The Photographist

Somewhat Later On

2019-12-01T15:30:00.000-05:00

So... To pick up where I left off, I've been at Tower Gallery now for a little more than two years. I get to show my black and white photographs there now, but there is at least some dissension. Why haven't I done this blog in all that time? Well... I dunno. Maybe artistic malaise, creative entropy? My muse is away. It isn't that I haven't been making photographs, I have. And some aren't too shabby. Maybe I just haven't been excited about them enough to boast. When photography was a hobby for me I enjoyed going around making photographs just for the fun of it, but it's an expensive hobby. When it started to pay for itself, my motivations shifted. Eventually, lately, finally, I've gotten to where I don't worry so much about whether or not the photographs I make will sell. I've started again seeing photographs just for me, just like back when it was just a hobby.

As the cars crossed the bridge, their headlights reflected in the water. They appeared to flicker as they passed behind the guardrail supports and the flickers are visible in the water.

I made this picture this morning. It's certainly not a knock-your-socks-off image, is it? But this is what I see. This is one of the places I know. I have no idea if I will keep this blog going or not. I kinda hope so. It may become more occasional than it was in the past, before it stopped. We'll see.

© 2019 Buck Ward The Photographist www.buckward.net

Color???

2017-08-24T21:41:00.000-04:00

I received a phone call from an artist at the Tower Gallery on Sanibel. She had seen a photo of mine at the All Florida Exhibit and asked if I'd be interested in joining their artist's co-op. They had an opening for a photographer. I would have to make a presentation to a jury. I agreed to do it. The chairman of the jury emailed me and said that they already have a black and white photographer. She suggested that, to avoid being in competition with that photographer, I should show them color photographs. So, I did. I hurriedly had some color photos printed and framed. For my jury interview I took four black and white photographs (black and whites are what I have on hand) and five brand new in living color. After an amiable, informal half hour, they told me they had several other artists to interview and that they would let me know within 24 hours. Then they helped me load my photos back into the car. 24 hours went by. No call. 48 hours. Still nothing. When it finally did come, I figured it was the consolation call. But no; They had interviewed another photographer and after long discussion and debate they had decided to ask both of us to join their gallery. The jury chair stressed that this invitation was if I would show color photographs rather than my black and whites. With some reticence, I agreed. So, now I have about a week to build an inventory of color prints.

These are the color photographs I took to Sanibel for my interview with the jury.

These are old photographs. Two were made on film. The most recent was made in 2009. My self identity as a photographer, as The Photographist, is as a black and white photographer. What have I gotten myself into?

© 2017 Buck Ward The Photographist www.buckward.net

I Do Tend to Repeat Myself

2017-08-15T20:25:00.000-04:00

On a blustery morning a couple of weeks ago, I made these photographs at the Fort Myers Beach Pier.

It wasn't until later, after I got home, that I realized how like a previous session this had been.

Take a look at this blog post from four years ago: Like a Box of Chocolates

© 2017 Buck Ward The Photographist www.buckward.net

Thirteens

2017-07-30T18:15:00.000-04:00

Two photographs of the same subject: One exposure, before sunrise, is 13 seconds. The other exposure, made 13 minutes later, after sunrise, is 1/13 second.

Both were made using a hard edge Graduated Neutral Density filter. The first also employed a full Neutral Density filter.

© 2017 Buck Ward The Photographist www.buckward.net

2278, Before and After

2017-03-12T21:34:00.000-04:00

Or, continuing the theme of the previous post

Several years ago I had an exhibit in a photographic gallery downtown. The curator was reluctant to show my work because he knew I did nature stuff. He stressed he was geared more towards gritty urban photos. The black and white photos I ultimately showed in his gallery weren't particularly gritty, but they were urban. They didn't sell, and now that gallery is no more. I don't think I was responsible for its demise. But, one never knows, does one.

So, here is one of my very few gritty urban photographs. (Not one I showed in that gallery) I made the photograph above in 2009. The backside of 2278 First Street was definitely gritty. Now that our downtown, promoted as The River District, is gentrifying, things are getting spruced up. 2278 is now a happenin' bar and restaurant, with apartments upstairs. The photo below was made in 2017. It's all spiffed up. If you want gritty, the older one is gritty.

