Just a quick snap today from Grasslands National Park this past summer. This storm should have been a clue not to camp here — the roads are impassible after much rain. As it was, we had a blissfully ignorant night in our tent with thunder rumbling us to sleep. In the morning we barely made it out.
I’ve just updated the Impressions gallery on my website. You’ve probably seen many of these images before, but there should be a few new ones too. The general idea of this gallery is to include photos that are about the feeling rather than the subject. They’re impressions as opposed to representations. This doesn’t mean that I’ve done a lot of editing on the photos. As with almost all my images, I’ve done some color correction and contrast adjustments. That’s about it.
I feel like I don’t do a lot of traditional landscape photography. There are a few reasons for this – many iconic views which are amazingly beautiful are over-photographed already. I don’t feel like I could add a whole lot to the visual conversation with these. Secondly, with so many of my outings being local, there are only so many vistas to be seen. And thirdly, I tend to be a photographer of opportunity rather than planning. So instead of finding the perfect landscape and returning when it is lit perfectly, I’ll explore a new place instead and if I run across a well-lit landscape I’ll work with it. I do have a few places where I return again and again, but it’s always because there’s more to discover there, not because I want to re-photograph something in different light.
I feel like this spontaneity resonates with the romantic feeling of many of my landscapes. I tend to like the soft warm embrace of nature, even if its a rare event. I also enjoy the cold and creepy facets of nature. But I always tend to like nature as it elicits emotion. Sometimes I’m jealous of painters, who can create the perfect light, add and remove elements from their compositions. Even some photographers / digital manipulators are good at this and can create stunning pieces with these skills. I can capture these things as I experience them, but I’m mostly limited by my experience. Which in some ways I really like. I’m lucky to have these experiences. And I enjoy sharing them with all of you!
A few years ago I really wanted camera manufacturers to make retro cameras. Now they’re here in full force from almost all the manufacturers, but they’re not at all what I wanted. Here is a short design lecture for camera designers. I’m sure they’re all better educated than me, but they’re certainly not showing it.
A dial is a marvellous interface. You can fit a lot of discrete (often scaled) settings on one control. You have a mark beside the dial pointing to one of those settings. Now you always know what your setting is. It doesn’t matter if the camera is on or off. You don’t have to look at a seperate interface (like a screen) to see what that dial is set at. There is physical feedback – you can feel clicks as you turn a dial — one click relates to one change in that setting. You get instant feedback, the visual feedback completely matches the tactile feedback, and changes (should) happen instantly when you change the control.
Dials as they are in most digital cameras are a disgrace. They are unmarked — you have to look at a seperate screen to see what changed. And if the camera is off you have no idea what the setting will be when you turn it on. The number of clicks does not relate to the change in settings. If you turn slowly, usually one click will change the setting by one increment. But turn that same dial really fast and maybe 5 clicks will change the setting by one increment. So the physical feedback is lying and you have to rely on visual feedback to see what the setting is.
The one dial that camera manufacturers have actually kept as a real dial is the mode dial, which is the worst one to keep on SLRs. This should be the least used dial, and by making it a proper dial and encouraging its use they’re actually dumbing down the camera. And I’m not at all against auto settings. I’m just for education and knowledge, and this dial hides all that.
Buttons are meant to be temporary. If you press a button, it should do something. When you stop pressing a button it should stop doing that thing. Buttons should not toggle settings – that is what switches are for. If you want something on or off, make it a switch. Switches are lovely.
Also, control placement should relate to what they control. Why is aperture control almost always on the camera now? That is the lens that you’re controlling – why not use a ring around the lens?
These things should be completely obvious. Not a lot of people think about them, but if they did I think everyone would come to this same conclusion.
So I welcomed the return of retro camera designs, but I am really disappointed. It’s not the aesthetics that I want to be retro (although that’s fine). I want the user interface to be retro. Mechanical cameras limited designers in ways that forced them to build better user interfaces. Now that everything is electrical under the retro veneer, camera designers are being lazy because they can. Or maybe because it’s cheaper, I don’t know. Fuji is the one manufacturer that’s actually getting a lot of this right. But even they have a ways to go.
I grew up on an acreage in northern Saskatchewan. We had a massive yard and a massive garden, I think partly because we were not wealthy and the garden provided much of our food, but also because my parents loved plants and trees. Many of our plants were your average garden plants — potatoes, carrots, beets, broccoli, tomatoes, beans, squash, peas, etc. I had to do what felt like a lot of gardening as I was growing up, and I remember not really liking it (as any kid is likely feel about chores). But I also have a lot of fond memories of the sun-warmed dirt between my toes, of throwing the sun-greened potatoes at the aspen trees growing around the garden, and of eating the fresh fruit and veggies right off the plants.
