It feels like the plants are frantically trying to catch up with the season as the weather is noticeably warmer for longer than even a couple of weeks ago. The longer days help, I’m sure. Nice to see some color working its way onto the palette after what seems like a very long winter.
Been driving around exploring parks in the area, which there are many. Some are more “wild” than others but everywhere a bit of spring is arriving.
For a couple of days it really seemed that spring was here to stay. Visited a local park over my Lake Michigan after work to enjoy the nearly 80 degree weather and found it teeming with playing kids, biking enthusiasts and people just strolling around in shorts. Most of the lakeshore south of Milwaukee is parkland and I imagine it gets well used when the weather is nice. Great to see the water’s edge hasn’t been completely boxed out by narrow-gauge subdivisions.
Nature believes the seasonal change is upon us even if there are days we’re wearing heavy coats. The forest floor was littered with little yellow flowers that apparently popped up in just a couple of days because they weren’t there earlier in the week. Don’t know what they are – perhaps someone out there can identify them?
Walking around the park I noticed there must have been quite a bit of damage from storms this winter as several trees were blown over and had been cut off the trail. I took advantage of this to continue my without-a-good-reason photo series of tree rings.
The park seems to have been around for quite a while – I’d guess it dates back to the early 1900′s. The trails are paved with flagstones and where they circle around the hills there are stone walls lining the cuts made for the trails. I really liked the way the sun was coming through the still leaf-less trees and weaving a shadow web across the trail. Felt almost medieval, like a lost castle in the deep woods.
All of these images were made with my recently purchased Olympus film lens, the 35-80mm f/2.8. Unlike the new digital lenses that have been designed from the blank page to optimally cast light onto a digital sensor, this lens was created to put a circle of light on a flat piece of film. It’s hard to describe but the resulting image almost has a film-like quality to it. Perhaps I’m simply dreaming and romanticizing what I want it to look like but I’m finding my compositions are slightly different using this lens, and that has me seeing things different as well.
ISO 100, 78mm, 1/1000 sec., f/2
Stare at enough scenes of the American southwest and you begin to think the world is composed of irregularly shaped, warm color landscapes. And maybe much of it is. But this is not Arizona or New Mexico or southern Utah – this is a fallen tree trunk being lit by the afternoon sun. I liked how the surface texture, seen up close, resembled the terrain captured in hundreds of images from out west. Much as a universe exists in a raindrop there is a world just around our feet if we take the time to look for it.
ISO 100, 50mm, 1/80 sec., f/8
Sometimes around our feet can be measured in hundreds of yards. For this scene I’m standing on a very tall bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, just south of Milwaukee. I liked the curvature of the beach leading to the groins that suddenly recede in linear fashion around the point of land. And between each groin is a small curve of beach depositing by the lake as it tries to wash Wisconsin’s shoreline toward Chicago. The waves give me a nice texture in the water’s surface and some breakers against the narrow pebbly ledge beneath the bluffs.
Both images made while just walking around, no particular scene in mind. It’s one reason I enjoy being an outdoor photographer. Your pressure is not other people’s time or the urgency of an event’s frantic action, but rather a sense of light and openness to what you see and what it can become in the viewfinder.
Visited the geographical center of the US once just to see what was there. It was interesting to think about how you would determine such a site. Of course it would involve surveyors, transits, complicated instruments and calculations by men huddled around a table littered with maps and such. Right? How else would you pinpoint the exact center of the country?
Simple – balance a cut-out map of the US on a pin and where the map balances flat is the center. And that’s how they determined it.
Elegant solutions are so great if for no other reason than here’s one that can be repeated by any class of 4th graders in the country.
We generally crave balance, a position of moderate force in all directions acting equally on each other. It’s so important to many things in our lives from bicycles to skyscrapers to bridges to ballerinas that we take it for granted, as if nature continually moves toward finding balance. Not exactly. Physicists tell us the universe strives toward unbalance, a state of disorder measured by an increase in entropy. Still, we continue to find a sense of stability where balance is provided.
Photographers generally prefer balance as well, guiding a viewer through a scene in an expected way, allowing the mind the dwell on particular aspects measured against other elements. There are even rules about this, advising where to put dominant subjects and how to use design elements to highlight or diminish certain parts of a scene in order to push the viewer to or from that area in the image.
