Dan’s Portfolio
When writing about Ann’s portfolio images, I mentioned that my approach to selecting images for the portfolio was a bit different from hers (BTW, she changed her approach after printing a set of the images on the Hahnemühle paper, though she drew from the images that we’d tested). My approach was two-fold. First, I wanted to use images from only the previous year’s photographs, in part to show where I’m at now in my photography, in part to limit the number of images I could consider. Second, I wanted the images to showcase the range of things I am interested in photographically. Basically, that meant I had images from our travels in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands to draw from. I’d selected images from before our trip to Ireland, but given that wasn’t really a photography trip, there weren’t any images that competed for a place in the portfolio.
The first image is one from Tivedens NP in Sweden. There’s something about this image that really draws me to it. The print of it is even better than on screen. Ann says that the dappled light on the ground comes out better in the print, and the textures in the trees are captivating. The image has a sense of space and depth that I was hoping for, so there was little doubt in my mind that this image would be part of the portfolio.
The second image is another one that I was captivated by when I made it (hand held nonetheless, though several of these are hand-held images). And, although it isn’t a landscape image, it shows my captivation with water and the fact that I do not limit myself to making only landscape photographs. Plus the abstract light patterns in the water hint at other types of work I enjoy making, though haven’t had the opportunity to do so in the past year.
The third image is a quaint composition that is representative of the way I’ll examine the landscape while I’m walking around. It’s made with the Panasonic LX100 Mark II, the camera the Baby Leica replaced. It’s a lovely camera (both are) and is part of the going light kit.
It’s strange that three images in a row were hand-held, but that’s how it turned out. This image has a couple of qualities that I enjoy. First is the fact that I was shooting into the sun. Actually, I have several images that were taken with the camera mounted on the tripod. As I was putting my camera away, I heard the geese honking in flight and I realized they would be coming into the scene - so I picked up my camera (no time to mount it on the tripod) and waited for them to fly into a nice location before I pressed the shutter. Three quick presses of the shutter button and . . . fortunate that one included the wings spread out for both geese. That’s the second quality I enjoy about this image, the showing of nature in the landscape.
The fifth image is another image from Sweden, from a cold afternoon as the sun was setting. It was taken a few moments before the image that was used as the header for the blog post. That image was part of the group, but for some reason the printer kept messing up the bottom edge of the print, so it was eliminated from contention. Ann really likes this image because of the reeds in it in addition to the abstract nature of the colors in the water. I do too, and it was always going to be one or the other of the two images. I guess the printer solved that dilemma for me.
The last image is yet another composition, this time much closer than the other one. I’m pleased with many things about this image (and the print too). It should be a jumbled mess, but the lighter oak leaf in the midst of the beech leaves gives enough focus and order to the image to hold it all together. The print is simply lovely.
And that’s it, my 6 portfolio images for the workshop. I’m torn about whether I want the opportunity to talk about prints during the workshop. Sure, I’d love to have some input on the images, but if that happens, it means that the weather is so gawd-awful bad that we can’t go out to photograph. I think I’d rather be photographing.
But if we aren’t, I’ll at least be ready to show some stuff I’m not too ashamed of.