Angry Photography Gods

 

I got out for a walk in the woods this week - no more household items. I was looking forward to this hike. The weather was going to be in the low seventies with a mix of clouds and sun and a small chance of rain. This would be the first time out in real spring/summer conditions. No snow, no ice, no frost, maybe some Trillium blooming and some ferns uncurling.

I could take my time. It wouldn’t matter how far I went or even where I went. I wouldn’t have to keep on the move to keep from freezing. I could just wander around and stop and sit whenever I felt like it.

It turned out to be just as I had hoped. I wandered through the trees, dropped into some gullies, dragged myself back out of said gullies, worked my way around back to the top of the ridge, and eventually circled back to my starting point. I ate lunch while sitting on a big flat rock beside a splashing waterfall.

One thing that I love to look at and study and photograph is decaying wood. Fallen trees become covered in dark green moss. Fungi grow in rows along the sides. The bark flakes off and the exposed wood splits open and falls apart. Bugs drill holes and burrow inside. The wood turns colors - grey and green and brown and red and yellow.

I think the colors and the textures are really neat and I take a lot of photos of various logs and stumps. However, you never see me post any of them. That’s because these photos invariably stink.

This day was no exception. Although the hiking was great, the photography gods were angry. I just wasn’t feeling it creativity-wise. I did manage to hammer out a few decent water shots - nothing amazing though. I also took bunches and bunches of rotting wood shots that all ended up in the reject pile.

I hate to blame my equipment, you know that old saying about a good craftsman never blaming his tools, but I think that maybe 35mm is not quite the right format to capture the fine details and subtle textures of the wood - part of the interest in these shots is the microcosmic complexity of it all.

A couple weeks ago I went to a local camera club meeting where the featured speaker’s topic was large format photography. The detail in the photos that he took using a 4×5 view camera was just amazing. He had some shots of leaves that were blown up huge and they still had razor sharp edges and clear details.

I often think that this is the kind of thing I need to get what I’m looking for in my decaying wood photos. Unfortunately hauling a large format camera and all the related equipment through the woods might be a problem. I start to gripe if my tripod weighs over 3lbs for heaven’s sake!

With a camera, heavy duty tripod, and assorted lenses and film packs, this setup would weight a ton. I’d have to go all Jungle Jim on the deal - me in a pith helmet hacking my way through the woods with a machete followed by a line of locals carrying huge packs and calling me bwana and stuff. Besides, at about $5 a snap, I couldn’t afford it anyway.

Maybe I can at least go up to a digital medium format setup - as soon as I win the lottery!

MDW

Of Fishing Lures, Shirt Sleeves, and the Tooth Fairy

 

As they say on TV: “…and now for something completely different.”

The first three weeks of April were some of the warmest and driest on record for western NY. Heading into May things took a turn toward more typical cold rainy weather.

You know, I can go hiking all day in the middle of January when the temperature is 15F and I’m wet from shooting waterfalls so that my clothes are freezing solid without thinking much about it. On the other hand standing around at my son’s t-ball practice for two hours when it is a drippy overcast windy 45F is brutal. It is all I can do not to go sit in the car until it is all over.

Anyway, on my day off this week I could not go hiking. The wife needed the car and it was too cold (frost everywhere this morning) to take the motorcycle. I decided to take some pics anyway. Let’s see what to shoot… I wandered around the house and just shot whatever caught my eye - probably not the most amazing photos ever, but it was kinda fun.

I opened up my fishing tackle box. This is the box that my dad and I used throughout my childhood and now that he is gone, I’ve taken it over. I don’t get the chance to go fishing much these days so the box hasn’t changed much. My son and I have been out a few times and he seems to like it so I expect I’ll be going more in the future.

I didn’t try to arrange anything for the photos. I just opened it up and shot whatever was on top. There were some interesting things there. This one has a lure lying on top of another lure with an old rusting tube of reel gear grease nearby. That tube of grease probably hasn’t been used in 30 years. I like to use that top lure. It is a floating popper plug dealie.

After a few other fishing shots, I wandered off to the closet. My wife and I designed and built our house ourselves so our closet it kind of big. It’s more the size of a small bedroom actually so there was room for the camera and tripod. I took some shots of my shirt sleeves of all things. They aren’t that exciting, but I liked the colors and the textures of the various materials all lined up together. I like colors I guess.

I wandered out to the garage and here and there for an hour or so until returning to my office. The last thing that I decided to shoot was this note for the tooth fairy that my son left on my work table. He likes to come in while I’m working on this stinking computer and draw things with my disc marking pens and highlighters and pens and pencils on paper swiped from my printer.

One night before bed we read a story about a girl who wrote notes to the tooth fairy in order to sway her toward specific gifts in exchange for the tooth. Forget that loose change stuff, I want a unicorn or whatever. Calvin decided to do something similar the next time he lost a tooth.

Oddly enough over the next couple of weeks he lost three teeth. He lost two on successive days! He was busy writing notes. This was one that the tooth fairy returned with her own note inside and it got left on my table next to some pens. Again I just like the colors and also the fact that the note is monochromatic. I also like that there are words in the photo. My pics don’t usually include words.

Well, that’s it for now. Next week I expect to be back in the woods. See you then.

MDW

Just some more water

 

Well things were pretty quiet this week. Lots of running around and doing stuff without a lot of time to put towards photography.

I went for one quick walk along a gully that I have been visiting for years. Although there is much that is familiar, there is always something new. The stream rises and falls with the weather, trees rise and fall too, the course of the water changes as erosion wears away some barriers and forms new ones as the stones split and shift.

The water falls that are formed from fallen trees subtly change as they slowly decay. Small ones can be swept away in the rush of one spring storm while larger ones can last for several years. The water here has a lot of iron in it so the wood often takes on an orange or red color that shifts as the seasons pass and the layers of wood shed into the water.

It is still early in the Spring for us, but it has been pretty warm already. The stones that during the winter are clean and mostly blue-grey are already starting to turn slippery with growing slime that is sometimes brown and sometimes black. Green moss is starting to build along the edges of the flowing water.

The air is warm enough now that I can take off my boots and socks and wade into the water if I need to in order to get a shot from a particular angle. The water doesn’t ever get what I would call warm even in the summer, but now it still has that springtime icy snap to it so I work until my feet get numb and then struggle out to warm up in the sunshine.

MDW