Organic Light Pan

I recently lead a private photography workshop.  During that workshop my client and I discussed many things photographic.  We touched briefly on the topic of creating HDR (high dynamic range) photographs and how they leaned, for the most part, towards not looking real.  A simple Google search on the terms “HDR Photos” will bring up excellent examples of unrealistic photos resulting from HDR techniques.  However I did mention to him that simply extending the limits of the camera itself does not have to take the resulting photos outside the realm of reality.  If you would like to see HDR photos done “right”, then just take a look HERE and HERE.

The work involved in extending the dynamic range of a digital camera or even that of film photos is extensive and requires special techniques and/or software to do the job.  However that is not the topic of this post today.  What I have been chewing on is, in today’s photographic world, where do we draw the line that delineates what is real and what is not?  I do my best to produce photographs that look as close to how I remember experiencing the scene that was before me.

Most of the photos I exhibit look, to my eye, even years later after I have made them, real.  However, there are times when I have crossed over into what could only be described as surreal.  The subject matter is real, the light is real, the colors are real, the colors were really there in the image captured by the camera, but the essence of the scene captured by the camera was not, and my cajoling of that base image produced what I was seeking to express.  In most cases what these photos elucidate are the subtleties that are almost always glossed over or never noticed at all.

For years I have been struggling in capturing photos from a particular beach along the San Mateo coastline in California.  This one little place still holds my imagination hostage with the possibilities that it provides.

One Little Place

On the afternoon of that workshop we found ourselves there and we worked on composition and creativity.  The light was changing quickly as the sun moved in between the remnant clouds of a passing storm and the way it played among the stone there was fascinating.  I made several photos that afternoon that portray the uniqueness of the stone on that small beach.  All of them are just on this side of reality.

As I wandered these little belly buttons just appeared.  The soft directional light added to accentuate the swollen nature of the stone, which I used to my advantage to bring out their three-dimensional nature.

Stone Bellies

‘Stone Bellies’ opened up a rush of seeking more of the hidden subtleties in the stone.  I started to look for more forms and colors in the rock and saw this curving line and how it played with the texture and color to finally produce ‘Stone Wave’.

Stone Wave

Things started getting strange after that.  Shape, texture and color (subtle color) that was barely evident took hold of my imagination and ‘This Side of Reality’ was captured.  Processed a little heavier than I normally would, brought out great texture and subtle colors that really make the stone attractively alluring.

This Side Of Reality

Locked within the stone were colors, hues and striations that begged to come out and impress the onlooker.  They were washed out, pale and bleached from the salt and sun, but looking closely their gorgeousness was clearly evident.

Folds In Stone

The striations in the stones continued to capture my imagination, especially how uniform the stone could be and how violently and abruptly it changes as exhibited here in ‘Stone Rift’.

Stone Rift

What drives us to make the images that we do?  As I have stated before, art is an expression of what is contained in the heart of the artist.  Art is the resulting outward manifestation of the environment and circumstances that we experience in our day to day lives.  Some of us have the ability to express these experiences more vividly than others, but deep down we all have the means to express.

What makes a photograph real or not is very subjective.  Photographs can be made to look cartoonish, as some HDR photos are, taking them out of the realm of reality, but so can conscience composition and processing that takes an image in the other direction and into surrealism.  Where do we draw the line?

Pigeon Point

We finished out the day hoping for a vivid sunset sky, one that would be a fitting backdrop to an iconic lighthouse along this stretch of the California coast.  My workshop client can argue, and rightly so, that we did not see such a vivid sky that evening.  It was most definitely quiet in terms of color, but as the last vestiges of light filled the sky, the water took on an eerie metallic blue and hints of yellow and orange tickled the sky.  I composed several vertical images in the camera as I panned across this scene hoping to make a panoramic image of this place.  Each exposure was in the area of 10 seconds long, blurring the water and giving it a surreal look.  The processing was simple, Photoshop did most of the hard work blending the frames together.  I made one sly adjustment by darkening the tones in the sky, the faint yellow and orange suddenly came out vividly to play and complemented the icy blue water perfectly.

Is it real?  Is it surreal?  Is it cartoon?

It is photography and its my expression of how I felt at the end of that day.  Lucid, vivid and very eager to share what our world has to offer.  Go out and experience it for yourselves.  Capture it with a camera if you can and share the experience with the rest of us and if you can’t, then learn how.  Experience can only be multiplied when it is expressed to others artfully.

Till next time, Peace.

It has been a trying couple of weeks.  Long days teaching rambunctious inquisitive children  in the midst of abstaining from food and fluids leaves one completely spent by the end of the day. However the day does not end.  There is time for maybe a few minutes for a quick nap before the breakfast meal is prepared.  By the time the meal is over, the evening prayer has arrived and after that additional prayers and recitations of the melodic words of the Quran.

Right now, in the middle of the night, with tiredness pervading, are some of the first quiet moments I have had in these last two weeks.  I have taken the time to reflect and realized the month of Ramadan is already half past.  Days of Mercy behind us as we continue on to through the Days of Forgiveness before culminating in the Days of Freedom from the Fire.  I returned to the memories of the day before it all started and remembered its humble beginning.

Ramadan Sunset

As the sun sank that day I was captured by the grass.  At the time I was not sure what it was about the grass that appealed to me but now I think I understand. Grass covers about 40% of the surface of all land on Mother Earth.  We rarely think much of it and we never seem to care as we trample over it beneath our feet.  It covers the ground.  Of all life on the Earth, it clings to the ground and it never rises more than a few feet.  It holds the soil of the Earth together and prevents it from being washed away.  It provides a home for many a small creature and insects and blankets the ground.

