Iceland One-off - Akureyri Botanical Gardens
There’s a photographer (David DuChemin) I’ve been following for quite a few years now (read: over a decade). In addition to being a photographer, he is an educator interested in the process of photography, sharing insights into that process and genuinely helping other photographers grow. I think I have every one of his books/e-books, as well as most, if not all, of his video courses (though I admit I have not watched several of them). That last parentheses may seem odd, given video courses aren’t cheap, but I appreciate the way he shares his thoughts and believe that I should support his endeavor to help a greater community (to include myself). His weekly/biweekly (or whenever it comes out) email, “The Contact Sheet,” is a must-read for me, even though it may take me a few days to get to it. It never goes into the trash and always, after it’s read, goes into the “Photography” folder in my email client.
While David’s approach to photographing is quite different than how I approach a subject, I appreciate and have incorporated aspects of his approach into my own. He’s a big fan of asking questions when making photographs. Perhaps the most significant question is, “What if . . . ?” During our trip to Iceland I asked that question when photographing in the Akureyri Botanical Gardens.
Ann and I were “going light” during our visit to the gardens, which meant brining our smaller cameras (for me a Leica D-Lux 8 and my Leica Q2MR) and ditching the tripod to photograph hand-held. As I’ve blogged before, I often use these “light” excursions to experiment a bit more (which means a lot more images that really aren’t very satisfying) and to “document” a location (again, not images to present as “Photographs,” but great for story telling). However, the choice of these two cameras means that, if the conditions are right, I can still make a quality photograph (with limitations in potential print size with the D-Lux 8) that gets presented as a Photograph. The Leica Q2MR is, well, a superb camera I’ve posted about before that needs no “qualifiers” on its ability to make a quality image (I’m the limitation, if anything is).
The Akureyri Botanical Gardens are one of the most lovely gardens we’ve visited, with a wonderful mixture of ground plants and an exceptional mixture of trees. Ann and I had a field day wandering around. It was quite the unexpected discovery (we hadn’t really planned on even stopping in Akureyri) and a testiament to leaving flexibility in your plans while traveling.
At one point in our wanderings, we came across several different types of plants, for lack of a better description (I’m sure plant people have a term for it) that had spiky balls at the ends of their stems. There were bushes, solitary plants, and plants with clumps of spiky balls all presented in a part of the garden. I, like Ann, photographed a lot of them, trying this and that and simply having fun with photographing a new type of subject.
At one point I seemed to run out of ideas. As I walked around while Ann continued photographing. After awhile, I came across one of the solitary-type plants and thought, “What if I shot that in black and white from down low and underexposed the image. So I put the D-Lux 8 away and pulled out the Q2 monochrome.
I made 6 images. Two initial exposures, ever so slightly different in composition due to a lack of tripod, which led to an “Oh, wow!” response when I inspected the image on the rear LCD. And then four more with a more “careful” positioning of the spiky ball surrounded by light from overcast skies and then the dark vegetation. Only the first is satisfying. I think it’s the ever so slight touching of the spikes and background vegetation to the lower left of the ball. The second image . . . well the two overlap too much. And the other 4 images are too precise, too clean for this type of image. I’d lowered the camera even more, creating a clean separation between the spiky ball and any of the darker background forms. They’re almost sterile. Only one has a life to it.
That said, I can’t tell you why I look at this image and say, “Oh, wow!” I can’t explain why I find this image, this type of image, compelling. I just know that it does. That too is part of the process - making something, pretty much by accident, and then struggling to find out what makes it special. Why does it work? And, just as importantly, how do I use that in making images in the future?
I just know that I never would have made the image if I hadn’t asked, “What if?” Thanks for the tip David.