ISO 100, 80mm, 1/400 sec., f/8
This scene was intentionally balanced as much as possible. I saw the scene emerging as the ship moved across the horizon toward the breakwater opening and the sunlight moved across the water as the clouds blew by. The horizontal lines are easy – the line of the horizon (which is never to be in the center of a picture unless it needs to be), the lines of dark and light on the water mirrored in similar lines in the sky. The line of the ship balanced against the line of the breakwater. There’s even a balance between the light on the beacon and the ship in the shade of a cloud. It took three shots to get the sunlight on the water just the way I wanted but the wind was blowing briskly and I could see the openings for the sun would line up in the space of just a few minutes to get the beacon in just the right spot.
Sunlight has been absent here for a week so it was great to finally have some contrast to work with. Might be all we get for a while…
By the way, if you’re in the Milwaukee area drop by the Art Museum to see the special exhibit on color photography Color Rush. It’s a great historical look at the development and use of color from autochromes to Kodachrome. In it you can see how balance has played an emerging role in photography once color became an alternative to B&W.
I’m pretty sure my ongoing quest for sharp images has peaked out, at least with the equipment available to me. It’s always been my challenge to push any tool I’ve got to limits beyond what I ever expect of it and then dial back to a working space, comfortable in the fact that there’s that extra bit available when needed. It’s what I’ve been doing with lenses and cameras for a couple of years now and I’m ready to call it quits.
No, I’m not through seeking sharpness. It’s just the next level requires a complete change of equipment or buying reconnaissance quality gear from the government, neither option I’m interested in pursuing. Besides, I’ve pulled back from printing really large sizes and am perfecting my craft in the 11×14″ range for the near future.
What got me to this point? I just purchased the rare and highly praised Olympus 35-80mm f/2.8 lens, a lens built for the OM line of film cameras. The general consensus on all the research I’ve done is this is the best lens Olympus made for their film line. I’ve only seen one for sale in the past five years and when another popped up on KEH.com in excellent condition I jumped on it.
I’ve only had a day or so to test it and under pretty miserable conditions of clouds and rain. Still, I’m very impressed and expect great quality from this lens. Here’s one comparison:
ISO 100, f/8, 1/20 sec. – 35-100mm f/2 Olympus digital lens
ISO 100, f/8, 1/20 sec. – 35-80mm f/2.8 Olympus film lens
Digital lens, same image as above, crop of 100% view
Film lens – same image as above, crop from 100% view
Both original images received slight sharpening via NIK Output Sharpener Pro. No other adjustments were made to exposure.
If I stare at them long enough I swear the film lens is sharper than the digital lens but I could be imagining it. They are both frighteningly sharp, giving a nice clearly defined aspect to the full scene. They are very, very close, certainly close enough for me. Not bad for a lens that’s got to be 20+ years old, predating the digital revolution.
Sharp eyes among you probably noticed my comparison lens, the 35-100 f/2, and are asking “why buy another lens covering similar focal length?” Well, the digital Olympus lens weighs 4 pounds and is almost a foot long by itself, not counting the large hood that fits on it. The film lens weighs 1.5 pounds and is less than 4 inches in length. Yes, the digital lens gives me one more stop of light at f/2 vs. f/2.8 which may be important during early morning wildlife photography. However, it’s a beast to walk around with and definitely is not subtle around other people. The film lens gives me just about the full focal length range of the digital one, is lighter to carry and much less conspicuous. I can see the film lens being my “walking around” lens and the digital one for outdoors.
Besides, the film lens will fit on my film camera (OM-1) to make a very nice little street photography kit.
So, that’s it. I’m done. If I can’t live the life of an outdoor photographer with two of the sharpest lenses ever manufactured then I guess it’s back to the view camera….