After The Sun

The photos I made that evening two weeks ago depict a vivid atmosphere. However these photos are not of the setting sun or the ocean of fog rising up to engulf where I was standing or even of the stark and colorful sky.  These photos are of the simple, unassuming and humble grass that stands between looking on and quietly fulfilling it role in creation.  Come winter when the rains come, the seeds from the very stalks depicted in these photos will germinate and will bare witness to the re-birth of a “dead” land.    It is then that the greatness of what humility is will be revealed.

Ramadan Blues

For now however, we just need to wait and continue along our path hopefully learning how to be as humble.  What we hope to reap from our humility on the Day when all Debts fall due, will be great.  As the great scholar, Abdul-Qadir Al-Gilani, of days past said in a book he wrote that I read years ago (I paraphrase) “I attempted to enter Paradise from all its gates, charity, prayer, fasting, and so on, only to find them all crowded  until I arrived at the gate of humility and found no one there and so I entered through it.”  That always amazed me.  We all try to rise up and stake our claim to something in this life.  It might be wealth or status or knowledge or any number of things that prove our unrelenting hubris.  And yet, what is asked of us by our Creator is nothing more than humble submission and obedience.  We have such a hard time doing and being something so simple.  Look at those photos again.  Do you see anything anymore besides the grass?  I thought not.

Thank you Grass for reminding me of my place.

Peace to you all.

Wish You Were Here

The first full day of photography has come to a close.  After 12 hours in the field we can finally take some rest.  It rained on us, the wind blew a bit, and the sun even shined on us a few times.  Through it all we kept the shutters blazing and the film burning and pixels popping, we could not have asked for better conditions.

Tunnel View Morning

The rain that fell today was not substantial, more actually fell over night and we awoke to a wonderland of saturated color.  The day started out somewhat dull at Tunnel View, and when we arrived about half an hour before sunrise there were few people there.  Within three or four clicks of our shutters, suddenly the place was overrun by nearly 50, yes 50 photographers!  It was getting a bit crowded and since the sun had risen and the light difficult to capture, we decided to move on to the color before everyone else did.  That was a good move.

Color!

We worked here until our stomachs said “feed me” so we took a break to power up and then we continued on our search for color which took us into the Ansel Adams gallery first.  There we looked at some amazing photography from Ansel Adams as well as some stunning work by others, the most impressive of which came from photographer Charles Cramer.

We then made our move into the El Capitan Meadow where the sun played hide and seek with us and won, as we could catch its rays to our satisfaction.

Moving on we found ourselves working along the Merced River where we not only found some amazing color among the Dogwoods, but they were showered in the sweetest warm light that just rendered the trees into something that I can only describe as delectable.

Sugar Coated for your Eyes

We worked there until we could no longer see through the camera viewfinder and headed back into the valley.  As we approached our lodge, we saw the slightest hint of twilight still dancing in among the the clouds and decided it was worth the effort to make one more photo.  I am glad we did.  The camera can sometimes see much better than we can.

Last Dance

So for another night, I bid you good night and Wish You Were Here!

Peace.

The thrill of hunting for wildflowers is on.  I am a little behind in my posting, but this year seems to be turning out to be one of those years.  This intimate photo of poppies was from last year.  I was for some reason in a rut last spring, didn’t even bother making a real trip anywhere, no clients either.  It was a funky year.  But right next door, in a neighbor’s yard, there was this lone poppy plant blooming its brains out and glowing with all of its electrifying color.  It moved enough to bring out the 4×5 Large Format camera and get to work.

Electric Dreams

I made three photographs from this one plant, but this one just had something about it that screamed spring to me and it had me and my camera contorted in the most unusual position in order to get this composition.  My neck still hurts when I think about it.  As the spring wildflower season began to unfold, I remembered making this photo and pulled it out of my files and developed it for print in the hopes that this year would be a good year for wildflowers – it has been.

So before the last blossom withers away, get out there and breath in the spicy aroma of the WILD flowers and let it spice up your life a little bit this spring.

Peace.

Light, we see by it and at the same time it is invisible.  The more I ponder about light, the more perplexed I become.  Duality is its nature behaving as both a wave and as a particle known as the photon.  We can recognize it as a wave after it interacts with an object and we see various colors.  Its interaction with an object takes place as if it is a photon.  When it is present we can see and in its absence we are blind.  It brings a steady flow of information to our eyes and by it we interpret the world we live in.

Brushes Of Light

But how we see the world and what is really there are two very different things.  It is difficult enough to understand this for a stationary object let alone for one that is constantly moving, like water flowing in a stream.  By the time you see the moving object it has already moved to a new point in space.  Luckily, light moves so fast, 186,000 miles/second, that the distance that something can move in the time that its light reaches our eyes is for all practical purposes so miniscule that we can say we see it in its actual position in space.  Further, its motion is so fluid that we see it as continuous. 

Throw a camera into the mix, which is an intermediary between the photographer who experiences the object and the viewer who only sees the photograph, and it creates a departure from reality.  Due to its technical nature, the camera can either freeze a moment in time or produce the illusion of motion as the object streaks passed its fixed lens.  Then in the hands of the photographer, the photograph itself can be manipulated in such a way as to remove any reference to reality bringing about an abstraction that only hints at the natural presence of light itself.

In the hands of the photographer, the one who writes with light, art is created through a simple tool of capture – the camera. Handled deftly, and the camera moves beyond mere capture, and becomes the translator of the intent of not just the photographer but of the artist within as well.