Category Archives: Photography

Gifts: Today it was things with wings

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It was William James who spoke of the ‘slow dead heave of the will’ and boy, did that expression come home to me this morning.  I was getting ready to go see my mother and I thought I would stop off at Fort Harrison State Park on the way home and shoot what there was to shoot (with a camera).  I had a good visit with Mom and then it started: do I really want to go shoot or not?  What was I going to shoot?  What would be interesting?  Anything?  Maybe I won’t go.  I’ll go tomorrow.  You get the idea.  And the moral of the story is that the head should not be in charge of some decisions.  Sometimes it is best just to go do it.  Which I did.

I went over near the walnut plantation and was roaming around among the weeds and I came upon a good sized thistle with lots of blooms and on many of the blooms there was a butterfly.


Hoo boy!  This is the good stuff!  Fortunately the camera was in burst mode where all I had to do was point it and hold the button down and it would take up to six and a half frames a second.  Butterflies were coming and going and everything was changing from one moment to the next.


Bumblebees were getting into the act as well.

And that was when the Canada geese showed up.


Yes, the moon was right there.  I will admit I didn’t even notice it until much later.  Some days we’re just lucky, which is nice because it balances out some of those other days.

To shoot or not to shoot is no longer the question.  My hero is Elwood P. Dowd, the Jimmy Stewart character in the movie ‘Harvey.’   If someone said the two of them ought to go for a drink sometime, Elwood would reply ‘When?’

Meanwhile, back at the Indianapolis Art Center

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Our camera club meets at the Indianapolis Art Center every week.  I often go early with my camera looking for opportunities.  I had shot flowers on this plant two weeks in a row and I was over there again this morning to shoot this flower.  I have come back to this plant four times.


This is a rather small flower, probably less than an inch from the tip of one petal to that of another and it was under a rather large leaf.  But there it was and I kept coming back.  I can’t identify the plant, it is probably exotic, perhaps from Africa or Asia.  Here is the leaf in case you can help identify it – it is about a foot long.


Interesting how one flower can capture us and bring us back repeatedly.  Fortunately it stays fresh for several days.

It was breezy this morning and elsewhere on the grounds of the Art Center these large leaves were waving in the breeze.  I don’t know what plant this is either, the leaves were about three feet long.

That is a new leaf unfurling in front of a mature leaf.  Shooting up close with the the wind blowing the leaves around made for a crap shoot as far as any given image was concerned but with a digital camera and a large CF card, I could take several pictures.  I hate to think of shooting with film under these conditions, one or two shots would have had to suffice; film is expensive.

Here is the mature leaf by itself:


And the new leaf alone:

Worth waiting for.

It was a good morning and I went home satisfied that I had more than I expected to get.  But I will still go back again for that special flower:


One small technical note: both flower shots are actually comprised of three images each shot at different exposures.  They were assembled with the High Dynamic Range tools in Photoshop CS5.  That software is doing its job.

No good excuse

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I’ve been away from posting for nearly two months.  Where has the time gone?  And why away at all?  No good reason – I didn’t feel like it.  In fact I preach doing what you love even when you don’t feel like it and I guess I had better pay attention to that.  I suppose that sentence is a bit self contradictory but I think you know what I mean.  What got me going again were two women.  One was Elizabeth Gilbert talking about creativity in the outstanding series of talks available at www.ted.com.  She was making exactly that point – that it is important to keep going with your creative effort whether you feel like it or not.  Well worth seeing.

The other woman was my friend Becky who said ‘hey, let’s go shoot some lotus blossoms.’  So we did.


It was a good day for shooting. I say ‘good’ because it was sunny but the light was not too intense and, especially, because we were enjoying a break from a long spell of hot weather.


I keep coming back to images with a lot of light and heavy shadow.


And the bees keep coming back to the blossoms.


More later.  Not much later, I hope.

100 Acres IMA part 2

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Our camera club went to the 100 Acres at the Indianapolis Museum of Art last night.  It was almost as much fun watching everyone else shoot as it was to take pictures myself.  Photographers are generally pretty careful about getting in one another’s way but it will happen from time to time.  No loss here, I kind of like it.

These two rings cast shadows exactly superimposed on one another on the ground at the summer equinox.  The rest of the year they are simply interesting to see.

There is a 35 acre lake as part of the 100 acres.  That is where I spent most of my time this trip.

This is called the I-Land, an experimental living space in the middle of the lake.  Two art students are living there this summer.  They, working with Andrea Zittel, the artist who designed it, will modify it in light of their needs.  It is made of fiberglass and is mounted on a small constructed island.

In the midst of exciting modern art we still find examples of art that has been with us how long?  Since before there were humans.

Into the wilds of Ohio

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I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania and the view from Interstate 70 going across Ohio gave the impression of one of the more cultivated states in the country.

Cultivated in the sense of land used for agriculture.  So I wasn’t ready for the Hocking Hills area, about an hour south of Columbus, where Ellie and I spent the last few days celebrating our 48th wedding anniversary.  It is very hilly and covered with forests.  We had a grand time.


