Originally published Nov. 29, 2012 A couple of years ago I went out to my Uncle’s place in the country to photograph the full moon coming up over the corn fields. To get to his house I have to drive down a very long, usually dry and dusty road. It’s one of those old gravel roads. The kind where you better roll up the windows and turn off the vents or the car will fill up with dust and you might be coughing by the time you get there. As luck would have it, the weather turned and it proceeded to rain for 2 days straight. I’ve never seen it rain that much in a 2 day period. The normally dry and dusty road was starting to wash out in spots. Generally, the house rules are that the dog is allowed inside but the cats are not. While waiting for the skies to clear up, which it did not until after I left, I couldn’t help taking a picture of this little cat hoping for a break from the cool rain. It sure seems to speak volumes. It might make a cute greeting card!
Originally published Nov. 17, 2012
This week I finally sprung for a 1 Terabyte external hard drive. I’m running a 2005 Mac with a PC processor it in and only 150 GB of hard drive space. That means over the years I have accumulated a total of 7 external hard drives to store my images on. Springing for the big hard drive means I can finally put all my best work together in one place. It will be a big job to weed out the duplicates, but in the end I will have a comprehensive body of work that is organized and easy to access. As I begin the process of doing this task, I am reminded through quick glimpses of photos here and there of all the great things I have done in my lifetime. The people I’ve known, some still here, some have moved on. The places I’ve vacationed to, the laughs we’ve had, the experiences and holidays, as well as the natural beauty in the world. So much to be thankful for that it makes my heart feel full. Photography is such a powerful tool. It can preserve memories for us and bring back emotions in an instant. If you are lonely this year or feeling like your list of things to be thankful for is a little short, or even if you are plenty thankful, try looking at some old photos to remember the richness and abundance life gives many of us, especially in this country. Wishing all those celebrating it a wonderful, peaceful and very thankful Thanksgiving holiday. Originally published Nov. 4, 2012 Fall as a season is about 3 months short for me. With all due respect to the calendar’s dates, here’s how it goes in Minnesota: Spring 3 months, Summer 3 months, Fall 4-6 weeks, and Winter 5 months. There’s a couple extra weeks in there but this is a flexible calendar. Following is a more detailed analysis, if you are curious. Spring lasts from about April to June so I’d say 3 months, give or take a couple of weeks. Summer runs from somewhere in June until maybe sometime in September, so a good 3 months there as well. Fall is from sometime in September through pretty much most of October making it the shortest season at about 4 or 6 weeks tops. Winter can kick in during October but most likely early November and lasts through March, sometimes even into April making it the longest season here at 5 months plus. When Fall rolls around, it is an intense and concentrated period of color and if you are into capturing it with a camera then one must get busy and focus. Fall also has the same issue as Spring, that being the wind. If one subtracts all the days when it is too windy to shoot, I’m guessing half of those possible 30-40 days of the season just went out the window. If only Fall was Winter we could really kick back and enjoy it. At any rate, one day while I was enjoying the display of colors, I got to thinking there sure is a lot of competition out there for attention. When we survey the landscape, which color grabs our eye the most: red, yellow or green? (I didn’t have any orange in my test acreage.) I guess it’s the hidden psychologist/marketing director inside of me that wanted to know the answer to this question. Here I tried to find trees in order of Green-red-yellow, Green-yellow-red, Yellow-green-red, Yellow-red-green, Red-green-yellow, and finally Red-yellow-green. What color did you notice first? Did it matter what order they were in? The tree color I noticed first was: Green Yellow Red VoteView Results Polldaddy.com Take Our Poll The tree color I noticed second was: Yellow Red Green VoteView Results Polldaddy.com Take Our Poll The tree color I noticed last was: Red Green Yellow VoteView Results Polldaddy.com Take Our Poll Then I got to thinking some more. Perhaps my experiment had too many variables such as size of tree, number of leaves, and percentage of frame each tree occupies. So I thought I would try it on a smaller scale with one leaf representing each color. Do you notice any differences now? Green-yellow-red, Green-red-yellow, Yellow-red-green, Yellow-green-red, Red-yellow-green, and last but not least, Red-green-yellow, The leaf color I noticed first was:
Green Yellow Red VoteView Results Polldaddy.com Take Our Poll The leaf color I noticed second was: Red Yellow Green VoteView Results Polldaddy.com Take Our Poll The leaf color I noticed last was: Red Yellow Green VoteView Results Polldaddy.com Take Our Poll Perhaps another variable could be whether you are female or male. I am:Male Female VoteView Results Polldaddy.com Take Our Poll Thank you for taking my polls. Maybe this will help you make your next marketing decision, at least as far as color is concerned! Originally published Oct. 1, 2012 Southern Minnesota is quite beautiful at this time of year. Much of the land consists of farm fields populated with corn and soybeans. The harvest stage of these plants is to turn a dark yellow, maybe even golden in color while some are the color of straw. Set this against the periwinkle blue sky, sprinkle in some clouds, and driving through those farm fields in September is very lovely indeed. As a child I felt differently and quite detested these flat fields that seemed to go on as far as the eye could see. It would have been so much more interesting to view mountains or oceans than corn and soybeans. So I’m not sure at what point I turned over a leaf and had a change of heart about this part