© 2017 Buck Ward The Photographist www.buckward.net

Then and Now

2016-12-31T13:04:00.000-05:00

If Fort Myers were in England it would still be in its infancy, but it's pretty old for southwest Florida. In our Historic River District there are quite a few buildings more than a hundred years old. I like to photograph the old buildings, out of a sense of history as much as art. This is a relatively new building, but it will be old some day. It was built in about 1999 as the City Pier - a home for the Buquebus, a high speed catamaran shuttle to Key West. The Buquebus never happened. From 2008 to 2013 the building was the home of Art of The Olympians, established by the family of the late Al Oerter, artist and four-time discus gold medal winner. Now it is the office of Allure, a luxury condo development yet to be built. The Allure folks brought these large metal sculptures to the River District, about two dozen of them scattered about.

Anyhow, here are two photographs of the City Pier, then and now.

© 2016 Buck Ward The Photographist www.buckward.net

A New Tool

2016-11-27T11:47:00.001-05:00

Several months ago I downloaded some new software - The NIK Collection, in particular Silver Efex, a black and white editor. I had heard about it. I knew some photographers used it, but I was satisfied with my aging version of PhotoShop. Then, last April it became available for free. It still is, as far as I know. Look it up.

I had been making photographs that just weren't satisfying. That's been the story for quite a while, as evidenced by the paucity of material posted here on this blog. I had worked with this one in PhotoShop, treating it the way I usually do. It just didn't work. So I thought I'd give Silver Efex a shot and booted it up. It has presets; so I ran through the selections. Many of them were unimpressive and some looked just like the results I had gotten using Photoshop. But a few got my attention. Below are two versions of a picture I had made that morning, predawn. The lower one is the PhotoShop conversion and the upper one is a Silver Efex preset with some additional PhotoShop editing. I found the difference to be remarkable. Wha'dya think?

I still haven't figured out how to use Silver Efex. It's a thing I keep meaning to do, to run through the tutorials and learn how to use it. My great talent for procrastination intervenes. But it has the presets. You don't need to know anything; you just click on the preset and see how it looks: Nope, nope, nope, pretty good, nope, nope, even better, nope nope, that's it!

So, I tried it on some recent also-rans and came up with some that aren't so bad.

© 2016 Buck Ward The Photographist www.buckward.net

Fire on the Presli Jo

2016-05-22T13:36:00.000-04:00

I saw the smoke, a black plume in the early morning twilight. It was at the yacht basin. When I got there, I could see flames, but there were no fire trucks around. A big yacht horn sounded, loud and long. I called 911 on my cell phone. They didn't answer and then a cop car drove up. I hung up and took a picture (above) with my phone. Another cop car drove up. I was going back to my car to get my camera. The cop parked behind me told me to go away, so I moved the car. Still no fire trucks.

I got my camera and telephoto lens out of the car and found a place where I could see the fire. It was a small sailing yacht, fully engulfed in flames.

Finally I heard the siren of a fire truck, and I saw the red lights. The fire burned. I couldn't see any fire fighters and the fire seemed to go on and on. After a while I saw a stream of water from behind another yacht. It was like a garden hose but it did seem to reduce the size of the flames. Then the water stopped for a while, then started again more vigorously. Pretty quickly, the flames went out.

I shifted my position and I could see a small crowd of fire fighters and other people on the dock. One was holding a hose, spraying the ill-fated sailboat, which was still steaming. Then a fire boat came and slowly towed the burnt yacht out from among the other berthed yachts and out into the river, to the outer dock. I could see the name, the Presli Jo.

By this time, the sun was coming up and I went on my way, like the cop had told me to do.

Causeway Skies

2015-11-09T15:06:00.001-05:00

or... Chasing the Sun and the Moon and Catching Clouds Instead

Near the equinox, from a particular vantage, the sun will rise directly behind the lighthouse. I've been trying, twice a year, to make a good photograph of this. No luck again this year. On this particular morning, – the calendar had turned the page to October; the sun would rise to the right of the lighthouse – one last try. One more “better luck next time”. The sun rose into the clouds and started spraying its rays. I stayed. I was rewarded with this nice sunburst. When this pelican flew into the frame, just by luck I managed to catch it silhouetted against the sun streak in the water.

My task this October morning had been to catch the crescent moon rising behind the Sanibel lighthouse about an hour before sunrise. The sliver of moon rose in a dark sky lightly streaked with wisps and then faded from view before the sun cleared the horizon. I got some crescent moon pictures, but nothing to knock your socks off. And then, over the next hour, this dramatic cloudscape built up. Not long after I made this picture, the clouds smeared into a dull overcast.