We also planted trees. At first they were mostly fruit trees that we’d expect to produce, like a few varieties of apples, chokecherries, cranberries, and whatever would grow in that harsh climate. Over time though that expanded to more challenging trees like plums or more decorative trees that were just for the beauty of being. We got a Swedish Nut Pine, we tried varieties of maple. All of us kids also learned about all the trees in the woods around us. We knew where all the stands of birch were (there weren’t many) and the one little group of balsam fir was a highlight that we built a little trail to. We would climb the jack pines and find the perfect white spruce or black spruce for a Christmas tree. I learned to love trees.
I’ve tried to increase my knowledge of trees over the years, but I haven’t done well. Living in the city with the pressures of jobs and bustle of life it’s hard to keep up with that sort of thing. Last month in BC I went on a few hikes with interpretive signs that taught me a bit more about Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock, and Red Cedar. But one tree stood out to me more that anything else: the Arbutus menziesii, commonly known as Arbutus (ar-‘byoo-tus). They have a striking bare yellow trunk sometimes covered with curling red to purple bark. They’re a broadleafed evergreen — even in late October there were flowers on some, and bright red fruit on others. They often have twisting gnarled trunks with clusters of leaves at the top. They are a beautiful tree. But they’re often overpowered by the cedar forests they’re growing in. They tend to be here or there on the warm south-facing rocky slopes where the forest isn’t too thick and they have a chance. I never saw forests of Arbutus.
I guess this is a post for my parents, who I thought of a lot as I was searching for these trees. I was thinking they would enjoy planting a small forest of Arbutus. Not that it’s practical or makes any sense at all, but I think they’d like these trees. They seem like they’d be a bit of a challenge to grow, and would pay off in beauty. Maybe they could even get them to grow out in Manitoba, although I’m pretty sure the winter would kill them.
One thing I really wanted to accomplish in BC was to get a photo that did justice to the Arbutus tree. I’m not sure I succeeded, but I gave it a good shot.
This is more of an explanation of yesterday’s post than anything else – mostly because I don’t feel like this is as strong of an image, but it does add a lot of information. Its both proof that we got a fire going when everything was completely soaked, and a view of the lake, showing the contents of yesterday’s picture. The lake is fairly small, and the dark lines you see coming in from the sides are the trees on the other side of the lake, mostly obscured by fog. As all good campers should do, we kept the fire on the beach, where it is well away from our tent (bear safety and “sparks melting the tent” safety) and where there is no fuel around or under it to catch on fire. I wouldn’t advocate making new fires on the beach unless they’re small and you can remove all traces of them, but this was in a well established fire pit.
One slightly disturbing thing about Davis Lake is the amount of trash lying around. We tried to clean up a lot of it, but there was still lots remaining. Please, if you go out in the woods at all, pick up at least a little extra trash and pack it out (I’m assuming no one reading this would actually leave trash behind). If everyone does this, eventually we could all have well travelled and unspoiled woods.
And just because I’m not sure it warrants its own post, I’ll add a picture of my tent taken from the beach.
I got to spend a couple days camping at Davis Lake with a good friend. One morning we woke up in this great thick fog. It was totally silent except for the condensation dripping from the trees onto the fallen maple leaves on the forest floor. Didn’t make for easy campfires, but camping challenges build character.
I just got back from hiking around the BC coast for a couple weeks and I’m just starting to go through the images. Since I haven’t shared anything for a while I thought I’d put something up before I’m even done looking at everything. This is from Skookumchuck Narrows on the Sunshine Coast where the tide creates pretty wild rapids once or twice a day. I seem to keep coming back to pictures of flowing water. There’s something about the constant movement within a pattern and the play of light across and through the water that gets me every time.
Anyway, tons of editing to be done, and tons of other work as well. I’ll try to keep some new photos flowing up here though…
Fall is here, and I’m not ready for it. As much as I love fall I feel like I didn’t get enough summer yet. I’ve just started to go running fairly regularly, but the cold air isn’t great for my lungs. I haven’t gone backpacking yet this summer. That is a travesty. On the other hand, I’ve done lots of things to get out of my comfort zone, and they’ve been going well. I started teaching photography classes which have been great! I started doing a lot of studio / model photography and that’s awesome! I’m also doing a bunch of video work. So I can’t complain too much.
But this tree, a single tree standing in for all fall trees, holds a lot of excitement and disappointment, all bundled up in beauty and endings.