There is a lot of sandstone in the area and a lot of gorges cut by streams.  Above, for example is a detail of Ash Cave which was a meeting place for early settlers and most likely before them, for Indian tribes.  And there are lots of waterfalls, the one below is in Conkle’s Hollow.

Ellie being a quilter meant that we looked up quilt shops in the area which gave me the opportunity to wander around the alleys of Nelsonville.

I think that is a set of bars over a window covered with wood.

The Fourth of July is on its way and this flag was near a country quilt shop Ellie found.

We can recommend the Hocking Hills area of Ohio as an excellent place for a get away.  We’ll be going back.

Visiting the 100 Acres

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Photo Venture Camera Club, the club I belong to, schedules trips around town to areas of interest to photographers.  The Indianapolis Museum of Art recently opened 100 Acres IMA, an area rich in opportunities for engagement and, for the most part, interaction with large scale art works.  Becky and I went over to scout it out before scheduling our next meeting there.

Interaction with large scale art works.  I got there before Becky and was wandering around shooting whatever caught my eye.  I wanted to get an abstract image of metal and shadow at the first exhibit from the parking lot but kids kept getting in the way.

There’s one of the little critters over to the right in the image above.  His dad is watching from the left.  I tried to out-wait them but they kept showing up.

Here’s one dropping out the sky (although not very far).  It slowly dawned on me that whatever other reason the kids were there, they were also there as teachers.  They knew what to do here, it is not to ‘interact’ but to play.  A much simpler word and far more packed with meaning.  Time to play.

Becky got stuck in traffic and after awhile I sat down on a low wall in the shade to wait for her.  There was a gentleman already there and we struck up a conversation.  He was saying he was pretty tired from walking around the area (100 acres covers a lot of ground).  Then he allowed that he had worked out in the gym for an hour that morning and for someone 92 years of age that plus a long walk was indeed pretty tiring.   I think he was there to play too.

Becky showed up and off we went.  There is a good sized lake (30 acres I believe) and a young boy we saw knew just what to do with it.  He threw rocks into the water and I worked at photographing it.

Play.  I’ve been reading a book about how very creative people create.  A wide range of creative people are introduced ranging from Richard Feynman to Frank Zappa.  It is interesting to see how often the word ‘play’ comes up.  Play is central to the way some creative people work.  It is not a casual kind of play, rather it is intense.  But fun, and out of it, new relationships are discovered and presented.  Kids are pretty intense in their play as well and I suspect that is an important way for them to learn about the world.

I would like to say to my wife that I am off on a creative venture, one whose pure intent is creative work but she knows better.  She’s a quilter and she knows what fun is.

Go create.  Go have fun.

Imagine that

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Every once in awhile I find it useful to stop and think about what digital image editing has made possible.  We go out and shoot and then bring the digital files home to the computer.  They are brought up in Photoshop or some other editing program.  In many cases the image is supposed to be pretty close to what was seen.  Contrast might be enhanced a bit, the brightness of the image raised or lowered a little, color is corrected and the image is sharpened.   The image is now ready to go and it does look rather like the original scene.  In other words, what was done was pretty much the digital counterpart to what might have been done in the darkroom a generation ago.

I put an image in my last post that was approached, from the very outset, in a radically different way.  Here’s the final image:

As I said at the time, I had taken the long route to the library.  This took me past a local hospital.

As soon as I saw this I knew what the final image would be.  It was virtually instantaneous.  No question arose about whether that final image was possible, the only questions were whether the clouds and light would still be good after I had gone home and come back with the camera (note to self: always take the camera with you).  They were.  I got this additional image to serve as a background.

I pulled the skyway out of the one image, put it in the other and masked out the ends of the skyway.  It took less than an hour.  What I imagined before taking any photographs was very similar to what I ended up with.

My studio (our daughter’s old room) is on the second floor of our house and I can see lots of trees out the window.  The light was coming up nicely early this morning and I could see that it would be possible to have a shot that emphasized the diagonal strip of light.  Here is what came out of the camera:

This was not what I had in mind.  I had envisioned a lot more contrast between the lighted area and the background.  I knew it wouldn’t show properly in the image as taken, it was  matter of going to Photoshop to complete the image as imagined.  I hadn’t envisioned it as a black and white image, that was a possibility that arose when I got into Photoshop.  Here is the result:
The point of all this is to say that where in the days of film imaginative exploration of what could be done with an image once it came out of the camera was pretty limited unless one were very skilled in the darkroom.  Now, in many but not all cases,  it isn’t much of a hop at all to go from  what we see in our heads to what we see in the final image.

It is unfortunate that the noun Photoshop has been turned into a verb (Photoshopping) and that new word is pejorative.  If one is out to document what was there, it is acceptable to color correct, add or reduce contrast change the brightness and sharpen, all within limits.  If on the other hand, the intent is to show something about the photographer’s emotional reaction to the scene or if what is photographed is to become a set of elements available for inclusion in an imagined final scene, all bets are off on what is included, excluded or changed.

