Cracked Ice and Branches

I made this exposure in February of 2005. For some reason or another it kept getting pushed back in the printing rotation until last Friday, 2 years later.

I remember that day quite well. The weather had been bitterly cold for some time and was just begining to warm up. It was a weekend, Saturday I believe, and I decided to take a ride to Shenango River Lake. There is one main bridge that crosses the lake at one of it's thinnest points and continues for some distance as a causeway. After crossing to the north you can drive back along the western side for a few hundred yards. I did this and got out when I feared my little truck would get stuck if I went any farther. I'd never been to this sliver of land between causeway and lake before and decided to explore. I packed up and walked for some time admiring the ice covered water to my right. I set up my camera once along the way but wasn't inspired to make a picture.

As I was nearing the bridge and end of the penninsula the ground became covered with large sheets of ice and frozen snow. It was creaking underfoot while I made my way along and suddenly I came upon a sweeping crack between two large plates immediately in front of me. The plate on the left had been saturated with water at some point and was considerably darker than the one beside it. I quickly set up my camera and began working with this extraordinary form. There were a couple of branches laying on the beautifully textured, snow covered ice sheets and I was having trouble eliminating them from the frame. I considered walking around the potential picture space to remove them but was afraid I would further crack the ice. Rather than risk disturbing that beautiful line I tried including them in the frame. Eventually I found a spot where I could incorporate both branches in a way that related to the rest of the image and the line of the crack seemed to take on the shape of the female form. I knew I had something and was excited enough to make a backup exposure. At almost 3 bucks a pop it was not something I normally did.

After getting lost in a shuffle of negatives and intentions I rediscovered them on Friday. I was looking to create a photograph to offer as a new Special Edition print and decided to give it a shot. After finding my base exposure I noticed a finger print in the emulsion of the first negative that showed quite noticably on the print. I nervously checked the back up negative I had made and found it was fingerprint free! I thanked the photography gods I had made a second exposure and continued printing. I worked out a base time of 10 seconds and then burned the negative for an additional 12 seconds while gradually covering the paper from bottom to top. I couldn't be happier with the results and decided to indeed offer it as my current Special Edition print.

Composition: The Subject

As most modern Americans, I've been taking pictures the majority of my life, though I began photographing seriously when I was 19. Of all the pictures made since then very few have survived my editorial process, hardly any from before my 25th year. Those early photographs simply lacked that intangible something which makes a photograph more than a photograph. There are several reasons for this: Age and experience have played a part, though at 28 I'm neither old nor experienced... My tastes have changed over time, as tastes will... I have also worked during that time to reexamine and change the way I see. As significant as all that has been the real catalyst for growth in my photography has come from the way I view subject matter. More precisely, what I view as subject matter.

Years ago my pictures were driven almost entirely by the things I was photographing. I'd take pictures of buildings and trees, people and places. The subjects needn't be bombastic, even then I was visually taken with the everyday. The resulting photographs, however, never seemed to reflect the initial excitement I felt in the field. I was close, but I hadn't arrived.

The solution seemed obvious enough, I needed to get closer, literally, so I moved in and cut out what felt extraneous. Again, the resulting pictures seemed cold and lacked the emotion I had initially felt. I waited for the best light and weather, bought different lenses, different cameras and even different media. Nothing seemed to help.

At this point I felt as though I needed a fresh start. I did the best I could to cast aside my preconceptions about what were the proper subjects, the ideal light, the best conditions and even the right equipment. I set aside my ideas about what a good picture was supposed to be and simply went out photographing. Free from dogma and formula I moved easily through my surroundings and worked when I felt compelled to do so. With no specific subject to render and no context necessary to include I was left with only myself, the camera and my environment. Working in such a manner I was able to concentrate on the relationships between shape and line, texture and tone and at last began producing photographs that seemed to capture the essence and intensity of my feelings.

But what made these photographs different? The pictures still included buildings and trees, people and places... The things in my photographs hadn't changed but my pictures had. It was then that I realised those things weren't subjects at all, only building blocks. The real subjects of my photographs were the way objects related to each other. Visual relationships themselves were the subjects and they were everywhere. Better still, they were constantly changing with the light.

My new found sensibilities brought about other realizations. While light was naturally paramount the type of light was not. After all, it's always the best light to photograph something. My routine was changing as well. Instead of pre-visualizing images and trying to fit them onto the ground glass I was using the camera to explore in a way that's not otherwise possible. I learned to set up when I felt a connection to a place and allow my instincts to guide the composition. I had finally found a way to extract from the world a moment of discovered beauty. The next step was presentation...

Life's Little Explosions

As children we are filled with a certain sense of wonderment while navigating through our surrondings. So many things, on a daily basis, are competely new experiences for us. Even the mundane, when unfamiliar, carries with it some degree of excitement. As we age we experience more and more and begin taking things for granted. This is certainly not a new idea, in fact it is an idea that is almost universally recognized. Even the most hardend among us can see a bit of ourselves in the wide eyes of a curious child.

What divides us beyond this recognition is our commitment, and possibly our capacity, to resist the complacency which goes hand in hand with familiarity. No sense is more affected than vision. Most people continue to relish sounds in many forms; music, birds, insects on a summer night, even the still quiet of a snowy afternoon. Who among us doesn't delight in the soft touch of a lover, the comfort of a hot fire or cool relief of the swimming pool? As modern Americans our love of food and it's smells are evident by our collective waistline. Our vision, however, often requires a remarkable expanse of ocean, our contries grand vistas or Hollywood's special effects to ellicit the same types of response. Or, at the very least, something new.

The best comparison I've drawn is the process of reading. As we learn, it's all syllables and sounds, words relating to each other in rhyme and tone, in measure and meaning. The more comfortable we become with the written language the more automatic the action and suddenly we're reading by mere assimilation.

In this way I parallel photographer and poet. Neither seem to tire of the building blocks of thier trade, of vision and words. As a teenager it was a writer and friend that opened my conscious mind to that with which I was struggling on a more subconcious level. She wrote the following in a letter.

"Today was slow; normal system of wake, work and home - perfectly unremarkable if not for some stolen glimpses of beauty - like when Dad pulled the car under a sprinkler and the water just glowed on the windshield and suddenly everything was beautiful. I love it when life just explodes like that!"

Those words struck a chord with me, aroused something that was struggling to stay significant, to stay awake. It was at this time that my battle for control, quite literally, of my vision began. What a meaningful and rewarding endevour it has been. In the words of Edward Weston, I was learning to see "through one's eyes and not with them", to open my mind to the subtle and transient beauty made manifest by the perpetual play of light and shadow in the everyday.

While rewarding in itself, learning (or perhaps re-learning) this manner of seeing is only the first step in becoming a photographer. Much like the poet, recognition of the potentiality is only the beginning, next comes the composition and the presentation...

Why BLOG?

I've choosen to start a web log for a few different reasons.

Firstly, whenever I show prints or scans I'm asked questions about why I choose to photograph many of the things people percieve as my subjects, how I go about the act of photographing with a view camera or with the small camera at night, and of course what drives me to photograph in the first place. I hope over time this blog will help to answer those questions in a way I cannot with a few spoken words.

Secondly, I already keep a journal but haven't written as much or as often as I would like. I hope the act of writing this public version of a journal will keep me motivated to write more for myself.

Thirdly, I enjoy reading the ideas and musings of those artists whose work I admire and wish to offer a similar window into my own thoughts about photography... And of course give people a reason to return to and become involved in my website (and perhaps buy a print!).

Finally, I find the process of organizing my thoughts into words to be extremely cathardic and equally valuable in finding creative direction.