Postcards from the Creative Journey

More Photographs than Wall Space

 

There always seems to be more good photographs than wall space. Fortunately, I have the Square Peg Weekly Blog to exhibit more photographs from the Hastings Building. When old buildings were converted from stoves to central heat, something had to be done with the flue – thus the flue plug. At one time someone hung a picture over the plug (and didn’t remove the nail in the wall when they left) and then someone decided a bucolic landscape would be better than a blank piece of tin. I came along decades later and made a photograph. Photographers have it the easiest, I think, because we can come along decades after the fact, arrange all the previous efforts of artists and craftsmen and claim the result as our own.

Photographing, "just because"

 

This is the epitome of a Square Peg photograph. It fits no genre that I am currently working on. It does not fit in any previous body of work. It is the square peg for all the round holes of my current projects. I made this photograph yesterday before I came home. I was walking down the steps of the Art Building and the following mixture of light and shadows, inorganic and natural shapes and shadows presented themselves to me. There are times like this when a photographer is forced to make a photograph, so I did. As I walked about campus for the next hour or so, I wondered how many opportunities such as that last one I had missed.

Off the road and watching your step

 

Light, dark, light dark, texture, texture, placement, placement, placement. That’s the literal interpretation of this photograph. There are only two important things to remember when photographing in the field. One is where you stand. Two is when to press the shutter. One is the prime rule illustrated here. The placement of the camera to emphasize the relationship between the evergreens in shade, evergreens in direct sunlight and the big and small trees makes this photograph. I did a lot of dancing around in making this photograph to make sure the relationship among the elements remained pleasing. It was also a challenge to avoid the elk droppings in this meadow. I was kind of lucky on the timing. It was fairly late in the morning when I arrived at this little valley, but the sides of the valley were pretty steep enabling me to use the “morning light” to my advantage.

That's Just the Way It Looked

 

The geometry of squares, subdivided rectangles and the perfectly aligned shadow cast by early December’s angular sunlight was too good of an opportunity to pass up. The perfectly placed round pot added a bit of relief from the relentlessly rectangular geometry. Some might think it was the photographer that was responsible for the placement of the clay pot in the foreground. It very well may have been a photographer that placed the pot there. I assure you, if it was a photographer, it was not me. I do appreciate the “found photograph” and happily photograph these scenes. I am also willing to follow in the footsteps of a photographer who will move most anything to their advantage. In the words of Huntington Witherill, “That was exactly the way it looked when I made the picture.”