Musings on Photography

Things have been a little slower in terms of posting because things have been a little more active on other fronts.

For example, in the ‘interesting things that have arrived’ front:

• A short stack of different books on book design, which puts me even farther behind on reading (I got distracted by Extraordinary People, a murder mystery by Peter May). Comments on these books in a few days.
• The L plate for the Powershot G9 finally arrived from Really Right Stuff, so it is now easier for me to do some serious image quality comparisons between the G9 and the EOS-5d. Hopefully progress on that soon.

Last night, I walked outside to get something from the studio and the night was very clear, with a more or less half moon illuminating the snow covered scenery. I was suddenly overwhelmed by that deja vu feeling that I’d seen this scene on Joe Reifer’s website, so I got out the camera, fiddled around for half an hour, and made one ten minute exposure. The clouds moved in and spoiled my nice star trails and I should have turned out the lights on the house, but the result was pretty interesting, and now I think I’m going to have to spend a little time fiddling around with this. It’s interesting in that way that indicates that perhaps I’ll spend more than a little time, actually. I will have to start paying attention to which places have those dratted ‘closes at dusk’ signs, I guess. This naturally provoked a sudden desire to buy some equipment.

On the subject of my musings on the photos not to take, I found this post on Mike Johnston’s TOP to be one of the best things I’ve read there. I’m not saying that Mike is right because he seems to agree that some photos are better not taken, or even that I agree with everything Mike has written. But I do appreciate the fact that people are thinking about it and that it’s being addressed by folks in places where the issue gets exposure.

My little community, a town of under two thousand souls, was recent stricken by a multiple homicide - six members of a family all murdered on Christmas eve. The event itself was enough to have the community reeling. Added to shock of the event was the impact of having all sort of reporters, camera crews, and photographers overrun the town. I stayed out of town for a week. It gave me increased sympathy for the plight of all those folks who lived near Nickel Mines, PA.

Well, I had stuff planned for the early part of this week. Instead of doing those things, I had weather. We’re fine here, with no problems other than a plugged culvert that caused water to flow across our driveway and threatened to wash it out. That’s all under control, now. Not fixed, but under control. Amazing what can be accomplished with plastic tarps, eh?

But roads are closed all over, which might make it interesting to go into Seattle in a few hours. At least this isn’t like last November, where the entire world was cut off from the center of civilization (aka Carnation, WA). This time, it was other places that really got hammered, although when driving home last night I several times had to drive through standing water 4-6 inches deep.

The good news is that the printheads for the Z3100 arrived, I put them in, and the printer seems to be fine now. It chugged along nicely yesterday when I was helping a friend out by making some prints for him. The nice prints did a lot to take the bad taste of my horrid support experience out of my mouth.

 The photos in my recent post Untitled are from just south of my home, where a huge windstorm caused widespread forest damage.  They’re photos of a salvage harvest - picking the fallen trees off the ground, taking down the hopelessly damaged standing trees, and preparing the area for replanting.  I’d made a number of satisfying photos in that stand of trees before the storm, and since then I’ve tried several times to take persuasive photos of the carnage after the storm.  Every time I try, I come back thinking that this time I’ve gotten something good, and every time the stuff I thought would be great turns out to be dreck.

Part of the difficulty is that it’s a daunting photographic problem, both visually and practically.  What was once a nice, beautiful stand of Douglas Fir was turned into a jumbled, random, tangled mess of trees that were very large.  It’s not just that it’s hard to move around in the mess, it’s that it’s downright dangerous.  That seemed to leave trying to photograph it from the edge, and everything I tried along those lines was just more photos of tangled mess.  I tried getting higher, I tried to isolate things and focus on details.  Nothing seemed to work.

The whole thing is just very frustrating on so many levels.

Have a Merry Christmas!

This is a view of what my car looked like for several days - all the ordinary stuff shoved forward (see dog bowl, tennis ball throwing device, etc.) and the wayback filled with chainsaw stuff. I spent a lot of time cutting up downed trees.

This is a view of the scene that’s now where the image from this post was made. It’s hard to tell from this photo, but this is a pretty big area where essentially ALL the trees came down. It’s just a huge tangled mess on the ground. To really convey some sense of the carnage, I need to find a way to photograph from a higher vantage. I’m working on that.

It’s really hard to get photographs that convey the scope of the destruction, not only because what was once an orderly, visually appealing forest scene is now just a tangled heap, but also because it was a spot that was one of my favorites, and it’s surprisingly hard to go back and photograph.

I had expressed that sense of loss and difficulty in even confronting the scene to Ed Richards, who has photographed post-Katrina New Orleans area extensively. His advice, which I think is pretty insightful, is that part of art is dealing with stuff like this. So, as time permits (I’ve been pretty busy) I’ll be out there with the camera, trying to capture not just the destruction of this forest but also how it develops from here.
One little anecdote… I was working helping a neighbor clear the driveway to his building site. I figure there were well over 100 trees across the drive. We had just cleared a stretch the previous day, and there was a huge tangle of cut up trees on the side of the road. I went back the next morning to get started, and caught a little movement out of the corner of my eye - a large number of little wrens were flitting about inside the tangle. Sure, to me it was a tangle of destroyed trees. To the wrens, it was a maze of protected little spots, just right for little birds to be safe from bird-eating predators.

Well, I have power, and I have propane, but now the internet connection is down. Sheesh.

As folks may know, we got whammied by the windstorm that hit the Puget Sound area last Thursday night. Our power has been out since 11:30pm last Thursday; fortunately, our generator ran flawlessly for five days straight.

Puget Sound Energy restored our power feed at about 1:30 pm today. Just a few hours later, we took a delivery of propane (which runs our heat, generator, etc.) So even if we lose power again in the windstorm the weather predictors are forecasting for tomorrow, we’re good for another ten days or so without any conservation measures. That huge rushing noise you just heard was my big sigh of relief.

Today I helped yet another neighbor finish cutting out from over a hundred windfall trees. I figure that’s pretty much three solid days driving a chain saw. My Stihl saw and I are like this (picture two fingers held side by side). Talk about reliable - that chainsaw has started reliably, never hiccuped or coughed, and has tackled trees so big I had to cut first from one side, then climb over and cut from the other side. The saw is ready for more but I am beat.

I’ll post something related to photography tomorrow. Maybe some photos, eh?

There have been no posts for the last few days because my area was hit by a massive windstorm. Power is out to a large number (hundreds of thousands) of people.

There’s quite a bit of damage in the forest right where I live; the stretch of forest where this photo was made was just south (easy walking distance) of my home. It was essentially destroyed - I’m guessing that 50% of the trees are down across an area of 20 acres. The spot where this photograph was made is now a meadow about 5 acres in size; all of the trees in this photo were destroyed and are now on the ground.

But we are all fine here - no one hurt. Power is still out (but the generator is running). My internet connection, which went down Thursday evening, is now back. Things have been busy, and when I haven’t been busy with a chain saw, I’ve been really, really tired. But things are starting to look semi-normal. I’ll return to normal posting in the next few days.