Portland Japanese Gardens - Imposed Constraints

The trip to Pro Photo Supply wound up being what we’d expected.  And that wasn’t good.  My camera andtwo lenses (yes plural) wound up on their way to Fuji for inspection/repair.  Fortunately, we’d brought our backup camera, which meant I could still photograph at the Japanese Gardens on Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, we hadn’t brought the L-bracket for the X-T1.  So I had a choice - hand hold the images, or hold the camera in place on top of the tripod head.  Knowing the type of images I’d want to be making, and the slow shutter speeds they would entail, I opted for the imposed constraint of holding the camera in place on top of the tripod!  

That must have been quite the sight - me standing there, holding a camera in place on top of the tripod, and occasionally having it slip off as I try to make an adjustment.  “Doesn’t the idiot know that you’re supposed to mount the camera on the tripod?”  But as we said in the Army, "Improvise, adapt, and overcome!"

Saturday morning the gardens wound up being pretty packed, even during the members-only period.  So Ann and I set out to try to photograph in places that didn’t have a lot of traffic.  We started at where we left off the day before, on the veranda overlooking the graveled garden.  My first image was a simple composition trying to emphasize the branches of a still-barren Japanese Maple tree.

As I made my way across the veranda and to the side of the building, I decided to give the giant slab I photographed last time another try - this time in black and white.  I also wound up getting in closer than I had previously. 

As I made the first image, I realized that black and white could really bring out the textures in the rock, so I looked for another composition. 

Which was easy enough given just how dynamic the rock appears up close.  

We eventually wound up heading down the trail that leads to the rock garden.  It was here where I realized that my decision to go square and in black and white was a good one.  Either that, or I was learning from my exercise.

There’s a patch of small ponds on this trail that has left me pretty frustrated in the past.  I’ve never felt that I’ve quite captured the feeling of the place.  That and the fact that during the winter you see all this mud on the bottom of the small ponds and it’s very unattractive.  Well things were entirely different this time and I spent what I guess was close to an hour at one location making several different images.

For once I could see images to be made, and they were all square.  The first one leaped out at me as I slowly moved my head around and suddenly saw reflections of the trees.  Drawing from concepts behind some of the images I made the day before, I started experimenting with images that played between the reflections and transparency of water.

While there aren’t any fish in these ponds (at least not yet), there were plenty of rocks! And once I got going, it was a quest to find more.

And amazingly enough for me, working with the square format was helping my image making.  I realized that not having a strong dimension - either vertical or horizontal - gave me the ability to ignore the demands of accommodating that longer dimension and instead concentrate on the elements within the square and to let them do the work of moving the eye around.

Ann and I eventually moved on, and once again, the square frame helped me compose a subject I had struggled with before. 

I guess the fallen blossoms and soft light helped as well.

I made a couple of more images but, having gotten comfortable with black and white, I became lazy and failed to check things out with my viewing filter before making the image.  The unsuccessful images are a reminder that sometimes things get totally lost by having similar tones, despite the fact that they’re different colors.  How many times do I have to relearn that lesson?

My last image of the day was by the rock garden.  And once again, it was the square that allowed me to see things anew. 

By the time we made it back up the hill, the Japanese Gardens were packed.  Time to call it a day and head down to Piazza Italia for lunch and then hit the road back home.