of the world I grew up in. Now instead of ignoring it, I wanted to photograph it. How many of you see something while you are driving and you want to take a picture of it? This happens to me all the time. Usually I think “I’ll come back and photograph that later.” On long trips though, the opportunity might only present itself once. Maybe next time you come back it will have changed somehow. Then, if you decide to stop and do it, you might find yourself thinking “that wasn’t so bad” and you might find another spot just a mile or two down the road, and then maybe another. It becomes impractical to keep stopping the car, especially if there are other passengers. It’s also fairly dangerous to be standing on the side of the highway. One time when I decided to pull the car over and get out (I was even on a gravel road meaning a lot less traffic), a farmer and his wife hurried out in their car to see what I was doing. It was a little more attention than I wanted – I was only photographing some hay bales. Now I wonder if they kept their gold bars in there or maybe something else? Anyway, sometimes it seems easier if I could just operate the camera while driving. I know, this is a terrible idea. I really should have someone else driving the car but my 11 year old can’t reach the peddles yet. I’ve tried looking through the view finder while driving the car. Even though I’m still looking at the road, the perspective is different and it’s just plain dangerous. Sometimes you want to stop but there is nowhere to park the car. This is when you must get creative. This time I did the shooting somewhat randomly by not looking through the viewfinder but trying to do the best I can to frame the image while keeping on my side of the road and clear of the ditch. I shot at a very high shutter speed since I was traveling at 55 MPH. I’d love to hear how any of you manage to photograph things you see while traveling down a road or highway.
Originally published June 16, 2012 A few years ago I came across a flower called Allium in a friend’s garden. I made a mental note of it because they were so unique and had an almost Dr. Seuss type quality to them. They remind me of the flower Horton is holding where the Whos live in Horton Hears A Who!. https://www.google.com/search?q=horton+hears+a+who&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=FzY&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=DYHcT6HDJOXg2AXD1rTVDQ&ved=0CIABELAE&biw=1440&bih=765 I knew I wanted some in my garden as well. Eventually I found the bulbs at the local Costco and planted a bag of them last Fall. Allium is Latin for garlic. There are hundreds of species of this plant. Bulb sizes are large varying from 2-3 mm to 8-10 cm. Apparently some people eat these and they taste like onions. I have a funny feeling a bowl of Allium heads would not go over well at the dinner table, besides the fact that the Whos live in there. I think I’ll stick to enjoying mine in the garden at least this year. They are exceptionally fun to photograph because of their long spikes. It is possible to find several different planes of focus within one flower head. And the extra bonus: I’ve read it blooms repeatedly throughout the summer, without the need to deadhead. I’ve seen one round of flowers and am currently awaiting the second bloom. There’s also a neat picture of these all in a row at Wikipedia. I have no idea how you get them to grow exactly the same height like that but it looks very uniform and would make a nice background border.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Selection_of_cultivated_Alliums_.jpg Happy summer everyone! Originally published Apr. 7, 2012 I have been writing about a 1980 video documentary on Ernst Haas entitled “To Dream With Eyes Wide Open”. In my last blog, I discussed Haas’ idea that artists incorporate their surroundings and then are able to re-present those surroundings with their own personal vision or experience on whatever medium is in front of them: canvas, paper, etc. using whatever vehicle they have in their hand: paintbrush, camera, pen, etc. Another profound idea in his documentary is that children see in pure vision and as they grow up that is taken away from them as they are schooled and civilized. Adult artists then must relearn how to “see” as they did when they were a child. He says: “If you are a child in many ways you are really yourself and you have a strange kind of a logic and the grown-ups come and they want to correct all this beautiful logic which is as illogical as poetry because it goes in a truth which is far beyond intelligence. And then comes the school and you learn to read and you learn to write. And suddenly this literary dictatorship pushes away all your vision and you are no more free. You can’t see a tree, no, you have to say “tree.” You have to know where it is, how it is called. You can’t enjoy pure looking, pure observing, pure thinking. But to live without a name this is when you become visual. When there are no captions. When it just is and with it being, it becomes. That means you have to unlearn to read and write and just live a little bit with your eyes…and maybe…music. So you really become yourself. I don’t want to become mystical but in meditation you do that. You forget yourself. You push your ego away while you be yourself. Forget that you want to be the best photographer in the world. Forget that you want to make the prize in this and this competition. There are no prizes, there are no competitions.” This reminds me of a museum experience I had with another mom and her kids. At every painting or structure, she would stop and recite outloud to her kids whatever description was below the piece. I had not been doing this, merely observing with my own kids and “oohing” or “aahhing” or “wow-ing”. I started to feel somewhat self conscious of myself at this point. Here was the other mom, giving her kids a crash course in art history, their brains growing larger by the second. I sheepishly started to do the same with my kids, a little quieter and now, intentionally, a few more steps behind the other mom. Now, I am rethinking that experience. Maybe it was ok to just observe and experience without all the details and background information.
