Last weekend I worried about using my new camera. It is a great piece of gear, but reading about it, using it at home and using it in the field are very, very, very different things. How you hold the camera is important because (like many new digital cameras) my camera is studded with button and if you accidentally hit an odd combination of buttons when you pick up the camera sometimes weird stuff happens.
I thought I was making a photograph and I must have offended the gods of cameras because instead of making this picture my camera started playing some new age guitar music and began a Ken Burns “pan and scan” slide show of all the images on my memory card. It was quite a scene, me in the forest primeval and my camera, on a tripod, entertaining me with a slide show and music. I was not upset. I started laughing because it was one of those surreal moments visited upon you by the complexity of consumer electronics. Why in the name of Daguerre would a camera have such a function? About five years ago, my primary camera was made of wood and leather. I carried a fifteen pound tripod and about forty pounds of film and other paraphernalia. Now, my camera serenades me. I call that progress and I am glad I live in America.
Trees, Fog, Music, North Head
At the North Head lighthouse there were some very limited photographic opportunities because of geometry and geography. Geometry, because lighthouses are tall and skinny and does not fit any known photographic aspect ratio. Geography, because once inside the lighthouse, there is not much room to maneuver. There was one photo opportunity inside of the lighthouse, so I made the best of it and this was the only picture I made.
Spiral Staircase, North Head Lighthouse
Heck, this is the only picture everyone can make in the lighthouse, because right below my camera is the “the stairs are closed, you may not climb to the top of the lighthouse” sign. On the walk back to the lighthouse keeper’s house, I was thinking that there was something wrong with the photograph. It did not seem correct. It’s nicely composed, and the curve is graceful. Then it struck me, the curve is going the wrong way. The spiral staircase is ascending in a clock wise fashion. Traditionally, spiral stairs ascend counterclockwise, the tradition borne of ancient castles which made the attacker fight left handed as he ascended the stair while the defender fought right handed.
We drove a certain stretch of road around Willapa Bay probably a dozen times this week. We always looked at it and wanted to photograph from that vantage point, but it just didn’t seem to want to be photographed – until this morning. We were on our way to meet the appropriate confluence of tide and the sun at Teal Slough at the appointed “magic hour” when we rounded the curve and had to stop. That particular place in the Universe needed to be photographed. So I called for a command stop, got out and made the photograph.
Fog at Low Tide, Willapa Bay
Persistence is needed to make a good landscape photograph. Well, I guess sometimes luck is needed if you are only visiting for a week. If you think about the great landscape photographers, they lived very near where they photographed. The most prominent example of this are Ansel Adam’s great photographs of Yosemite that defined several generations’ views of that National Park. It also helps to know that he lived in the park for several decades and made those photographs “in his backyard.”
The trees in fog is absolutely gorgeous. It is surreal to think about the slide show your camera created while you were trying to create this wonderful and quiet image.
Posted by: Harold Ross | September 25, 2011 at 10:21 PM