It was the gibbous moon that I wanted. The moon was setting and the clouds were rising; the opportunity wouldn't last. I saw the anhinga in the mangrove; it drew me to this location. I experimented with the composition – the tree, the bird, and the moon. I really wanted the moon to be lower so I could make the image with the long end of the range on the 17-40 zoom lens., to fill the frame with the tree and bird, and to make the moon as large as possible. But it just didn't work. The moon was too high for that, and would have disappeared in the clouds by the time it was in a better position. So I moved about, trying this, trying that. Then the little boat came a long, and, something I don't usually do, I popped off a couple with people in them. This is the one I chose. The moon, initially the inspiration for the picture, is a hardly noticeable tiny little bonus.

Polarizing Clouds

2015-10-21T12:38:00.001-04:00

Polarizing filter - a simple and effective photographer's tool.

One of the things a polarizing filter is good for is increasing the contrast in clouds, especially on a hazy day. I show you these two photos simply to illustrate the effect a polarizing filter can have on clouds. One photo was made with the polarizer rotated to its maximum effect; the other was made with the polarizer rotated to its minimum. The maximum setting slowed the shutter speed by two stops, but in this case that was inconsequential. The positive effect on the image is remarkable. To be most effective, the axis of the lens needs to be pointed perpendicular to the direction of the sunlight, that is, the sun should be to your side rather than in front or behind you.

Fun with Ospreys

2015-06-26T16:34:00.000-04:00

When I go out on my photographic forays I usually look for something of scenic value, a landscape. I used to be an avian photographer, but now it's pretty much just landscapes. Sometimes the locale lends itself to either. I was out on the Sanibel lighthouse beach, one of my recurring venues, and there was nothing to be had, landscape-wise. I've pretty much milked it for all it's got, but it's a nice place to be. There are ospreys there. I usually ignore them. I have hundreds of osprey pictures in my files. But on this particular day, they were showing off, so I went back to the car and got my long lens and had a lot of fun. My bird skills are gone, but this was like shooting fish in a barrel, so to speak.

The Osprey and the Shell Picker

2015-05-23T16:56:00.000-04:00

Beach erosion has taken this old buttonwood. It's still twiggy, but before too long it will be a picturesque snag, if some collector doesn't cut off its branches. I made this picture last week, at low tide. I had to wait about 20 minutes for a slow moving shell picker to mosey out of the frame. At one point she looked up at me as I stood waiting behind my tripod, arms folded across my chest, and said, “Oh, am I in your picture?” I nodded. “Sorry,” she said, and went back to her shelling. I went back to my waiting.

So, a week later it was high tide, according to the natural scheme of things. I returned to do it again, to see if I might be able do to it a little differently. A neutral density filter and a graduated neutral density filter let me shoot into the rising sun with a long enough exposure (about two seconds) to turn the surf satiny. The tide and surf kept the shellers out of my frame but the ospreys were there, on a favorite perch right next to my buttonwood snag.

Grandmother's Dresser - A Still Life

2015-05-13T14:08:00.000-04:00

I participated in Broadsides – Poetry Off the Shelf at the Alliance for the Arts, a project in which artists create visual art to accompany poetry by local poets, with the poem to be printed directly on the artwork. My assignment was Grandmother's Dresser by Marnie Heenan. This was a challenge for me. I had never before photographed a staged still life. The dresser in the image does belong to a grandmother, also known as my lovely spouse Peggy, who upon seeing my complete ineptitude, graciously volunteered to be my adviser in the project.

The thing about a poem, a descriptive poem like this one, is that it elicits images in the mind's eye of the reader that are necessarily different from what the poet sees. Everybody's grandmother's dresser is different, so I felt I had the freedom of artistic license. But when I looked at my first test photographs, I realized that we had so many of the things in the poem, I really needed do the best I could to try to replicate it. It wouldn't be Marnie's grandmother's dresser, but I should try to photograph the poem complete, as I saw it in my mind's eye. I had read it so many times by now that I knew all the items by heart. And so began a sort of treasure hunt, an epic shopping adventure under the expert guidance of my adviser.

I experimented with the lighting, and finally settled on ambient window light, with no artificial lighting. It required a longish exposure time, initially about 8 seconds.

This dresser has a mirror, which of course captures an image of the photographer, who isn't in the poem. I thought I would deal with this issue in post-production digital editing, that is, I would Photoshop it. A mirror shouldn't be blank, so I had an idea of superimposing an image in the mirror. The image I had in mind is a portrait of my grandmother, which I wanted to subdue so that it would seem soft and ghostlike. On a fairly early test photograph, I roughed it in just to see how feasible this idea was. It just didn't work; It didn't look good.

