Revisiting the Portland Japanese Gardens

No, we didn’t (unfortunately), go photograph the Portland Japanese Gardens again.  Instead, I’ve been trying to catch up on cataloging my photographs from 2017 and, as all too often happens, working on some of them.  I recently returned to the photographs of the gardens I took during our mid-December trip and was pleasantly surprised.  

I’ve mentioned in the past how Ann can jump right on her images and start working on them just after, or even during, our trips.  Call it in-grained habit from my film days, but I usually have to let them sit for awhile (sometimes a long while) before I’m comfortable even looking at them, nonetheless working on them.  Well, that was until late last year when I started trying to learn from Ann and to start work on them a bit sooner rather than later.  Still, I don’t think it’s sunk in yet, because when I revisited these images, now a couple of months on, I found them more compelling and was more excited about working on most of the images than I was when I first had a go at it.  One bit of advice that is often shared in photographic circles is that one should periodically go back and revisit your older work - this time it paid off.

Not only was I taken aback by how nice some of the images were, they caused me to think a lot about image making and what was going on through my mind while I was photographing the images.  So I thought I’d share some of that with you, in part to help me develop these thoughts a bit further.  As a reminder, we visited the gardens on two consecutive mornings - which was a wonderful opportunity to revisit the same location and develop on the second day ideas that arose from the first day.

Sometimes one of the hardest things to do in photography is to get started once you’re there.  Like a writer with a blank sheet of paper sitting there in front of you, having all possibilities available before you is not always a good thing.  All too often a photographer can get to a lovely location and not see anything that’s compelling.  Not that one (read: I) can’t see the beauty all around me, but nothing may grab me, forcing me to photograph it.  Call it not seeing, being uninspired, or simply not being creative, if it goes on too long it becomes a bit depressing (especially when you’re in such a wonderful place) and increasingly a self-fulfilling prophecy that you’re not going to see any images.  

Well, that’s what happened the first day for the first half-hour or so - I saw nothing.  Perhaps it was that everything was so different, and almost gloomy given the heavy overcast skies; but those are really just excuses - even then, the Japanese Gardens are beautiful.  So when that can’t-see-anything thing happens, I just try to make a photograph - any photograph - and hopefully things start flowing from there.  I’ll often try to focus in closely on a detail to see if I can find an abstract image to make.  And I found a rock that from close up looked like it could be a mountain side.  It was a total failure.  So I resorted to the other approach I’ll use when trying to force that first image (see, by then it was the second image and the photographic process had started already so . .  .), that is to create a well-designed image that, while not spectacular, is fairly structured and well ordered.  And that’s what I did.

It was nothing spectacular, but it gives a sense of the place and, best of all, it was a start.

After making that image, I started seeing things.  I certainly wasn’t firing on all cylinders because several times I set up to make an image, only to decide it wasn’t good enough, but I was finally working.

At one point we stopped our wandering so Ann could make a photograph.  As I waited for her I looked around, and noticed a tree calling me over.  Intrigued with the structure, I decided to set up and work with it.  At the time, I had been studying William Neill’s work, and had commented to Ann about how he was unafraid to let trees extend beyond the frame.  I thought about that comment and instead of trying to include the entire branch reaching towards me as part of the image, I moved in closer to focus on the body of the tree, letting the branches to their thing.

From that image I established some constraints about approaching photographs that would carry on over the two days.  As noted above, the hardest thing to do is have unlimited options in how one works - a full range of lenses, any subject matter whatsoever, etc.  Often, the best thing you can do is establish some constraints on your work.  It’s surprisingly freeing, much like photographing with my x100 with its fixed focal length lens for an entire year freed me from having to make decisions regarding what lens to use and forced me to working with what I had.  It allowed me to focus on seeing instead of my gear.  So I decided that I would try to make images that intentionally had trees or other objects that extend beyond the frame for the next couple of days to see how that could push my seeing.  

As we walked around the lower part of the garden, we came across a lantern that let me put my constraints into practice.  Again, not a great image, but one to keep exercising my eye and mind.

The thing about simply putting in work is, even if you know it’s not your best, it gets things flowing and you (usually) eventually do start seeing images.  That happened a few steps later.

As one would expect, the Portland Japanese Garden has a rock garden.  Every time I’ve been there, I’ve tried to make a successful image, sometimes actually making a photograph, other times looking and looking but not seeing anything.  In every instance I’ve considered the photograph a failure.  Well, within my constraints I was freed from trying to capture the whole rock garden and suddenly realized there was an image there before me.

