Shooting the Shooter - Scum Photographer
One of the earliest images I made with a 4x5 camera was an image of duckweed in the C&O Canal. It was a very cropped image, abstract in nature, that filled the frame with duckweed - a small green plant that floats on the surface of water, sometimes filling the entire surface of confined water areas. It wasn’t exactly a close up, so there were millions of bright, closely packed dots on a dark water surface, with gaps interspersed among the groups of petals. The image captured what I was seeing - a visual vibration on the surface of water made by the optical effect of so many small bright pieces on a dark background. That was when I realized that 4x5 film could render such detail with incredible tonality (compared to the 35mm film I had been shooting) that it really opened up a whole different world of image making. It was the only image I made that I think, no, I know, printed better with a condensing enlarger head than my preferred cold-head. I tried reprinting the image using a cold head, but it didn’t have the biting edginess that the condensing enlarger print had. I gave the print to Len, who had it hanging for years. Len asked if it had a title, I said, “Scum on Water.” That was nearly 40 years ago.
Fast forward to more recent years and I still photograph things that collect on the surface of water. Ann says I’m a Foam and Scum photographer, but I tell her I don’t shoot foam (I don’t find foam particularly appealing or interesting or photogenic). Ann insists it’s both, but no thank you, just scum please. I think of it as one of my photographic themes that I carry with me all the time, a variant of my compositions. It’s not always there, but you’re cognizant of it when it’s around and when you have the opportunity to photograph it, you do. Movement in water, the solitary tree, pre-dawn light, and . . . scum.
I’m surprised that we haven’t come across it too much in The Netherlands, given how much still water there is (there is some duckweed in the creeks we walk by nearly every day . . .). Maybe we just haven’t been around during the right seasons. Well, we certainly came across it on our trip to Sweden. Thus, this post.
The images are from the afternoon when we arrived at Söderåsen National Park for the second time. It was a bit late in the afternoon, and it had been drizzling a bit. We had no doubt that our photography would be very different this visit given that the hillsides were leaf green instead of brown, which it had been two weeks earlier. Given the uncertainty of the weather, we decided to go light and take a walk around the lake to see how much change had really taken place. About 3/4 of the way around the lake, I discovered an accumulation of . . . scum . . . at a dam of logs where the creek entered the lake. And I couldn’t help myself.
As you can see from Ann’s image below, it wasn’t a very easy composition to make. And I imagine that Ann was worried (hoping?) that I’d lean a bit too far forward and fall in. Fortunately (or unfortunately based on your perspective), I managed to avoid disaster. Unfortunately (no question about that), I really wish I’d had a polarizer filter with me to reduce a bit of the glare in the image. Oh well, you do with what you have.
Ann’s image is a good one, because you get a nice view of what initially attracted my eye (yes, I saw it from a distance and walked over excitedly once I did). And you can see the difficulties in making images like this, which is much easier with the LUMIX than the bigger cameras. I’m not sure I could have made this image if I’d had my X-T5 and a tripod. I’m not sure I would have if I could. Sure, I could have hand-held the X-T5, but there’s something about the small LUMIX and the Q2MR that lead me to make different types of images than I do with the Fuji, and to push the boundaries of image-making more than normal. Call it a limitation of mine, or perhaps think about an artist and his tools - it would surprise no one if an artist painted different subjects in oil than in watercolor, or made drawings of different subjects than she sculpted. Different types of cameras encourage me to see things in different ways. Or maybe that’s all a bunch of BS and I’m just afraid to admit I’m not very creative.
In any event, this instance the scum was so interesting, and large, that it allowed for a couple of different images. Yeah, a polarizer would have been nice.
Still, photographing this subject gave me several minutes of pleasure, trying to figure out how to compose an image of scum that is worth looking at. At least it was a good exercise for the eye and composing, despite the technical issues.
So call me a scum photographer, I don’t consider it an insult.