, introduced midway through the sequence, is navigating an ambiguous landscape that insinuates the familiar human form as a drifter in a strange land. This figure allows the viewer to finally recognize themselves within the images: reminding them that the earth is continuously ebbing and flowing between order and chaos.