Light
The thing about doing the work of photography, or I assume of any creative endeavor, is that you’re never really done, even if you “finish” something. That was the way it was following last week’s post. To be honest, I was pleased with how the images I’d made turned out in black and white. Even more so from the fact I pushed them to be darker than I’d normally would have developed them. I’d say they were better because of it. Believe me, before they got that dark, I developed them in the way I normally would have in B&W, and only then did I push it even farther. Yeah, they ended up better than I would have made them. That in itself gave me lots to think about.
Part of that thinking had me return to the images as I’d originally envisioned them, which was in color. Again, I have to admit that for at least two of them, the black and white images are by far better images. Perhaps that was because they were black and white images in my mind to begin with, I just wasn’t aware of it. Regardless, as color images they were failures. Not so the third. This image really was about the color and the light and that came out in the image as I began to work with it.
One of the things I’ve struggled with over the years is managing color vs black & white imagery in the digital era. It’s not the same commitment you make with film. There, you’ve either loaded B&W film (Tri-X in my case) or color film (several options there) in your camera and that was it. At least until you reached the end of the roll. Ok, with my 4x5 I could load color film in some holders and black and white in the others, but in those days I saw in black and white and only photographed color for money. Yes the Q2MR only photographs in B&W, and that’s why I got it; but with all my other cameras, it’s almost as if there is too much flexibility with the camera. So sometimes it’s hard to decide which route to go when envisioning a photograph, and then again when developing an image. And you can’t always do both color and black and white versions . . . that process really doesn’t work well for someone so concerned about seeing the image at the time of exposure. This image may give me a clue to resolving that log jam - the B&W images were so oriented around the subject (the bench, the abandoned rabbit hutch (now frequented by the chickens)), while the tree image was less about the tree and more about the light and the color of the leaves. The “subject” wasn’t as much a “thing” as it was . . . let’s call it the stage set. I’ll need to keep that distinction in mind in the future as I’m approaching images both with the camera and on the monitor.
Strangely enough, I had occasion to pull out my camera again last week. But it too turned into a photo session not quite what I thought it would be. Coming back from dropping Ann off at Nicole’s house (Ann’s hairdresser), I drove by this freshly harvested field in the fog that had these incredibly graphic rows of cut grasses. I got home, grabbed my camera and quickly walked back the half-mile or so to the property and started making photographs as the fog was burning off.
After a half-dozen or so images, the light suddenly broke through and the image I had in my mind’s eye evaporated. Remembering what had happened with the previous image set, I kept photographing. I’m glad I did, because the light turned the image into something very different. And sometimes an image does work in both black and white and color.
Continuing to photograph made me realize something that really does matter to me. The morning light gave me a sense of optimism, a feeling of hope and renewal that is hard for me to shake off for very long. Perhaps that’s why I like sunrises more than sunsets. The positive reframe of events during trying times than the wholly depressing negative view of things, even when that’s the more accurate description of the situation. Light gives me a sense of the possible, the new and unexplored, that darkness doesn’t. Yes, darkness has its place, but not for very long. At least for me.
So it was that my slow walk home was about looking at the morning light and enjoying it. Seeing what it had to offer me as it burned the morning fog off the fields.
Stopping to enjoy not just the beauty of the light and the place, but to learn from it and then to craft images around the light and the stunning array of colors it can provide.
That’s the thing about photographing the landscape. You don’t control what nature gives you. You can only work with it. And sometimes, it starts out giving you one thing and then transitions into something altogether different. You just need to be sensitive enough to realize it’s happening, and flexible enough to go with what you’re given.