While living around the Monterey peninsula biking along the coast was a favorite way to see the landscape and enjoy the area. One defining memory of gliding along the shoreline was the roar and rush of waves as the Pacific attacked the rocky edge of the coast. With some large, pounding breakers and some gradual, lapping curves the ocean is eating away at the central California coast, turning it into sand that is deposited on the beaches of southern California. This process is far too slow to observe but the sounds associated with it are memorable, at times outstripping the human noise up and down the road running alongside. The brief pause as the water gathers itself, the rushing anticipation as the wave glides toward the shore, the “woomph” of the crash as liquid weight breaks against the solid rocks and the hissing as the sand and pebbles relinquish the water to return for the next assault.
I’ve never been a beach person, never understood the appeal of the sand, sunlight, lapping water and smell of suntan lotion. But the Pacific at Monterey is not a beach person’s seaside. It is not friendly to those who wish to languish by the water’s edge. It intimidates and challenges, daring the venturesome to approach and test it. Only the hardy dare get close (except for the sea otters, who laugh at the ocean as they go about their daily chore of abalone gathering or the pelicans who glide effortlessly along the wave fronts using the ground effect to swiftly carry them from one fishing ground to another). But the less hardy can appreciate the sound as it rolls from the water up onto the ground to envelope any who pause to take notice.
Several years on the Great Plains and I still miss that sound.
And now I’m moving to those inland oceans, the Great Lakes. And I’m finding that sound again, renewing my connection with the waters of the country. No, nothing like the pounding Pacific but nonetheless the same effect of anticipation, rush, crash and hiss.
Won’t ever be a beach person but I can still enjoy the sounds.
ISO 100, 35mm, 1/800 sec., f/2.8
ISO 100, 14mm, 1/1000 sec., f/2.8
ISO 100, 35mm, 1/500 sec., f/2.8
When I stumbled on this scene my first reaction was “how pastoral this looks” which is odd since I don’t usually think in terms of artistic genre. Nonetheless, what I saw was the peaceful, soft, illuminated aspects of color, shadow and light I’ve come to associate with paintings I’ve been told are Pastoral in their style. Turning to the go-to universal definition place (Wikipedia) I expected to find a comprehensive article on this painting style, the influences on its development, major contributors to the genre and how it was supplanted by the continued evolution of visual arts. At least I was hoping to find some aspects of why we find some scenes “pastoral.”
Turns out this term is used to covered a lot of art, from writing to poetry to music, and yes, painting. What isn’t seemingly clear, at least in language I could understand, is how the genre is defined. Reading several critical pieces on the form it seemed all the writers class this style of art not by what it delivers but rather what it is trying to avoid. Pastoral turns away from urban, civilized, organized, routine aspects of life to embrace the wild, natural, agricultural. It uses simplicity as a way to forestall complexity. Some critics indicate it’s simply art about shepherds and their lifestyle (not sure why shepherds are more pastoral than cowboys, farmers or conservationalists other than all those Greek plays and pottery extolling the lives of shepherds).
Way too much information. I finally found a comment about how the Hudson River school arose in this country as an off-shoot of English Pastoral tradition and then it clicked for me. The Hudson River school was about romanticism, showing how humans and nature co-exist peacefully. Portrayals were at times idealized, at times realistic, many times showing the wildness of nature as a backdrop for the idyllic state of agriculture.
Thomas Kincade is probably the most well known American painter using this type of portrayal (although his work is not traditional Hudson River school), a style characterized by the self-proclaimed phrase “Painter of Light,” which was originally attributed to J. M. W. Turner. Perhaps it was the light that caught my attention immediately in the above scene. Or the warm vs. cool color palette. Or just how inviting the composition appeared. For whatever reasons, it seemed pastoral to me so I make this image to share the moment with you.
ISO 100, 93mm, 1/100 sec., f/8
Our eyes love to follow lines. They entice us to gaze along their stretch, luring us from point of origin to point of ending. They enclose objects of interest or carry our sight away from places the photographer wants us to ignore. Multiply them and their seduction becomes overwhelming, taking an act of will by the viewer to look elsewhere in the frame. This image is full of lines – lines that curve around the middle, lines that stand straight to the sky, lines that disappear into the distance, horizontal lines that ground their part of the scene to the earth. The content becomes secondary to the myriad of lines.