There are really two big ideas in this excerpt from Haas. The first is the seeing as a child part and the second is the competition part. In today’s world where so much of people’s identities is wrapped up in internet presence and competition in photography is as fierce as it ever was, it is difficult to not get wrapped up in that thinking. By that I mean when you are in the process of creating, your thoughts are not with what you are doing but with what the end result will be. I guess not in the present, but in the future. I like the thought of it – just being at peace with what is. Photographing something because you are drawn to it, not because you are trying to gain critical acclaim or recognition for your work. Coming up: I think I will take a break from the Ernst Haas quotes and talk about or better yet, show what is going on outside: images of Spring. Happy Easter everyone! Originally published Feb. 5, 2011 Someone recently asked me to name three photographs I liked, a lot, and why I liked them. They couldn't be my own. With the exception of a photographer I studied under once upon a time (Craig M. Tanner) (http://www.tmelive.com/), I couldn't identify any specific photographs that I was just crazy about...until recently...when I picked up a book from the library called The 50 Most Influential Photographers of All Time, by Chris Dickie. When I came across a photographer named Ernst Haas I felt as if I had finally made a connection. He is known, among other things, as a pioneer of showing movement in color photography. At last, here was someone who could understand the beauty I see in movement or blur in an image. These images often seem met with resistance from many people. "Why is it out of focus?" "It isn't sharp" or "This is too confusing for me to look at." While there is certainly a place, ok a majority seat, for tack sharp, in-focus images, I often find myself becoming bored with the same static captures documenting a second of time in life. I'm not saying they are boring in general, just that I become bored when all I feel I'm doing is pushing the button, repeatedly. I found myself wondering, isn't there some middle ground that can be recorded? Not the split second, "in-focus" our eyes see and not the other extreme of constant motion, but the space in between - the initial focus and the beginning of movement. The resulting images exhibit a flow of energy and to me, a fresh way of seeing and recording life. They are more exciting to my eye and can turn the most mundane, everyday scenes into interesting and thought provoking landscapes. This technique is nothing new to the photography community - there are many other photographers who have "painted with the camera" since Haas. It's just that I was pretty excited to find the person who first photographed this way - intentionally - and had the courage to put it in color print. Here are a couple of my motion images and a link to Ernst Haas's color movement photos. http://www.ernst-haas.com/colorGallery03.html Originally published Feb. 23, 2011 I was thinking this morning about how lucky I am to be an architectural photographer in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. We have so many great buildings between the two cities and as if that wasn't enough, the Mississippi River runs through both. I am one of those people who thinks that water makes everything more interesting. Having photographed cities that do not have bodies of water in them, I can just say it's better with water. But, back to the main topic, the great architecture we have. Minneapolis can boast being home to such stunning architecture as The Guthrie Theater, the IDS Tower, the Foshay Center, the Minneapolis Central Library, the Orpheum, the State Theater, the Basilica of St. Mary, the Weisman Art Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, to mention a few. They have at least 3 remarkable bridges (Third Avenue, Father Hennepin, and the Stone Arch) that cross the river providing fabulous cityscape shots for anyone willing to take the time to venture there (and lots of great food excuses to get you there too). St. Paul is equally fascinating from an architectural standpoint. For starters they have the Capitol and the surrounding structures. The Ordway, St. Paul Central Library and St. Paul Hotel are anchors to the Rice Park area, as well as the Landmark Center. Other notable edifices include The Cathedral of St. Paul, the Fitzgerald Theatre, the Children's Museum, and the Hamm Building. St. Paul is home to the Wabasha Street Bridge and my personal favorite, the Smith Street a/k/a High Bridge crossing over the Mississippi, both of which provide excellent opportunities for cityscape photos. After all this talk about the great architecture we have, I'm starting to wonder what I'm doing sitting here typing on my computer. I have a lot to do! Maybe I will start a self assignment and post images I can make of some of these buildings. In the meantime...I have something much more exciting for next week (and a lot more computer work)...I just have to keep it a secret until then! Let's just say it has to do with one of the buildings mentioned in this blog. |
AuthorI am a photographer who lives in Minnesota. I blog about Minnesota, photography, music, food and miscellaneous topics. Archives
November 2016
Categor
All
|