Waterfalls Sans Water

 

The chilly spring weather continues here in western NY.  In general I like my weather cool – highs in the mid 60sF all the time is fine with me. The weather forecast for my hike this week was 62F and sunny. It sounded good to me.

Unfortunately I was riding the motorcycle and the temperature in the early morning was only 39F. That’s a bit colder than I normally like. I ride a Kawasaki Vulcan 800; a basic road bike without a windshield or fairings. Without any protection from the bike, wind chill is always a factor. At 60 … I mean 55 miles an hour, the wind chill makes 39F feel like 11F (that’s around -11.6C for you folks not from around here).

I wore my thermals and a winter coat and gloves and stuff, but still it was COLD! I had planned on going somewhere different than my usual haunts which meant a longer trip – maybe an hour and a half or two hours. However, about thirty minutes into my ride I could not feel my fingers anymore and it felt like I had a line of frost running down the middle of my chest where my coat zipper did a less than perfect job of keeping out the wind. When I saw the turn for a bit of familiar woods, I stood on the brakes, aborted the original mission, and ditched the bike as soon as I could.

You ever been outside in the winter so long that your hands get really cold and when you finally get inside and they start to warm up you get that pain like someone poking your fingers with thousands of jagged rusty needles? Well I had that in spades. I took off my gloves (unfortunately they were summer riding gloves), dug my hands into my pockets, and just stood in the sun for about ten minutes until I could get my fingers working well enough to take off my helmet. A little bit of walking down the trail finally got me up to speed and I was OK for the rest of the day which really did turn out quite nice in the afternoon.

OK, so on to the hiking.

If I didn’t know better I would have thought it was October instead of June. The air, as I may have mentioned, was crisp to say the least and clear with a cold pale blue sky. A thick carpet of crunchy brown leaves covered the floor of the woods. It made such a racket as I walked that every animal within a mile could hear me. Squirrels constantly scolded me from above for being so noisy.

The stream that I met was mostly a dry rock strewn chasm. Just a trickle of water, as in late summer, zig-zagged in the deep dark gaps between the stones. Often the water would fade away altogether and run only underground until it seeped out again further down the gully.

Obviously my usual flowing water photos were going to be hard to come by today. I took to shooting dry waterfalls. Places where the stones and logs just a couple weeks before were masked behind a translucent curtain of bright water splashing over them. Now they stand out clearly in their own right, but they have gone cold, dark, and silent. Strange shapes loom out of the shadows underneath the ledges.

I worked with what I had; trying to capture and convey something of the odd dismal beauty. My day passed at a very pleasant slow pace. I had a wonderful time of quiet reflection during all the loooong exposures in the dark recesses.

The photos certainly came out as strange as the subject matter. I’m not completely happy with them. The subtle texture of the light was difficult to capture. Ah well, as in golf, a little success here and there coupled with plenty of frustration is what keeps one coming back for more.

MDW

P.S. You didn’t think I could resist including at least some water pics did you?

The Good, the Bad, and the Iffy

 

If you are into photography like I am, you love to go out and shoot. Whatever your “thing” might be – street photos, studio work, nature, industrial – taking the camera out and capturing images is where the fun is. Exploring new scenes and finding out what is going to capture your eye today is what got you into this mess in the first place.

Then comes the hard part – processing the jillions of images you took.

Processing is a little different for me now that I use digital instead of film. I used to spend hours in my basement developing the film, cutting up the strips, mounting the slides, and then scanning them. Now I just plug in the camera and go away for a while.

Oddly enough developing the film was not the worst part about processing my images. Having a chemistry background, I actaully enjoyed the chemical processing. Maybe it was just the fumes – I really liked the smell of the chemicals (I like the smell of a freshly opened can of film too).

No, the worst part of taking photos for me is deciding which ones to keep and which ones to throw back. I ran across a post about this subject where the author advocates letting your photos sit for a few days without looking at them. I do something similar mostly due to time constraints more than purposely ignoring my photos.

After a day of hiking and shooting, my typical M.O. is to immediately (if there is enough charge left in the battery) plug in the camera and then go take a shower while the pics cross over. I have to admit though that sometimes I sit and watch the little thumbnails go by as each image transfers. Every shot seems to look fantastic when viewed as a tiny little splotch of color. It is really best not to look.

At some later point, often the next evening, I get the chance to really look things over with my photo editing software. I usually take my photos in clumps. Each subject has multiple images shot at different exposures and from different angles. Some images just don’t work – they seemed like a good idea the time, but in retrospect they are crap. I move on. When I see a group of images that have potential, I jot down the image number(s) on a piece of paper.

Some I just write the number. Some that I really like I put a star next to the number. Then there are some that seem interesting, but might be a bit off the wall. I’m not sure if they are good pics or if I’m just overly full of myself and the pretty colors. I put a question mark next to these. With limited time slots available to waste on this hobby, it might take me a couple three days to go through all the images the first time.

When I get a chance, I start back at the beginning. I go through my number list and do a second round of selections. I usually scratch out about two thirds of my original list. I’m always overly optimistic about my photos at first blush. A few days and a closer look later, I’m more realistic about things. Usually the ones with question marks get the axe and most of the unmarked ones and even a few of the ones with stars.

During this round I also sort out which image of a particular subject is the one I want to work on more. I bring up several images at once and compare them side by side to see which exposure or which framing I like best. I move the images around on the screen and re-size them a few times to make sure I’m not just favoring the one that happened to land in the middle of the screen or the one on the right because I’m right eye dominant or whatever.

Finally I go back a third time and completely work up the images that made the final cut. At this point I might still toss out one or two images if I’m just not happy with how things go.

Anyway, for better or worse, that’s my system.

At least I have the chance to hang on to all my images (I even burn the rejects to DVDs). I saw a documentary on the 1914 Shackleford expedition to Antarctica and the expedition photographer, Frank Hurley. After their ship became stranded in ice and eventually sank, the crew had to jettison all non-essentials if they were to survive on foot and in small life boats. Hurley had to go through all his glass plate photos (that he worked so hard to get) and keep only certain ones. He smashed the ones he cut so as not to be able to second guess. That had to hurt.

MDW

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