Peggy's Cove

It’s something of a cliché, but I don’t think you can do a photo workshop in Nova Scotia without visiting Peggy’s Cove. We made the trip, but didn’t shoot a lot as it was raining most of the time (and my rain coat was in the trunk of my car back in Halifax.). Didn’t get up to the lighthouse either, which is just as well since it was in desperate need of a paint job. Mostly hung around the wharves and shot away. It’s all been done before (what hasn’t?) but it was great just the same.

Impressionist Abstracts

Yes, I know that these are not the same thing. But follow along and you’ll see the connection. We did a lot of shooting impressionistic images by multiple exposures & camera movement, as well as abstract images in the workshop I attended recently. For example, the two images shown here. The first is from a wonderfully over mature and overgrown apple orchard. It was made by setting the camera to a small aperture/long shutter speed, and turning the camera. A fairly hit or miss proposition (I killed a lot of pixels to get this one) but can be quite impressive when it comes out right. The second was taken on the waterfront, and is of reflections in the gently moving water.

For a long time, I was a fairly straightforward nature and snapshot photographer. Nothing fancy, nothing the uninitiated couldn’t recognize. But I found it very hard to get a unique image. We all know what, for example, a mountain looks like. And have a good idea of what a ‘good’ photograph of a mountain should look like. And when photographing mountains, the tendency is to try to make the mountain look like it ‘should’. Which makes it hard to get an image that gives the impression of how ‘you’ see the mountain. To paraphrase a piece I once read, all pictures of Yosemite looks like those of Ansell Adams, because Ansell taught us how Yosemite looks like in photographs. Kind of circular reasoning, but illustrates the point.

So what’s the connection? With abstracts and impressions, it’s much easier to let oneself go photographically. There is less of a ‘template’ to follow, so I find it easier to relax and see whatever jumps out and grabs me. Which makes many of these images imminently satisfying to the photographic soul.

Yet Another Junkyard

Really, after years of photographing and never setting foot in a junkyard, what are the odds that I would spend two weekends in a row prowling around car wrecks with a camera. But that is what happened. I signed up for a photography workshop with Stephen Patterson and the first stop was another junkyard (there were other stops throughout the weekend; more on that in later posts). This was a good junkyard, acres of wrecks and lots of variety for abstracts and similar, like the two shots at the top of this post.

But the real find was a burned out mobile home. I don't know the story behind it or where it came from, but it was now tucked away in a corner of the yard. It was great visually, with strong graphic lines of charred wood, soft & diffuse colours from the layers of ash and soot, etc. And quite sad too, since all the former owner's possessions were still in the trailer. Clothes, kitchen dishes, a piece of mail somehow unscathed by the fire; it was all still there. I made what I think are some of my strongest images in a long time at the trailer. I'm not sure the exact reason I feel that way, whether it is the great visuals or the emotion.

Here's one of my favorites:

Junkyard Shoot

After a fairly lengthy photographic hiatus (note the complete lack of recent posts), I've started to pick up the camera again. I was out with a group on Saturday shooting in a junkyard. Two things of note:

1) I very easily go into visual overload when there is too much to photograph. On a shoot with so many opportunities for pictures, I tend to focus on just a few locations/objects. This isn't for any deep reason like 'working the image' until I get 'the shot'. It's just I can't absorb any more.

2) I really have to work harder on getting the composition right. I'm cropping way too many images that I should have taken more care with and gotten it right in camera. And I see the composition I want the minute I open the image on the computer; I'm just not seeing it in the field. Not a big deal I suppose, but a hold over from shooting slides. Having to crop all the time also makes me feel like I'm being lazy when I'm shooting, like I'm not trying hard enough to see what I need to see.

Anyway, here's a few of the images I made on Saturday.

The Driveway

I have't been making many photos lately; I have been busy with all the other things in life. And photography has been very close to home. These two are, in fact, pictures of my driveway.

One pre-snow, one post-snow.

