It was a sunny day with intermittent gusts of warm air breathing life into the long grass of the meadow. Elongated stems laden with blooms swayed and swirled in the midst of this flowing sea. A rabbit crossed the worn path, heard but unseen, as small birds filtered and crows fought.
It’s an equal struggle to portray my experience in words as it is in pictures. I cannot convey how at times like these the wonderful memories of a childhood seemingly spent entirely enveloped in long grass surge. I’m unable to show how the grass moves moments after the leaves rustle. So I can only do my best even if it doesn’t’ meet my own expectations.
As for the camera it’s muted leaf shutter seemed well suited to the quite sounds of nature. There is a severe limitation with a 1/200 second shutter on such a bright day but the inaccuracy of the aged meter led me to over expose anyway. The lens appears to have some sort of coating but it is likely a single coating and doesn’t do a great deal for the lack of contrast when used with colour film. Focusing with the range finder patch was difficult when so much of the scene appeared so similar so I resorted to focusing by using the scale on the camera. As I stated in an earlier post the Super-A has framing lines for the 50mm lens within it’s larger 35mm accommodating viewfinder. This is a nice way to see outside the frame for items to include or exclude from the image. It’s an interesting camera and one I enjoy looking at but it’s heft and other limitations will likely force it to remain largely a display item.
There was a tree that I wanted to take a picture of and I knew it was going to be just too big to capture in one image at the sort of resolution that I wanted. So I took multiple high resolution images with the intent of stitching them together in the computer. This leaves me with a new dilemma though, how to convey the size of the tree to a viewer on the Internet. I could have attempted to include something in the frame to give scale “Here Bessy, here Bessy…” but cows are notoriously bad at taking directions and even then I’m not sure the impact could still be carried through with a small image. So I’ve essentially taken control of the viewing experience and am presenting the picture in the form of a video.
And just to prove my point about impact here is a small web friendly version of the image.
Photography is an illusion of reality, we largely accept that what we see is a truthful representation of what was seen be the person taking the picture. In reality though it is a flat two dimensional facsimile. Even if the photographer doesn’t manipulate the image after the act of capturing it, the image is influenced by the choices that were made in it’s creation. The photographer may have made camera settings or a lens selection in order to effect your perception. This image is an obvious reminder of the artifice but all images are tinged by this reality.
Digital cameras provide the potential for including almost any image modification that are, currently or conceived, of being done on a computer. As the ability to manipulate the image at the time of capture is expanded we may need to remind ourselves about what is real from time to time.
One of the great things about taking pictures of dance is that there is always a lot going on. This is especially true behind the scenes where there are dancers waiting to go on and stage directors helping coordinate the entire process. I’ve been fortunate to be able to document some of this and it has provided me with a tremendous opportunity to create images.
While I would never compare myself to Cartier-Bresson he has certainly influenced this image, this is such a brief instant where each of the elements came together. It’s only by being in a state of constant observation that it is possible to see and capture these moments. Beyond that I should probably let the image speak for itself.
The technique of joining two images together to create a larger view is mainly associated with digital photography but it can also be used with film that has been scanned into the computer. If the intention is to provide multiple viewpoints simultaneously as in a David Hockney photo collage then using stitching software isn’t necessary. If you want to create a seamless view however then you need some way to adjust perspective and join the images. Here I wasn’t able to get in all of the view so I just took two pictures with the intention of stitching them later.
Now I have an image that I was unable to capture within a single frame. I’ve used this technique in more extreme situations such as when I wanted to take a reference photo of a scene behind a construction fence. I blindly took images while holding the camera over the fence and then later pulled them all together into a single scene which will be the basis of a painting.
It’s difficult to convey a sense of time photographically, the very nature of a photograph is the capturing of an instant. You can use techniques such as using a slow shutter speed to allow moving objects to blur evoking a sense of motion and time or multiple exposures. But the best way is through a series. This example is two images that were taken more than two years apart. I’ve also purposely placed the most recent image on the left to distort time as most viewers will read this image left to right. Great care was taken to frame the scene the same, this was aided by using live view on my Pentax K-7 DSLR. It allows you to see in real time the framing on the rear LCD of the camera. I also used a photograph of the original scene for comparison.
Where do you see rectangles, everywhere? If you can imagine the world in front of you as a flat two dimensional plane it can be an interesting exercise to look for ways to divide it. It can be helpful to look through the viewfinder to generate that flat view and frame a scene but with practice you can spot images without the camera. So why would you want to do this? Like any exercise in seeing it helps to broaden your visual acuity.
These two images are about the division of the image through lines. The pictures are broken into smaller shapes by the lines running horizontally, vertically and also diagonally. Additionally there is the repeating patterns of lines: the steps, railings, grill. All these lines create a certain visual rhythm.
Most of the images that I took of this debris did not have the impact that I wanted. It wasn’t until I got right down amongst it that I was able to convey the sense of being there adequately. I was then able to depict that the waste wood stretched from the foreground to the bridge in the distance using a relatively wide field of view oriented vertically.
What goes into a photography like this, is it merely a snapshot or a considered composition? It’s a bit of both, the crow wouldn’t take directions. The image itself is divided equally between the house and sky and by their values and textures. In addition the crow now stands in contrast against the sky at the intersection of the roof lines. I held this framing until the crow turned this way just before it flew away.
