S and I went shooting along the White River just north of Noblesville this morning. It was a bright sunny day and it was good to be out.
As the shooting progressed, it got more abstract:
It’s supposed to be nice tomorrow too.
Author Archives: Barry Lively
Don’t expect too much
I find that it is best not to expect too much when I go out to shoot. It narrows the focus and I almost never see exactly what I had hoped to see. 
I had gone out to shoot the emerging berries and ended up shooting mainly the leaves. That was the other day and this is all I have to show for it.
Today was different. I had no expectations and it was a more satisfying day.
Those are insects in there. It went down to 23 degrees last night, the first hard frost of the year. They may have survived.
The last three shots were done outside an orthopedic veterinarian’s office in Franklin. I had driven a friend and her dog down there. The dog, 12 years old, had torn a cruciate ligament chasing school buses (inside a fence while the buses were on the street). She won’t be doing that anymore but the other day the dog went for a ride, saw a school bus from in the car and barked at it. So now she has a car and a driver, no more running after the buses.
Today the berries look fine but the leaves are wilted.
And then there is this shot, entirely unexpected:
I guess that is what wondering is all about. If I only saw what I expected to see, what would there be to wonder about?
The infinite in the finite
A friend of mine, the one who got me started using the term ‘wondering around’, recently sent me a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, who was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1913). Here’s the poem:
There is a point where in the mystery of
existence contradictions meet;
where movement is not all movement
and stillness is not all stillness;
where the idea and the form,
the within and the without, are united;
where infinite becomes finite,
yet not losing its infinity.
About 10 years ago I took a workshop with Freeman Patterson. In the course of the workshop, he made a point of talking with each participant and discovering something that was of particular interest to that individual. It was in October and I said something about the upcoming Spirit and Place festival in Indianapolis. The day before the end of the workshop he gave each of us a photo essay assignment to be completed in 24 hours. Mine was ‘Spirit and Leaves’. Here are a couple of images from that trip:
Ever since then I have worked at finding external correlates to internal states. Or, more to the point, I want to reflect states of being such as peace, stillness, reflection, spirituality etc. in photographs.
When my friend – I’ll call her S – sent me the Tragore poem I was moved to treat it as a source of ideas for photographs. For example, what single image would best reflect what I was getting out of the poem? I’m sure my answer to that will change over time and I will keep coming back to it because I love the poem. Here’s today’s version of the image, I don’t know what I will think tomorrow. The poem is repeated below the image. You might try this exercise yourself. Let me know you make out with it.
There is a point where in the mystery of
existence contradictions meet;
where movement is not all movement
and stillness is not all stillness;
where the idea and the form,
the within and the without, are united;
where infinite becomes finite,
yet not losing its infinity.
Thanks, Freeman, I’m still working on the assignment.
The leaves are just about gone
We have a lot of trees around our house; that is one of the reasons we bought it 30 years ago. The walnut leaves have been gone for some time as have most of the hickory leaves. Some oak leaves are hanging on but they are coming down too. I went out today to work on finishing getting the leaves off the ‘lawn’ but it was so windy I decided to wait. No point having to do it twice.
The leaves at Fort Harrison are largely gone.
I expect these will be gone in the next few days.
But as leaves are falling the sycamores are standing out more. And there are still a few hangers on.
Their going is not without its beauty as well.
Sic transit gloria.
Great day in the morning
The average episode of going out to shoot is at least satisfying. There are a few times that don’t get up to that level, but there are others that exceed it. Today set a new standard.
Four of us from Photo Venture Camera Club went to Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge this morning. It is hunting season there and we were confined to just a part of the area. This, however, was more than enough.
There was a nice fog this morning which fortunately was still largely present when we arrived. It helped produce photographs reminiscent of Michael Kenna’s work.
As the morning went on the fog lifted and the light was sweet.
The opportunity to be there was a great reward and to actually bring home images that in some way reflect what it was like is over the top.
What a great way to spend a morning.
I’ll be going back.
National Weed Month?
Post number 100 and it’s time for a celebration. It’s time for National Weed Month. Well, if we can’t get a month perhaps a week or even a day.
Come the day, I’m ready.
Write your member of Congress.
Hopes for a misty morning
The mist closed in as I was on my way over to see my mother this morning and I had great hopes for some shots in the mist. But I didn’t have my camera with me right then. After seeing Mom and doing several small chores I collected the camera, lenses and tripod and got over to Fall Creek. The mist was largely gone but there was enough for an accent.
Colors in overcast weather are nicely saturated and have their own kind of appeal.
For the last few days I have been visiting an area of the creek where it drops through small riffles and falls. The beauty of having a long lens (400 mm, a strong telephoto) is that one doesn’t have to wear waders and get into the water to get close ups.
These little falls are gorgeous. Slowing down the exposure a little stretches out the flow a bit without losing some of the detail. With the water bouncing around as it does, three shots in a row will produce appreciably different photographs. Best to work with a tripod and keep snapping.
I like the contrast of the smoothly flowing and chaotic water one next to the other.
This one is my favorite:
There were areas of calm water as well.
There is a feeling of being removed from civilization here except that the bridge for I465 is 100 feet away. This shot was taken upstream from under the bridge:
There is a little mist there. More mist on the way home:
Luck favors the prepared. Maybe next time we have a good mist I’ll be ready for it.
Poetry in motion
Herb Blitzer, a friend from our camera club, and I went down to Fall Creek this morning. Herb had earlier scouted one area while I had shot in another so we went to both.
On bringing the images home and putting them up for inspection, I was struck by how in different ways they seemed poetic. Poetic in in a very broad sense. They all evoke sensual and emotional reactions although in each case the experience is a bit different. Here are two images that define the range:
I’m not going to write about what those emotions and sensual experiences might be, they will be very subjective and will vary from one viewer to another.
I guess the best I can do is show them to you and ask if you see poetry in them. If you do, fine; if you don’t but enjoy them that’s good too.
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook.
A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.
From ‘Going for Water’ by Robert Frost
It’s about light
Photography is about light. I’m not talking about the extreme case where no light equals no photography. Rather, it is the quality as well as amount that matters.
We often talk about ‘sweet’ light, that light that occurs not long after the sun has come up and shortly before it goes down. Those indeed are special kinds of light. But there can be decent light just about any time of day.
This light, with a little help from Photoshop, occurred about 11:00 one morning.
Especially if it is filtered through leaves and trees, light in late morning can be just fine.
Backlighting can be good just about any time of day.
And light can often be assisted by Photoshop as it was in this next example.
As I look at this last image, I can see that it needs some more work. But that can be done in the evening, when the light is pretty well gone.
Dents, creases and folds in the water
A lot of photographs of moving water use a long exposure to bring out the silky smoothness of the flow. Here for instance, the exposure was .6 sec. That’s pretty long for a normal exposure.
This one was even longer at 1.6 sec.
We’re used to seeing nice smooth flow. That is a trick of the camera and also of our brains. We interpret the scene as smoothly flowing. Photographing water up close and at more normal photographic exposures shows something quite different:
Dimples. This is a function of surface tension. Once again, enter a different world than the one we think we inhabit.
Most of these pictures were shot at 1/100 sec. or faster and a different picture emerges.
That looks like a hole in the water.
Would you expect to see something like that? I wouldn’t have.
Surface tension.
When I see this, I wonder what else we are missing. It’s all right there in front of us. All we need to do is look with a camera. And wonder.
Spirit and Seeing 