Another Season Come and Gone

Here we are in the depths of winter again. Snow on the ground and the lake has just frozen over. This image is actually from this spring, when the ice was just disappearing from the lake. But it looks remarkably similar to the view just a few weeks ago as the ice began to appear on the lake (no picture of that scene though). Isn't the cycle of the seasons neat?

Reflecting on Reflections

I have been going through my slides of the Rockies lately; trying to pick put a few iconic-like images to hang in our new home and remind of all the good times we had hiking in the mountains. As I started picking out a ’short list’ to choose from, I noticed something that had not been obvious before. I have an awful lot of slides that show mountains reflected in water. Thinking about that, I’ve come up with two possible explanations:

1) I’m attracted to the tranquility and peacefulness of the reflected image, appreciating the juxtaposition of solid, immobile rock with the transience and insubstantiality of the water.

2) I’m lazy and a reflected image makes for a simple, clean, thought-free composition.


I suspect it is a good mix of the two, with the relative proportions varying in each image.

More Flowers

Just a few more flower images from the spring and early summer. I'm not exactly fast and efficient when it comes to processing images. It tends to be months from pressing the shutter to getting an image into it's 'final' form. So expect images of spring flower in late summer, summer flowers in late fall and snowbanks in June (although where I grew up, real snow in June has been known to happen).

Mountains for No Reason

I've just come across these two mountain images that I seem to have edited some time ago for a blog posting, but for the life of me I can't remember what I was going to write. Well, I'll post them now to mark the nearly one year anniversary of my last visit to the Canadian Rockies (I lived out West until about a year ago). Both images are from summer 2007. The first is Mt Chephren & Waterfowl Lake in northern Banff NP; oft photographed and a familiar landmark to anyone who has been in the area. The second is from the Maligine Range in Jasper NP; not nearly as photographed or recognizable.

Seeing

Photography is about seeing, not looking. A profound statement. But of course not one that is unique to me or one for which I can claim credit. It is a concept at the heart of ‘true’ photography. And it is one I have heard and read many times; in fact it is what jumped put at me while re-reading Freeman Patterson’s “Photography and the Art of Seeing” and Joel Meyerowitz’s “Cape Light”. But it has over the last little while become something of a revelation; not is a sudden flash of inspiration but more like a tiny kernel of truth burrowing into my brain. But why now?

I’ve been looking over a lot of the photo’s I’ve made over the last few months, many of which are ‘pretty’ flower pictures. And the ‘photography as meaning’ side of my brain keeps popping in to tell me that that is all they are; pretty pictures with no real meaning. But I think I last I realize that they are not. Making these images had made me look closer, to see the how and why, the line and colour and to perhaps appreciate or understand one little part of the world around me a little better. And I think, ultimately, that that is the appeal of photography to me. I have always been an observer of the world around me, and photography has helped me tune my vision and better appreciate even the seemingly insignificant things. And if you better see the little things, it helps put the larger questions into proper perspective or order.

So pretty flower pictures are OK; and so are dinning room chairs and dirty shed doors.

Spring Flowers

I did promise (threaten) more flower photos. I have in fact been shooting very little else but flowers over the last few months, and all of it around the house. We have a cornucopia of wildflowers and flower gardens to keep me busy.

Ted Grant

There was an interesting interview with Ted Grant on CBC Radio a few days ago. Ted is a well respected Canadian Photojournalist who has been shooting the news for nearly 50 years. He had some interesting insights and stories to tell from a uniquely Canadian point of view. I was familiar with some of his work (particularly the picture of then Prime Minster Pierre Trudeau sliding down the banister, and of Ben Johnson crossing the finish line at the Seoul Olympics) but didn't really connect the images to the person.




It's an interesting interview and well worth taking 20 minutes to have a listen. I particularly liked his comment that real photographers work in black and white, eat sushi and drink single malt Scotch. Oh well, two out of three ain't bad ...