SEPTEMBER 1 TO 15: WORKSHOP


#63 – Thanks for the Light – 1 September 2017

Month three. Trying to see anything clearly is hard. Sometimes, the harder I try the more elusive clarity is, and the more frustrated I become. And then, when I’m just minding my business and not on the hunt for clarity at all, it suddenly catches me all by chance and clear as day. Maybe I glimpse it only for a second, but that’s long enough to make me a believer.


#64 – rainy afternoon – 2 September 2017

On a rainy afternoon at the Freeman Patterson workshop we were assigned an indoor wide angle project. The widest angle lens I had was a 35mm. I was feeling pretty cramped taking interior shots; 35mms aren’t wide enough to feel “wide” in small rooms. Then I chanced to look out the window and saw this. The reflections of the curtains on the glass is pretty subtle – and this is a perfect example of an instance where modern digital editing works better than burning and dodging in a darkroom, as I was able to bring out the details of the reflections quickly and precisely to where I wanted them. 35mm is not really wide, but it is deep and layered.


#65 – smudge – 3 September 2017

Some crazy forest. Maybe some crazy mushrooms. Or maybe this is another instance of seeing clarity when least anticipating it. Or its opposite (obscurity?). I don’t really remember.


#66 – wander away – 4 September 2017

Ruth and her partner Sarah have started a business, and their website features my images. This is one of them. Its my honour to be a part of it, and fun for us to be able to supply our own content (and no copyright issues!). Ruth and Sarah are providing an important service: helping people prepare for death, to die, and deal with death. As I write, our family is in the midst of this final journey with my ailing mother, and it is very helpful to have someone close alongside who can help navigate.


#67 – F150 – 5 September 2017

This is a reflection. A black Ford F150 pickup truck was parked in Freeman Patterson’s garage, with the tailgate at the open garage doorway. It must have been recently cleaned, because it mirrored the forest behind it this well. There was considerable variation in the light across the width of the image, but that was easy to fix afterwards. Shamper’s Bluff, Mr. Patterson’s home ground, is a magic place where things like this happen.


#68 – wind wash – 6 September 2017

The new digital camera has a neat feature that emulates a very slow shutter speed, as if you had mounted a neutral density filter on your lens to retard the rate at which it collects the incoming light. Basically, once you have dialed in your exposure settings (ISO, aperture and shutter speed), you can ask the camera to execute the exposure by stacking lots of little micro-under-exposures click-click-click-click-… click. Net effect of all those exposure layers is very similar to long-exposure motion blur. This is at the bottom of our street again.


#69 – try again – 7 September 2017

When I made and edited this a year ago, I went for gloom inside the cave, so it’s quite dark in there. Looking at it a year later, I am remembered that the interior of the cave was also very lovely.  So I went back to the image file and re-edited it for much more balance between the interior and exterior exposure levels.  You can see the results in take two.

ORIGINAL:

TAKE TWO:


#70 – floral explosion – 8 September 2017

I stuck my thumb – no head – in this one.  When I first projected it to be critiqued at the workshop, Freeman commented on a large circle of darkness in the bottom right-of-centre, below the purple blooms.  I have lightened it now, but you can still trace where it is / was. At the time I thought how embarrassing, what is that blob? The image was taken on a sunny day … and then I realized. Classic beginner mistake. I had stuck my head in it, causing my own shadow to cameo in the image. And in lightroom afterwards, I was so busy adjusting the purple flowers I missed this very obvious blob deficiency.


#71 – birth of the planets – 9 September 2017

So why are we here?  Why were we created?  Freeman’s answer, at least how I hear and interpret it in retrospect (I am writing this long after the workshop), is that we were created to create.  And so we all participate in creation – without at all being godlike or audacious; our creativity contributions can be small and humble.  They are creation none the less.  My personal take on this is:  I want to make beauty.  With every image I want to be making beauty, even if it is just a little bit of beauty. I have spent the most of a year surfacing this thought.


#72 – sky paddling – 10 September 2017

Of course as soon as I say I am creating the little voice inside goes “nice try.” Michelangelo’s beauty contribution per painting is 1000 beauty points and mine is 1 point per photo. But if, rather than give up, I make 1,000 images x 1 point per image, I have created an equal beauty contribution to a single Michelangelo. That’s not bad. Also I want to be counterbalancing the ugliness I (and others) let slip into the world. So I try to chip away, 1 beauty point at a time. Making one image a day for a year gets me to 365 beauty points. Here’s today’s increment.


#73 – migration  – 11 September 2017

Beauty begets beauty, and ugliness (whether behavioural or aesthetic) begets ugliness, so there is the power of feedback-loop amplification. So it is with many things human. If you are anxious your worries will extend to the very state of your anxiety, and so intensify. If you are calm and relaxed you take a deep long breath and deepen the calm. If your boss is generous and thanks you for your work you will behave the same way with your coworkers. If your world is harsh and ugly you are much more likely to destroy than to create. So, make beauty. It will be amplified.


#74 – beginnings – 12 September 2017

I mentioned that my mother is dying as I write this. Its not going well, and I am experiencing an unmanageable cocktail of emotions, including a welling up of anger at aspects of her fate as her body betrays her. I am trapped in this pit, and wanting to get ugly about it. But I am also remembering beauty. Yesterday after lunch I felt ready to spend two hours photographing down in the ravine as a form of respite. In the end I couldn’t protect the time window to go. But a remarkable thing happened the rest of the day: I kept imagining being down in the ravine, and that was enough to begin to counterbalance everything else. Beauty pushing through the darkness.


#75 – yesterday – 13 September 2017

I believe that printing is the ultimate form for a photographic image. Printing is the un-instagram. It bespeaks permanence, stability, reflection, revisiting, taking the long look. This is the first image from this year-long project that I printed. It was shot in a little secret abandoned place off the side of the road about half way to work. Ruth liked this image – and so it became the first print.  I worked with a custom print shop in Toronto, and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. It hangs in our back hallway. I see it every day. Also, the secret place no longer exists, victim to development. I recommend printing.

 


#76 – watch – 14 September 2017

This heron is sitting on the top rail of a chain link fence, with an arterial roadway 10 meters behind it and a waste treatment plant across the water in front. It is an entirely urban / industrial / human environment. But that’s not how he sees the world, I’m sure, and that’s not how the camera sees him. I was on the bike riding by when I spotted him. Taking the camera gear on the bike is a perfect way to discover the unexpected. The bike is slow enough to observe, fast enough to also get me to work on time, and takes the weight of the camera bag off my shoulders.


#77 – highway hitter – 15 September 2017

Here we are driving home from St. Martins and the photography workshop. We are on the 401 (major east-west highway across the province of Ontario). Ruth is driving and we are of course passing everything. All is a blur, so … I start picking off the trucks we pass at a low (1/10”) shutter speed, looking for shiny bits in motion. I liked the ghosting effect on the drive wheels of this tractor unit.

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