ISO 100, 62mm, 1/320 sec., f/8
Here are lines real and possibly imagined, skewed and angled, straight and level. The breakwater comes out of shadow to shine warmly against the cool lake water, which defines a ruler-straight horizon behind it. The sunbeams (are they really there?) point upward to the sun, angling their vectors to bring the viewer down into the space below them and on through the horizontal barrier and into the lake. The cloud layers imitate the horizon in a ragged manner, putting multiple ceilings across the sky to hold the view in place.
We are sensitive to lines and to patterns that break lines to stand out. Evolution has programmed us to survive by being this sensitive, aware of the normality of pattern and sharply attentive to the pattern breaking danger. For civilized man art has broadened our appreciation beyond the glance necessary for survival to see the expression essential to a fuller life.
To a person trying to learn a bit about photography the amount of information you seemingly must know just to ask an intelligent question is overwhelming. Cameras, lenses, gear, software, paper, ink, etc., etc. just rushes at you like water from a fire hose. And the jargon – who makes up all these words and acronyms? All I want is to make pictures – just show me which button to press.
[As an aside, ever notice when someone asks you to take their picture (usually a couple or family that wants everyone in the image) they always point out the shutter release button? You know, just "push this button right here." You'd think camera manufacturers would put the button in the same place, colored in read, with an arrow and writing saying something like "press here to take picture."]
Well, it is complicated. It’s complicated because you have so many options to make the image you want. Someone once said computers ought to be as easy to use as a toaster (really? have you seen toasters lately?). Great idea, simplicity incarnate. Of course all you get from them is toast. Cameras and gear are that way. If all you want is the standard vacation image then get a simple camera and push the button. To really give yourself options to make the images you want, you’ve got to get into the complicated.
And it’s always been this way. Do you know how many different films existed in the heyday of film photography? It seemed every photographer had their favorite film, processed with their favorite chemicals, printed on their favorite paper, also processed in their favorite chemicals. And you think Photoshop is hard to learn. At least you can see what you’re getting in Photoshop and you can work in the light. For film the desired photo and the delivered photo were apart by hours, days, months (if you forgot and left your film stuck in the seat cushion of the car for awhile).
And why was it so complicated? Well, as artists photographers had different views of the world and were able to present those for others to appreciate by using all those special tools. Were they really different? Let’s take a look.
Here’s a digital image processed through the NIK Color Efex Pro tool to render images similar to different films. Note – these are not images from these films but rather a digital approximation created using profiles the people at NIK developed by analyzing the actual films and incorporating their various attributes (sensitivity to different wavelengths, dynamic range, saturation, contrast, resolution, etc.) into the software.
Kodak Elite Chrome 100
Fuji 160S
Kodachrome 64
Original Digital image
Kodak Portra 160NC
Fuji Velvia 100
I used this image because of the limit color palette – little if any warm colors. You can see the varying responsiveness to the blues and greens across the images, some subtle, some more obvious. There are differences in contrast, particularly in the clouds. Differences you probably wouldn’t notice if you looked at the images separately rather than side by side. Nonetheless, there are real differences and photographers of that day usually picked a “look” and stuck with it, learned how to get the best performance from it and made that their signature. A few of them even made the film itself famous (well, that and lots of marketing dollars from the manufacturers).
With digital we run the risk of all images looking the same unless radically post-processed intentionally. Digital sensors are generally designed to render “flat” exposures and color saturation, leaving it up to the photographer to decide what the final image will look like. But sometimes that just makes it harder. At least with film you could pick one and get on with it. Digital has so many options and such a learning curve that at times you wonder how you’d ever develop your look. Sure, the software usually has presets you can configure to run a set of steps with one click but then you have to remember what that preset is supposed to do!
Film, pick one and go.
Photography – more than a hobby, less than a compulsion…..maybe.
ISO 100, 16mm, 1/500 sec. f/9
Out and about today exploring the area and came across this scene. I hear there’s one of these in Nebraska but not next to the body of water I’m standing in front of to make this image. Wind Point lighthouse is on the shore of Lake Michigan just north of Racine, Wisconsin, placed there to guide shipping down the coast to the port of Racine. I was fortunate to get some very cooperative clouds and sunlight for this. A little perspective adjustment in Photoshop and I’ve got a Great Lakes postcard.
And no, I didn’t copy the photo on the Wikipedia site – it’s just a very popular perspective to make this image….
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