Thunderstorm in southern Saskatchewan. This is one reason I love the prairies.
Anna and I just got back from Manitoba where we were visiting family. Family trips are not exactly conducive to photography, especially when they are rushed, but I managed to take a few photos. I’m almost looking forward to winter, when everything can slow down a bit, and I get a chance to go through my photos.
There are some places on this earth that seem a little surreal. Ice caves are one of those places. And in these strange and beautiful places, I find it really hard to take photos. I’m often overwhelmed with the experience, and focusing on composition becomes impossible. Everywhere I look there is something new. I have to slow down, let the surroundings soak into me, and then I can start to express my response to a place.
Although I would have loved to spend more time here (it’s kind of scary with the falling rocks and ice), I’m pretty happy with how the photos turned out. The lines of the photo lead into a dangerous unknown.
When you see an elk, what do you do? You stop and take a photo of course. And if the elk stays there, you get closer. After all, wasn’t it Robert Capa who said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.”?
But for some reason your brain starts to throw up little red flags. Wait a minute, you also want context — the animal acting in its habitat. And maybe you don’t want a photo of an elk eyeball, maybe you want the whole elk. And anyway, isn’t it bad for animals to get accustomed to people? And dangerous for the people?
And then, for some strange reason, you start to think of photographing weddings, of posing and of lighting. Direct evening light is pretty good — it’s warm and lends definition to shapes, but what if you backlight this? That would wash it out and give it a dream-like quality. But animals are not as cooperative as people who hire you to take their photos. You have to do the moving, and there’s no adding light. You know that flash would bother this elk and disrupt his feeding, possibly making him aggressive.
So you do the moving, far enough away that the animal is not disturbed. You wait for the animal to move into a position that works, you get the sun at just the right angle, and you get a photo. You don’t know if it’s a good photo or a great photo, but you’re pretty sure it’s not a bad photo. And that is satisfying.
These photos were taken at the same place, facing the same direction, within 1 minute of each other. The difference is part of what fascinates me about water. Small changes in the viewing angle completely change the photo. The top photo is almost purely reflected light, while the bottom is a mix of reflected (which bounces off the water) and refracted (which goes through the water) light. Add to that the constant variability of the wind creating different wave patterns, flowing water creating more stable ripples or even falls, and you have a subject that never gets old. I find flat water like this a little bit harder to find compositions in. Waves from wind are transient enough that you don’t know exactly what you’re going to capture — you have a general idea, but the specifics are up to chance. Flowing water is much easier to compose, and you often get more interesting lines. Often these lines and ripples are stable enough that you can see exactly what you’re going to get. But to get refraction in flowing water, it has to be flowing pretty gently — this works best with quite small amounts of water. Otherwise you get whitewater (full of air bubbles), which is great in a completely different way.
These photos don’t have leading lines to add depth or direct they eye (which generally I prefer), but they do illustrate some of the possibilities.
This photo was taken late in the evening on our way back from Grasslands National Park a while back. The thick fog softened everything and let the windbreak fade away into nothing. This look reminds me a bit some lomo or holga photos I’ve seen, but I really like that you can see a lot of the detail here, while still retaining that soft dreamy feeling. Although I suppose a big orange light leak would change the photo quite a bit.
Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatum) in a small aspen tree. Check out the claws on this guy.
Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera) in front of Bellis Lake on a lovely summer evening.
The warm bright sunlight on the bark against the dark blue water caught my attention, and the cloud reflected in the water just topped it off. The hardest part of a photo like this is simplifying — getting rid of all the things that will detract from the feeling I’m trying to capture. There can be so much surrounding a scene like this. There are lots of trees crowding around, I’m standing in a grove of alders and rose bushes, the far side of the lake is just a little above the top of the frame. But I’m capturing what I love, and the surroundings almost fade away — I capture what captures me.
The area around Elpoca Mountain looks fascinating to me, and I never got a chance to explore it. It was a forbidden land — closed because of grizzly sightings. But the vertical slabs of rock jutting from the warm grassy slopes was a magical contrast that caught my attention, and something I have not seen often in the rocky mountains.
This little grizzly cub wants to let you know that this is the last week to see my photos at Elm Cafe on 117th Street just north of Jasper. It is also the last week for my current show at Daffodil Gallery on 124th Street and 104 Ave. If you miss them, don’t despair — there are more shows in the works.
Below are a series of photos exploring a field of Spreading Dogbane (Apocynum androsaemifolium). These are all taken from the same place, at the same time of day. As I’m taking photos, I often move from the literal – capturing a scene as one would usually see it (hopefully with a pleasing composition) and move towards the abstract. Often what I’m after is the abstract photo, but sometimes the original, more traditional landscape is the one that wins out when I’m evaluating them afterwards. It often takes me months to discover if I’m happy with a photo or not. And blogging them is part of this process. I blog photos that I initially think are pretty good, and the ones I’m still happy with in a couple months will likely go in my portfolio.
