{ 0 comments }
Posts tagged as:
black and white
These guys showed up for a gig at a local bar but the owner cancelled – no customers apparently. So they came down to Saybrook Point and just started playing.
The acoustics were best 100 yards out, from a small elevation overlooking the river, where the first fortified settlement in New England, the original Saybrook Fort, probably stood (1635-1647).
{ 0 comments }
With the emergence of digital photography, it doesn’t cost much these days – other than in time and attention – to fully explore a scene with your camera. And it’s no surprise that some compositions in a series will be “better” than others, that is, (warning: arguable definition ahead) ones more apt to initially engage a viewer, and sustain their interest over time.
My friend Dennis Stock, well versed in the art and business of photography, used the term ” visually articulate” to describe what he felt to be good photography. Not that he particularly defined what that meant – but I think most of us who heard him say it probably got the drift. (the top hit in a google search for “articulate” brings up these synonyms: “eloquent, fluent, effective, persuasive, lucid, expressive, silver-tongued; intelligible, comprehensible, understandable.”
Which brings me to these two images of a stream bed. Though quite similar, this one is probably more “articulate”, in the sense that the complexity and detail of the subject matter was easier for me to grasp at first glance than the one below. Originally I found this one a less appealing composition, as I was put off by the relative size of the log on the bottom right, but now it strikes me as more relaxed, better balanced and less nuanced than the other, and for those reasons, perhaps more able to engage a viewer. Maybe having less detail on the right hand side of the image functions as a sort of pause in the visual story, giving the viewer a chance to rest a bit. In any case, this is my preference of the two – well, for now anyway.
{ 0 comments }
Serendipity (or more accurately – the faith therein) is a significant part of my photographic repertoire. It’s a simple, elegant and useful tool, and a guidepost along the lines of Yogi Berra’s adage about baseball, ” 90% of this game is half mental..” My longer trips into the North Country, for instance, generally begin with only the vaguest of destinations in mind, and the wandering that follows, the heart and soul of the trip, will rely on circumstance and luck for image making. Call it the Yogi Berra/William Least Heat Moon school of photography.
There are places that call me back, though, like this vista. As on my first visit, however, the light and the time of day were not the best – for color images. Rendered in black and white, though, it becomes an entirely different (and pleasing) story. Two years later this same scene popped up in VT Life magazine as a color photograph, a truly spectacular shot. And that’s how it sometimes goes with photography.
{ 0 comments }
I see this meadow in the winter moonlight, and I am skiing along the tree line. Every now and again, I stop, and listen to the night. It’s an exquisite stillness, broken only by occasional sounds: a breeze shifting some branches, the hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo of a Great Horned Owl, something scurrying along in the night (maybe a porcupine?). I hear my breath, slowing.
I hope someone has really been out there, and written a poem about it.
(Believe it or not, this photograph is in color)
{ 0 comments }