I for one think of myself as a visual poet.  I’m not a documentary photographer.  The photograph as taken is grist for the image that will result.  I don’t always mention what I did because it is usually quite beside the point.  But if you ever have a question about the faithfulness of the images you see here to the image that was stored in the camera, feel free to ask.  I’ll tell you exactly what I did.  So I will leave you with this:

The possibility of doing digital image editing has been a real Godsend to me.  I’ve always lived in my imagination and the possibility of realizing some of that imagining means a lot.

Time to get back to it

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The last several days we have been having an unsettled but recurring weather pattern.

The clouds go dark in the early evening, the wind whips up to as much as 50 or 60 miles an hour and a deluge starts with lightning and thunder accompaniment.  After a few minutes the wind dies down and the rain stops.  The thunder rolls into the distance.   It’s all quite dramatic.  Too dramatic for the dogs:

They head for the stall shower and stay there well into the night.

Unsettled would describe my photography recently as well.  I’m not seeing the opportunities that I know are there.  Flowers, such as these begonias are alright but I’d like something a little different.

The opportunity came today in the form of taking the long way around to go to the library.

The tentative name for this is ‘Can I get there from here?’ which might be symbolic of my slump recently.  Perhaps the best thing to do is close my eyes, take a deep breath, open the eyes and look around.  Who knows what there is to see and wonder about?

That calls for some reflection.

Geometry

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We could talk a long time about what makes a good image.  We could list criteria and features, we could have rules, we could have recommendations.  But when it comes down to it, rigidly following rules and meeting criteria just don’t hack it.  An acceptable image would probably result but it would likely be as memorable as the artwork on the wall in a hotel room.  Visual Muzak.

All of the criteria, features, rules and recommendations have their place and we can certainly point to spectacularly good images that share at least some of them.  There is one criterion that, at this moment anyway,  I would like to pursue a bit,  if only to see where it goes.  The criterion is simplicity, especially geometric or graphic simplicity.  Human structures provide excellent material.  Here, for example, is the arch in St. Louis:

And part of the entrance to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta:

Here are some structures in Indianapolis:

Interesting geometry is not limited to buildings.  Here are a couple of examples from nature:

When looking at a photograph a common question is ‘what is the subject?’   Sometimes the subject is simply the texture and there is no specific area of the photograph that is more important than any other area.   This, however, is not often the case.  Most often, there is a specific main subject in the image and with geometric, or graphic simplicity, it is easy to find.  If you want to make good picture making as simple as possible, simplicity itself is a good place to start.   As is the case with other rules and suggestions, simplicity isn’t the be all and end all of composition but more often than not it helps.

A simple spirituality: Part 4

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Spirit and seeing, spirituality and photography.  I believe that each nourishes the other.  Right, but how does that work?  How do they fit together and nourish one another?

This is one of those things I know to be true but it is mysterious and I find it difficult to put into words.  I’ll begin by repeating what I have written before about the nature of spirituality.  Here’s the working definition:

‘the pattern of beliefs, attitudes and feelings about the Sacred and the world – a pattern that defines who you are at the profoundest level.’ (From Skylight Paths, Who Is My God?: An Innovative Guide to Finding Your Spiritual Identity, Skylight Paths Publishing; March 2004, p5)

This is essentially the definition of personality with the addition that the Sacred is placed at the center.  Viewed most broadly, an individual’s spirituality is always a part of what that individual thinks or does.  It doesn’t have to be a thought or an act with spirituality actively in mind, it is there whether we recognize it or not.  In an important way then, our spirituality as well as our personality colors and frames the way we think and behave.  Of course there are times when we don’t act according to our best spiritual selves.  The apostle Paul made this point when he wrote

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
Romans 7: 14-15

I would be surprised if all major religions did not share this lament.  So we don’t always act according to who we are at the profoundest level.

In my simple spirituality, everything is interconnected.  God is in all, all is in God.  So when I go out to shoot, there is a strong sense of wonder at God’s creation.  Looking through the viewfinder of a camera intensifies that sense of wonder.  I see this most strongly with close up, or macro, photography.

Getting close to a flower opens up a new world.  Flowers are small, and if we think of the distance between our eye and the bloom in terms of diameters of the bloom (e.g. this flower is half an inch across) we are almost always at least 10 diameters away and more often, when we are walking past them, perhaps hundreds of diameters away.  So when we are close we see a lot more of what the flower is about.  And there is more to it.  We aren’t just close, we are looking at it through the viewfinder which considerably restricts our field of view.  If we are close enough, we see just the flower and little, or nothing, else.   A sense of wonder is then all but inevitable.

But the sense of wonder is not restricted to just flowers.  A flower just provides one good example.  Looking closely at a flower readily gives rise to wonder in just about anyone.  Most things we see, hear, feel or otherwise sense can be a source of wonder.  The quote from Meister Eckhart in the banner at the top of this page says it very well:

This then, is salvation: to marvel at the beauty of created things and to marvel at the beauty of their Creator

What feeds wonder in me probably wouldn’t be the same as it would be for you.  That’s why we could stand next to one another with cameras and come back with different portfolios.

I believe that sense of wonder is an expression of spirituality.  It is God in me seeking God in the world.  So is it surprising that spirituality would nourish photography?  Or that photography nourishes spirituality?  I’ll write more on this soon.