Painted Hills in Black and White

Our July 2018 adventure had me in an abstract frame of mind.  Blame it on studying Brett Weston that month, or on the photography gods, but I recently decided to visit my Painted Hills images in black and white much like I had the Palouse images.  I think think it was a good thing to do. And given where we went for an excursion last weekend, the timing on posting these images couldn’t have been better.

The reality is that I knew the images I was making on that first day were going to be rendered in black and white, regardless of how the color images turned out.  With the intense low-angled light and the sculpted forms available in the Painted Hills, it was simply a matter of finding a location where the light skimmed a face of the hills.  

I did what I should have done at the Palouse and grabbed Ann’s 100-400 mm lens and used only that lens.  So despite there being a fence to keep idiots from walking out to and on the barren hills, I still managed to frame things tightly without too much effort.  I started off well short of the 400 mm end of things.

Then slowly worked my way inward . . .

until I hit the 400 mm mark to produce the most abstract of the images.

My mind was thinking deep shadows and the angled light made that a breeze.

Once I was at 400 mm, it was a matter of exploring the hillside to see where different compositions might lie.

As well as studying how the different surface angles worked with the late afternoon sun.

Sometimes the revealed forms were almost sensuous . . .

other times they came across as stark and biting.

Regardless, I feel a real sense of joy and wonder exploring the interplay between light and object, particularly highly textured surfaces, that I can’t really describe.

As you might have expected, the next morning Ann and I got up before dawn and photographed in that wonderful pre-dawn glow we like to work in.  But because it was morning, the sun was bound to rise above the horizon.  And because it was another clear sunny day at the Painted Hills, the light was just as angled and just as sharp as the afternoon before.

It didn’t take me long to find compositions that I became excited about.  Compared to the day before, I explored a much greater range of images (some less successful) in an effort to find striking compositions.

I even worked with fairly front-lit surfaces where the direct light barely cast shadows on the greater forms, yet still helped reveal the gentle curves that are found nearly everywhere here.  Interestingly, the frontal light helped cause the hillside surface to glimmer by creating micro shadows between the crusty, textured hillside.

And then of course there was the graphic effect of photographing a well-lit hillside with the background of another hillside in deep shadow. 

I’m hoping that these periods of play and experimentation will not only help me identify when images should be photographed as a black and white image, but will also help improve my skills in developing them when I do make them.  

In the end, the solution for both is to keep doing the work.  The results will naturally follow.