Why I had not seen that image before, I don’t know.  But I hadn’t.  

Before I move on, I’m going to skip ahead a bit in time.  When we returned the following morning it had rained during the night and was threatening to do so some more.  As we entered the gardens, we turned left instead of our usual right, just to see things in a different order.  Ann quickly saw an image and set up.  I decided, given the potential for rain, I’d better start as well and did one of my just-to-get-the-juices-flowing first shots.  Again, a nice composition, but nothing particularly special.

It kept to the theme from the day before and I can’t complain too much about it.  To quote Joe Cornish, “It is not a terrible photograph, but it is not a good one.”  It is, however, a starter to get the eye seeing and it gives you an idea of how I work. 

Now I’m going to show several series of images from the two days, and it was thinking about these images that got me thinking about about image making, doing a blog post, and ultimately to including the images presented above. 

There’s this lovely stone slab in the gardens that I’ve photographed on several occasions, but have never been very pleased with the results.  On the first day, I saw it anew, probably because it was so overcast that day.  Here, I stole a bit from the first failed effort of the day and looked at the slab as a mountain side and photographed it as if I were photographing a landscape.

The next day, I quickly made my way around a building to revisit it, and decided that I needed to photograph it again.  And while I didn’t try to precisely recreate the image, it’s obviously the same rock. 

On both occasions I took quite some time to get the framing just right.  I can only think that somehow it’s the wetness on part of the latter image that led me to get closer, and focus a bit higher on the rock.  I then decided to change scale and photograph the rock in its environment, while still adhering to my self-imposed constraints. 

There was another composition that I did on both days that wound up being nearly, but not entirely, identical.  Walking around that same building that the rock is near, one comes across a lovely garden that is part rock garden, part lawn, bushes and trees.  Thinking about tightly framing on a subject, with surrounding elements extending outside the frame, led me to a pair of rocks that I’ve included in wider, more landscape-type images, but I don’t recall focusing on specifically.  

Again, on the first day, everything was dry, but the overcast skies gave a soft filtered light that allowed the forms in the rocks, trees and bushes to elegantly present themselves. 

The next morning I was no less enamored by the same elements, but this time decided that I wanted  to better give the feeling of how these rocks are nestled into the vegetation, and how the gravel wraps around the rocks and bushes like a shoreline, so I switched to a slightly wider lens.

That slightly wider lens allowed me to include the trunk of a lovely, small Japanese Maple that stands just off to the side.

It’s only by returning to places again and again can one begin to see the same things in subtle, different ways.  

As the original blog post mentioned, visiting the Portland Japanese Garden in winter offered us very different views of the maples.  Instead of rich vegetation (and color in the fall), the fascinating structures of the trees were revealed.  What perhaps surprised me the most, was the rich color that remained with several of the trees.  One in particular at that same garden grabbed my attention.

On the first day I was struck by the red tips and mosses that seemed to light up under the overcast skies.  It took me several efforts  to find the right composition, but I eventually found one that adhered to the constraints and that allowed me to really focus in on the tree and the rock formation below.

On the second day, I saw things quite differently, and instead of just the tree, I saw the garden.  So my efforts became focusing on capturing how the garden emphasized the tree, not just my photographic framing.  But as is so often the case, one struggles to determine which is the best composition.

My first effort tries to hint at how the garden gives the flowing gravel rocks a shoreline on both sides and that helps lead the eye to the tree I photographed the day before.

To again quote Joe Cornish, “Sometimes it’s hard to know why some shots work and some do not.”  With that adage in mind, and the knowledge that one rarely gets the best image of a subject from the first effort, I kept working the image, seeing if I could capture the same intent with a better composition.  

Working the image led to this other view, ever so slightly different, but more graphically clean. 

Sometimes it’s just not possible to decide which is better.  I honestly couldn’t say.  

Finally on the second day, as we were heading out, I had to stop and make one final photograph.  When you see an image - take it! ( I almost invariably regret when I don’t follow that advice.)  It was one last gift that my self-imposed constraint gave me as we headed out of the garden. 

I’m glad I returned to these images, because now I realize I did much better than I had originally thought.  And I think I learned quite a bit from pausing my cataloging efforts and stopping to look at, think about and work on these images.  Not a bad way to spend a couple of winter mornings!