Veering Wind Photography: Man In Pajamas takes picture

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Man In Pajamas takes picture

This is a shot of Breskins Lighthouse in southern Holland. I think the only thing that slows the wind in Holland down at all is all the windmills there. It sure is tough taking an image. And this is in July. You'll see people with what people in the US call kites ( like a small parasail) that I've seen used for wind boarding. The Dutch don't though. Water's too cold. Some will have on swiming suits. A few of the spartans even wade with them. There were surfers though, but more out on the North Sea. Outstanding trip though. I highly recommend it. Just don't bring too many summery cloths.
Ta

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Artist Statement

I have to relive the moment, for that satisfying glow of
joy with attaining a goal. It is not enough to see something once, although it can be totally memorable. But to relive it allows contemplation of its meaning and refinement of the image towards the statement. So to see an image is not to see the meaning. It is only through viewing and playing with it that the meaning comes through. My goal is therefore to spend more time contemplating the inspiration of the moment and deriving the statement, because inspiration is ephemeral. To do that I have to have benefactors who will support the work financially. Also we ran out of walls.
My art is subject to the whims of Gods. But Gods are cyclic in their whimsy. There are seasons and seasons within seasons. Going to North Carolina to capture lighthouse images took planning, but with flexibility, to account not just for "Murphy", but allow for opportunities. We went in Spring when the Dogwoods and the Azaleas are blooming and Spring-time storms make for interesting skies. A trip is a stalk, like hunting, where moving less yields more. I have to go slow enough to be blessed with a shot, but fast enough to be there for it. Sometimes I sprint. Sometimes I wait. But I am always after the quarry. I try not to be impatient to the point of losing an opportunity, but will take opportunities while waiting for quarry. Cape Lookout NC is a case in point. I was not able to go to the island for two days due to storms. So I shot the storms and the huge marshes of Pamlico Sound while waiting. It was worth the wait and the Cape was well worth waiting for. We were blessed by being able to shoot our plan plus more.

Castle Hill Lighthouse

The stout and sturdy stone lighthouse at the entrance into Narragansett Bay at sunset. It s not a large light as it is only has to mark the eastern entrance to the bay and Newport. The schooner in the distance is from Newport and sails most days to give tourists the experience of sailing in an old schooner. This is a calm afternoon, but this place can be hugely dangerous when a hurricane approaches from the south as they always do. Then the giant swells come from the south and right up the bay.

Dry Stone Bridge

In Gilsum NH, what could only be called a hamlet, is the highest Dry Stone Bridge (36 feet) in New Hampshire. A dry stone bridge is one of stone that has no mortar to bind the stones together. The stones are fit together. This bridge crosses the Ashuelot River. One of the many rivers of New England with water the color of tea due to the tannic acid that is the product of the incomplete decomposition of leaves. The sparsely mineralized bedrock ( granite) is the reason for this phenomenon as well as the swampiness (high rainfall) of drainages.

Guantanamo Bay Lighthouse

The large boat in this image was packed with refugees from Haiti. They sailed 90 treacherous miles of open Caribbean Ocean to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. The small refugee boat sailed along the coast from Santiago de Cuba about 40 miles east to Guantanamo Bay. The lighthouse served as a beacon for people seeking the dream of a better life. The bay was the gateway for those people to that better life. We could just say 'well, what do they know. They don't know what it is really like here'. But they would say the same. We live on an island. Just like Cuba we are insulated from the rest of the world and rarely ever see what they lived. "Lion", a friend at Guantanamo from Cuba, he knows.

Texas Towers in Mobile Bay

The Sweet and the Pain. I spotted this image about 5 minutes too late to set up the camera. The light of the sky was failing and would have been too far gone for capture. The blue color of the sky and water had countered the orange yellow of the lights on the rigs beautifully. Since the last ferry had left the only way back to lodging was to drive all the rest of the way around Mobile Bay. It took until midnight. The next year serendipity allowed a second chance for this image. But this was tempered with the full understanding that there was a long drive long into the night after the glorious moment of capturing a beautiful image. When I returned there needed to be something in the foreground for a depth reference. Serendipity intervened again in the form of the ferry's piling, which would not have been visible had the ferry been there. It also creates a bond with the pilings around the base of the nearest Texas Tower.

Annisquam Lighthouse

Annisquam Lighthouse at Sunset. Annisquam is on Cape Ann, an island in Massachusetts that also has the two famous fishing ports of Gloucester and Rockport. Annisquam however is a smaller and shallower port. It also is much less commercial and touristy. Ergo it is organically more fundamental and real for the area. The native rock of the New England coast is granite, which was quarried for hundreds of years and is what the foundation of the lighthouse is built upon and of. The lighthouse itself is made of brick. It had a fifth order Fresnel Lens, which is the size for a small harbor light and would only be visible for about 8-10 miles. This was shot on a clear summer afternoon. These are the wonderful calm days in summer when the days are warm, comfortable and the living is easy. The waves lap on the small beach and rocks. The Salt Grass in the image move with the waves stiffly as they always do. The sunset is slow and predictable. So there is plenty of time to set up the camera and be ready. A person has the time to bask in the beautiful event of sunset as it staidly advances into twilight. The disassembly of the camera is equally unhurried. It has been as if I had meditated through all of this. I am totally relaxed and have achieved total consciousness.

