Tag Archives: winter

Shooting and sharing

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Jane Reichhold is a major American haiku poet.  She has this interesting thought:

‘And the way you know a haiku is lurking about is if you see something and say oh!  I want to show that to somebody!’

Substitute ‘photograph’ for ‘haiku’ and you have the starting point of this post.  You see something interesting and there is a connection demanding to be completed.  It doesn’t matter what it is, it could be a child smiling, a shadow on a wall, the great American landscape scene, you get the idea.  I’m sure you have experienced this too – you see something and if you have your camera you make the photograph.  Because you have to.  If you don’t have your camera with you, it becomes one that got away.  I can vividly remember one from nearly 40 years ago.  I was in a restaurant and a few tables over an older woman was leaning toward the waitress who was leaning toward her to take her order.  There was strong connection for me to that moment.  I didn’t have a camera with me.  And as you can tell, I wanted to share that moment with someone.   That’s a second connection asking to be completed.  We make a picture and we want it to be seen.  We want people to see it and appreciate it.  This is an offering, something to be responded to. 

I have no idea how many pictures there are today on the internet but think about this: in 1853, just 14 years after it was was formally described, there were probably 3,000,000 daguerreotypes in existence.  Not many of us would choose to make a daguerreotype today.  Life with a digital camera is so much simpler and as a result there are orders of magnitude more digital pictures today than there were daguerreotypes back then.  And we want others to see our work so we put them out there to be seen.

Sharing that image, that moment, with someone can have value beyond any ‘reasonable’ expectation.   Several months ago I had to stop at our veterinarian’s to pick up a prescription for one of our dogs.  It was late Friday afternoon and the vet had a few free moments.  She was playing with a pug who was in for an extended evaluation.  I had my pocket camera with me and got this shot.

I worked on it over the weekend and brought two prints to her the following Monday, one for her and one for the owner.  When I arrived on Monday morning the staff was looking somewhere between professional and somber. A man and woman were in the waiting area, both obviously facing something pretty difficult. The man was biting his lip and the woman was crying nearly hysterically. I dropped off the pictures and left.  I later found out the man and woman were the owners of the pug. The dog was 17 years old and had been at the vet’s  because she was failing. She got worse over the weekend and now it was time to put her down. I’m very thankful I was able to give the prints to people who needed them.

Keep shooting.  Keep sharing.

Winter sunshine

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We finally got a few days of sunshine here.  We had had one day after another of clouds and no direct sunshine.  It reminded us of living near Syracuse, NY where a sunny day was call for a discussion with the bank teller.  It was good to get out with a camera in the sunshine.

Sunshine this time of year suggests that spring is not far off.  Ice on the pond but light in the trees.  Light and, if we could look closely enough, buds ready to wake up when the day lasts long enough.

Place your hand on one of these trees.  The life is there, the tree has been there for decades and has gone through the same cycle year after year; you can feel the life, even if it is resting.  Sunshine gives rise to these thoughts.

Many of us humans have been through several cycles of the year as well.  We know spring is coming and we know what that brings.

We may long for the warmer weather and it will come.  In the meantime there are some hints out there that it is on its way.

This is the season for snowdrops.  They stand up when it is warm enough and lie down when it is too cold.   And they are a sign that winter is not going to be with us too much longer.  I saw some here the other day and didn’t get out to photograph them.  This shot was taken in January a couple of years ago.

Yes, spring is on the way but there is plenty to appreciate about winter as well. It is a time of bone essentials, a time to reflect on what is, through all the cycles of the year.

Wondering in winter

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I had just one shot in mind as I set out yesterday, this one:

I had seen this on another trip but had the wrong lens for it at the time.

I had stopped at a local orchard to pick up some apples on my way to shoot so I had the camera with me. 

Finding this shot put me in ‘wonder’ mode for the morning.  Who knows what else there would be?  That shot is in color by the way, it was just a gray day, and yes, that was a very green door.  The other three shots are in black and white.

