Sometimes you get what you need.

The last post was pretty depressing, I know.  However, if there is anything the iChing has taught me it’s that the only constant in this world is change and that even in the midst of the yin, there lies an incipient yang.  Fortunately, that came sooner than either Ann or I had expected.

Last weekend Ann and I went out for a drive to explore new parts of the Peneda-Gerês National Park.  And unlike our previous trips, this one bore fruit.  Both in an immediate sense and for the longer term.  That story will come later, but suffice it to say it was a good day overall.

This post is simply a reminder that even when things seem down, you never really know when the up is coming and, as is so often the case, the way for that to happen is to simply get up, head out and then allow for the possibilities to happen.  And, not too surprisingly, they did.

It wasn’t much, but given the frustrations of the previous two weekends of failed printing efforts, it didn’t take much to lift our moods.  While on our drive into the park, not too very far from the Portugal-Spain border, we pulled over by an old station.  It looked to be a cross between a home and a park station, and it was deserted.  Obviously for quite some time.  Fortunately for us, it was the opportunity we were looking for.  Not only did the signs there explain that the road between the station and the border was closed to parking (helping us to avoid a hefty fine, even if by accident), it gave us a few photo opportunities.

Mine came from Ann, who has learned to see things I might find to be a source of inspiration, and who is kind enough to let me know when she sees them.  On the back end of the station was a wall with some graffiti on it.  While it might have turned Ann off from making an image, it was right up my alley.  Why people in the middle of a park have to do such things is mind boggling, but that doesn’t stop me from photographing it.

I actually made a couple of different compositions of this wall, one a bit more closely cropped (about 5 feet closer) than the one above, because I wasn’t too sure about the upper edge of the image, and then a couple of more crops after the fact in Capture One.  I was unsure of which image to post so, given Ann was the one who identified the potential image for me, I let Ann decide which one to pick.

She picked the above based on the two elements that were critical in my composition of the image - ensuring the top of the image included the lit blade of grass on the stub-roof, and the downward curve of the stucco wall fragment on the bottom and left edge.  

Ann’s photograph was one I had to convince her was worth pulling out the camera and tripod from the car.  We’d started wandering around with our point-and-shoot cameras, and I had pulled out my “big” camera and tripod to make an image that was, well,  . . . not very successful (thank goodness Ann found a better image for me).  

Ann had found a better image from around my original location, but wasn’t sure whether she should make it.  Looking over her shoulder at her point-and-shoot LCD, I fortunately was able to convince her that it would be worth the effort.

So we grabbed her gear and she set up to make the photograph.  That morning we had billowy clouds rolling across the sky.  So Ann wound up making several images with different lighting effects - no sunlight, sunlight in transition, full sunlight - which took a bit of time as the clouds were slowly making their way above.  I’d left to make my photograph of the wall, above, and returned as she was making her last set of images.

She wound up using one of the mid-lit images in the transition period from harsh sunlight to no sunlight.  Even then, it was a bit harshly lit, so she toned the contrast down a bit when developing the image.  As with so many of Ann’s images, it’s composed to lead you in the frame, inviting you on a journey.  And if you prefer, instead, to simply stay there, it offers a lot for the eye to explore.  

Neither image is a knockout image.  But why should they have to be that?  Lately Ann and I have been watching Thomas Heaton’s latest YouTube videos, where he’s trying to keep his inspiration up (and YouTube algorithm rating)  during the summer months.  He, like us, really does not enjoy photographing in the summer.  So he’s been doing a variety of “exercises” this summer with the goal of simply getting out to photograph and without the notion the he has to make “great” images.  In one video he decided to ride a 10 or so mile loop around his neighborhood (on the coast of England, through farmland, and a natural area) on a bike with his camera to see if he could come up with 10 decent images (1 per mile).  I’d say he was successful.  In another video, he grabbed a photo guide book and chose a location to go to, where he hoped to make a decent image.  Which he did, two of them in fact.  That was our mindset with this trip, in part, hoping we could find a decent image.

And that’s what these are - images that neither of us should be ashamed to show someone else.  No, they’re not the grand landscape, or even landscapes in dramatic light or weather conditions.  But they’re images that were offered to us and that have qualities beyond mere snapshots.  Images people can spend time looking at, exploring and, hopefully, enjoying.

Sometimes you get what you need.