Wavefoam

Wavefoam, Cape Fear, NC. On Bald Head Island the fine sand is a rich rubrous brown made more so in the sun's early morning glow. The small and gentle waves are thick with foam as they wash up on the beach. A long shadow sweeps ahead of the wave because of the sun just rising. It casts a larger shadow due to the combined heights of two waves trying to cross and climb over each other. The foam forms because of the of the death and breakdown of ocean life. The proteins in the cell walls are broken down by the agitation of the waves out on the Frying Pan Shoals. Like soap the proteins create bubbles and stick together forming foam. The shoals run from here out thirty miles yielding an immense area of agitation . I come alive in places like this. It is not a place for the humdrum life of living, but it cannot be lived too much for fear of complacency. Maybe it is a place for calming one's soul. There have been such places in my life, that cliff over Somes Sound, Point Reyes along the headlands or the wind through the White Pine grove near home. They all say in that small voice upon my being "you are where you are from and it is beautiful". Whether they are new or old it whispers the same to me. Calming me, it raises my joy to overwhelming heights, but it never lasts. So I am compulsed to try to capture it, to relive it just one more time.

Schloss unter Snee

Schloss unter Snee: Schloss Neuschwanstein, AKA the Sleeping Beauty Castle. This is the most well known icon of Germany. Landscape photography requires understanding weather so that the photographer can determine when and where to be for an image. Hard weather will precede fair. The Friday morning forecast was the end of a three day snow storm that day. It was worth a chance to drive the 5.5 hours to this schloss. I had dreams of a shot from across the valley I had seen of the Schloss and the Alps covered in snow. I left the hotel in the dark. I had no equipment for a climb, nor energy since I had been working 12 hour nights and was awake when I should have been asleep. I was determined. I parked at the castle parking and started trudged up the kilometer long driveway (no cars allowed). The camera was 50 lbs. No one else was there yet, the sky was bluebird clear although dark, the driveway was plowed and there was no shot of the castle. It was windless so the thick snow on the branches did not blow off. The sun was not up so it did not melt off the branches. It was a Bavarian Winter Wonderland, but there still was no shot. As I neared the castle, desperation was setting in. Finally there was a unlikely looking platz at a switch back 150 yards from the castle where visitors picnic in summer. There was a gangway going back and forth through the 3 foot deep snow to enter. The platz was not open. Rather than post-holing through the snow back and forth I just slipped over each of the fences, which were about 4 feet high with the snow in place. Once in the open I labored to an unlikely overlook...Wow! There is a clear shot of the castle. The ridge I had hoped to climb up was in the shadows and dressed in snow...Double Wow!! The sun looked like it was in the right place to come over that same ridge to light up the castle and the ridge that it was built on...Triple Wow!!! Hey! This kid jumped to. Whumph! The pack went into the snow. click! click! Clamp! Clamp! Clamp! and the tripod was set up and shoved down into the snow. Rail next. Camera next, open it up about for a wide angle lens...Henry is cookin'. 90mm lens-click, polarizer, screw,screw. Next comes the focus cloth (an old dark jacket zipped up with my head through the neck hole, up-side down. Hold my breath to keep from fogging the focus screen and lupe. Put on my focus screen glasses for a rough focus then use the lupe for final rough adjustment,(Pant, Pant, breath away from the camera) set the slide, swing and/or tilt. Adjust for the final focus. Humidity from my eyes can fog up the lupe/screen. The camera was out in the car all night long to be the same temperature as the ambient air. The Spot meter and lupe were in with me. (Pant! Pant!) Set the polarizer. Slide in the film holder. Ca-thunk! Cover the focus screen. click! Pull out three sheets of quick-load film. Number them, one, two, and three. That way I don't mix them up as I shoot. Meter the scene, Sky, darkest shadows, snow in the sun up on the mountain behind (Highs and lows). Adjust the meter for the high side, set the f stop, set the exposure, cock the shutter. Load a sheet and wait for the sun. Shazam!!!! And that is all there is to using a View Camera.

Eiffel in the Rain

Eiffel in the Rain: It was raining at Ramstein AB in western Germany as a long weekend started to unfold. At work the night before I was unsure about what would transpire. Another nurse and I went to dinner at midnight when we started talking about the weekend. I mentioned since it was raining here and I had done a lot of shooting locally that it might not be raining in Paris (6 hours away) and even if it was it was still Paris. The nurse's eyes rather lit up as she asked if anyone was going with me. I said "no". When we returned to work she talked to another nurse and they approached me with the idea that they wouldn't mind going to Paris either...since it was raining and all. So we went. And it rained all the way there, all while we were there and all the way back, but we didn't mind since it was Paris after-all. There have been many shots of the Eiffel Tower, but I have never seen one that showed the Eiffel Tower as the lighthouse that it is. This shot was hand held against the top of a wall with me sort of leaning on the wall to brace it, while trying to cover the camera from the rain. Humans just aren't built with enough arms and hands. I'd use a leg but I'm not that flexible and the camera was on top of the wall. Of course it is a timed exposure as well. So the image is rather soft, but it would of been in the first place because of the rain.

Veering Wind Photography

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Man In Pajamas takes picture

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