Wondering around in the woods at Fort Harrison State Park initially yielded little of interest.  But that was because I was looking at eye level.  Down on the ground things were much more interesting.

Being in ‘wonder’ mode means being open to what’s there, open to discovery.  I have to say that this is not easy to do for very long, it is similar to turning up one’s hearing and becoming aware of all those clamorous voices.  After awhile, it’s as the expression says – too much information – and that can be tiring.

Underlying all that visual clamor I listen for the still small voice.  It’s there but it picks its own way of expressing itself and it won’t be forced.  I hope that the images I find in my wondering about reflect that voice in some sense and in some sense I feel that I am getting closer to it.  I don’t even know what that means but it seems like a brush with the ineffable. 

“Heaven gives it glimpses only to those
Not in position to look too close.”
Robert Frost, “A Passing Glimpse”

Sycamores in the mist

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When we lived in Maine we loved the large birch trees with their peeling white bark.  Here in Indiana we don’t have much in the way of birch trees, certainly nothing to rival those in northern New England.  But we do have sycamores.  Their bark peels too and underneath the peeled bark the ‘skin’ of the tree is often white, or near white.  In the summer they are beautiful trees that don’t stand out too much from those around them, but come winter, it’s a different story.

We had some mist yesterday morning and it was too good an opportunity to pass up.  Sycamores in the mist!  In some respects that is about like trying to find our white dogs in a snow storm but not quite.  The sycamores stand out from their neighbors and the mist wasn’t that heavy.  In fact it was rather light but there was enough to make it interesting.

The mist provided a lovely indistinctness to the trees, a softness that seemed to make the trees want to be seen more as contrasting colors than as textures.  I was happy to oblige. 

Some treatment (but not a lot) in Photoshop gave it a story book character.  If you said you saw Hansel and Gretel among the trees I would be ready to look.

I’ve always wanted a painterly effect and this provided it.

And when the mist was lifting, there was more texture evident.

If I’ve learned one thing about photography this year, it is that good shooting is available in just about any weather.  There is always a gift for someone who will just be open to it and  look for it.  I all but bolted out the door to go shooting and my wife smiled and made a comment about the six year old going to the park.  Guilty as charged and proud of it.

A dreary day?

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The forecast today was for partial sun.  Wherever the sun was, it was somewhere else.  But fog came up about 10:00 and it looked interesting. 

David Ward, an excellent British landscape photographer, identifies three elements of a good image – beauty, simplicity and mystery.  The fog was simplifying the image and adding mystery to it.  A little work in Photoshop helped bring out the feeling of the day which wasn’t quite so evident in the original pixels.

There were surprises, too, both for me and these white tailed deer. 

The fog was the initial attraction but it was lifting and the nearer subjects were were speaking their own quiet messages.

To the eye, a ‘dreary’ day looks so flat but the colors are more saturated and even if the trees do not cast visible shadows, the leaves still reflect more light on one side than on the other.

These were the gifts of the day.  It wasn’t too cold and certainly not too warm and the light was just right.  A good day to be alive.

It was about paying attention

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The sermon this morning was about God speaking to Moses from the burning bush.  It was about paying attention.  As I was listening, I was wondering what God had done before that to get Moses’ attention.  Had there been earlier cues, escalating in insistence, before the burning bush was noticed?  We’ll never know.

As I was listening, I was also thinking about how important to photography attention is.  Varying attention is probably what contributes most to the difference between a good day’s shooting and one that’s not so good.

I’ve been out a couple of times since the first of the year and neither time resulted in images that are going to make it to the top of my list.  I’m not complaining, just noticing that some days are better than others. 

One part of me says now is the time to bear down and try harder while another part says to relax and exercise ‘soft focus’ – stay alert and see what is there, what presents itself.  

Perhaps that is the best way to see the burning bush.

New Year’s Eve Day

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Last day of the year.  My photography buddy Becky and I went to the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art to see what was up for shooting.  We stopped next to the tree with these leaves because they looked interesting.

