(Not Quite) Shooting the Shooter - Amsterdam
I guess I don’t need to remind anyone that both Ann and I have been working through a lot of images lately, compiling them (and occasionally working on them) so we can update the website. It’s always good to periodically step back and review images (David DuChemin says he makes it a habit to review images from the previous year and from 5 years earlier - I wish I was as diligent). That way you don’t have the immediacy of having just made the image and can look at images with fresh eyes, perhaps seeing things you missed before, learning from them, and understanding how you’ve progressed (hopefully) in that longer time-frame. So while the update has been a lot of work, I’ve made sure I’ve taken the time to stop and look at (and think about) many of the images and not losing the benefit of working with older material.
So when Ann was pulling out images to include in our 2022 Amsterdam Trips update two images immediately triggered something in my brain. I said, “Hey, I think those are from when I made that water image I like so much!” Well, I checked my Lightroom catalog and confirmed, indeed, I was right.
Her first image is of me pausing from making a series of images I’d made of the canal and the boats along the side of canal. You can see a tourist boat to the left in the canal (through the wheels of a parked bike) that caused me to wait.
With the image below, I had just photographed that smaller boat sticking out at a 90 degree angle, now docked to a house boat, when the tourist boat came in from the connecting canal and executed a right-turn beneath my feet. Liking the various angles the boats formed as well as the wake from the tourist boat’s thrusters, I decided to make an image.
And then I noticed the surface of the water, and started studying it. That’s when Ann made her second photograph. Much like her photograph of me at the beach just north of Seal Rock, I’m standing there studying what’s before me - seeing (or trying to see) what’s there and how to photograph it.
I recall standing there quite a while, and then staring to photograph, taking the same photograph over and over, knowing that no two will be alike.
Yeah, I remember that moment.