Like many people I love repeating patterns and am awed by things where scale is outside the norm. I noticed this log sorting yard while driving past on the highway but it wasn’t until I drove around on some back roads that the scale of it became clear.
It was raining quite heavily and I had limited time but I hope the images convey some of the scale.
Here is another attempt at dealing with images that require a scale greater than what a web browser generally affords. By clicking on the thumbnail you can navagate into the image and pan and zoom.
This was taken with my Yashica setup to create the distortion. http://wkoopmans.ca/notebook/?p=200
The imagery I think is clear even if the image isn’t. The steps in the cemetery look like a ladder which seems to be there to help achieve some form of ascension, even a tree has been removed to clear the path.
I haven’t had the time to do much photography lately and my studio isn’t ready for me to paint in yet so I thought I would take a moment to look at some older images that haven’t been published yet.
I thought it was interesting how this image came to be posted. I took a Polaroid of this sign and because my main computer and scanner are still in boxes as I write this I took a picture of the picture with my camera phone and then uploaded it to Flickr so that it would be automatically re-sized. I then copied the resulting image to my children’s laptop where I now sit typing on it’s tiny keyboard and uploading the image to this blog.
A quick search on Flickr using “Flowers Backlit” gives up over 9000 results. So if it’s already been done to such a degree and this is true of almost all photographs taken today then why do we continue. Well for me a portion of it is the act of creation, I enjoy the time that goes into creating an image as much or more than the image itself. I will be the first to admit these are average images that don’t inspire much of a response but they are my images and they may be a step that leads towards the creation of something that is better.
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.