There are lots of interesting areas at the IMA and I don’t know that this one is intrinsically any more interesting than any other except that these leaves caught my attention.  Neither one of us anticipated that we would spend all of our shooting time this morning within a 30 yard radius of this tree.

I liked these tree tops.

And this leaf.

The day was quite overcast but I have found that a gray sky can be a plus.  I shot these oak leaves and branches and then forced the gray sky to white in  Photoshop.  It produces a somewhat painterly effect.  I removed some of the branches; it seemed to want to be a simpler image.  I may remove more before I’m through.

By many criteria – it was muddy, cold and damp – it was not very pleasant but it was well worth it to cap off the year with a shooting day like this one.

A snowy day

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My friend Becky and I went to Fort Harrison State Park on Saturday to shoot in the snow. 

It was in the low 30’s and it came down as snow rather than rain.

We wandered (and wondered) around the park getting the usual winter shots and looking for something out of the ordinary.  We could hear guns in the distance; it wasn’t target practice and guessed it must be hunters.  They were pretty far away and we could ignore them. 

The sky behind the branches in this image was gray, but pushing it to white in Photoshop gave the image a painterly quality I have always liked.  I would like to make a card of it and say something profound on it but nothing like that occurs to me so I’ll leave it as an image.

As we wander about, I recommend shots to Becky and she recommends some to me.  Here is one she suggested.

She gets good ideas.

After about an hour and a half I was soaked and ready to go home.  Becky said she would stay and poke around the park some more.  She called me later to say that she found out what the gunfire had been about.  A re-enactment of a World War II American/German battle was just ending and Becky was right there.  She got some pretty unusual shots for a snowy day at a state park.

I’ll dress more warmly next time and hang out longer for the better shots.

Winter

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Alright, it isn’t technically winter, being the 18th, but we are close enough.  I don’t think the plant life knows the difference, being asleep and all.  Leaves are down about as much as they are going to be although there are some that will hang on through the winter.  Here, for example, is Japanese honeysuckle, which is an invasive species that we need to keep under control.  But on a day like this, with its leaves just so, it can be beautiful.

Ice with leaves can be beautiful too.  I’m coming to like this season.

The forecast for tomorrow is snow in the morning.  The plan for tomorrow is to go shoot in the morning.

Being right here in the present

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I read an article in the online edition of the Washington Post this morning making the point that a lot of people are being seduced by technology and are spending more time than ever texting, Twittering, talking on a cell phone, or just sitting in front of a computer (which is what I am doing now).  If they are out and about doing all this stuff, that means they are not as available to what is going on around them as they would be if they were not engaged with all of that technology.

Lots of folks believe they can successfully ‘multitask’ and they do generally avoid major problems but I can personally attest that multitasking reduces the margin for safety.  I made this observation as the car next to me was pushed into my car broadside by someone who ran a red light because he was on a cell phone.  No one was injured.  The data show that multitasking is not a good idea.

Multitasking is a vote against being here (right here in this physical place) in the present.  A vote in the sense that we make choices and the choice of the multitasker is to not be entirely here.  A college professor friend of mine says that he walks around the room as he is teaching a class because if he stays at the front of the room, the people at the back will be texting.  He would rather they didn’t.

I don’t want this post to be a rant.  The point I am building toward is that photography, for me, demands that I be fully present to get the most out of it.  And that isn’t just being present with a camera in hand but as much of the rest of the time as possible because the eye is constantly looking for image potential.  Some of my most memorable images were ones I didn’t take (the ones that got away?)

The image below, one I got yesterday, wouldn’t have been made if I had been on the phone as I was looking around.  It was fleeting and in its context, more subtle than it appears.  It’s funny that with all its busyness, it is a kind of symbol for multitasking. 

I know I wouldn’t have seen these leaves in the ice if I had been on the phone.

It’s been warm the last few days and it is getting cold tonight so there will be more leaves to photograph tomorrow.  If you call me, leave a message;  I won’t be near a phone.