To hide myself from the mirror I used a plush throw blanket held in front of me and the tripod. With some practice, I was able to squeeze behind the tripod, between the bed and wall, and to hold the blanket, so that my tripod and I were effectively hidden from the mirror.

Then something unexpected happened. The cat, the one in the poem that the laser toy was too mean to, got into the act. The bed is this cat's natural habitat. When he moved into the frame to see what was going on, immediately he became a necessary element of the image. Of course he didn't want to be where I wanted him to be. The proverbial rule about herding cats came into play. His inclusion in the photograph added a level of frustration. In the low light of the windows, filtered through the sheer curtains, I had been using an exposure of eight seconds. The cat wouldn't hold still for eight seconds. I bumped the ISO one stop and opened the aperture one stop to reduce the exposure time to two seconds. This was doable, I thought. I could hold the cable release in my right hand which also held a corner of the blanket, and trip the shutter just when the cat was being still, for two more seconds I hoped. So, picture this: I coax the cat into the right location on the bed, clamber over the spread legs of the tripod, grab one corner of the blanket in one hand and the other corner and the cable release in the other, try to position the button under my thumb, raise the blanket, and then the cat comes over to see what's going on, expletive deleted, try again.

We tried numerous different arrangements on the dresser, trying this, trying that. Finally I got it, nearly perfect, or at least as good as I could expect it to be. By this time, I was ready to be finished. I started processing this image and discovered to my great chagrin that I had forgotten the wallet, which, when it wasn't performing its duties as a member of the still life company, resided in my pocket.

So, back to the old drawing board, as they say. This time all the pieces were in place, the cat was reasonably cooperative, and, voila, I had it. After more than 200 photographs over the course of three weekends, it was done. It still required post-processing, to convert to monotone sepia and to clone out the light switch and the small picture hangers on the wall, to hide the exposed edge of the blanket in the mirror, and numerous other small corrections and adjustments, but I finally had it - the image you see at the top of this blog post.

Marnie asked that I not put the full text of her poem in this blog post. She hopes to get the poem published in a literary magazine, and they usually won't accept submissions that have been posted online. She did consent to my use of her name, and publishing the final Broadside image with her poem on it. If you click on the image, it should enlarge, making the poem easier to read.

As it hangs on the wall in The Alliance, I wonder how many people actually read the poem, and how many look for the one item in the poem that isn't visible in the photograph. I think most people probably don't see the cat.

Dredging Off Lover's Key

2014-07-17T18:39:00.001-04:00

The newspaper article had said the beach renourishment project would be starting soon, Bonita Beach first then Lover’s Key, in August. They’d be dredging the sand from Big Carlos Pass. The last time they did a renourishment project at Lover’s Key was about ten years ago. They’d had to stop for a storm – Charley in 04’ or maybe it was Frances or Jean, I don’t remember for sure. Whenever they do a beach renourishment, they rake the beach clean of any snags, deadfall or driftwood. I like to photograph driftwood. I had made one good photograph of the deadfall there, ( First Quarter, December 2011 ) but I hadn’t been to Lover’s Key for a while. I figured I’d better get out there and get what I could while the getting was good. I didn’t really have a plan, just a notion that I should go soon, before it was too late.

After getting my morning coffee from the McDonald’s drive-thru I drove absentmindedly in my usual direction. I didn’t make the turn to Sanibel – hmm, must be going to Fort Myers Beach. After crossing the bridge to the beach, I made the turn to the south. Smiling to myself, driving south down the island, I remembered Lover’s Key and the imminent dredging project. Then, crossing the drawbridge over Big Carlos Pass I could see the dredges out in the Gulf, lit up in the dark.

With my old tripod slung over my shoulder I came out from the path onto the narrow strip of beach that runs along the pass. I saw the dredge barge anchored just off the little beach, and the yellowy-silverish rippley reflection of the full moon. I walked a little way, to shift my perspective so the barge would be in the pool of moon shiny water, and stopped to make a picture. The sky is blue and the water is blue, even the land is blue and the barge is blue in the moonlight. The moon was too high for a good composition. I looked behind me to see the sky lightening where the sun would come up. If I waited here for a little while, the moon would get lower and the scene before me would get lighter. I explored the composition, walking up and down the beach, trying different lenses, biding my time. I would’ve just walked on if it hadn’t been for the setting moon. I have a thing for the moon. Plus, I knew that the light would be no good to do anything with the deadfall on the Gulf beach. And the barge was off my beaten photographic path. Gradually, as the sun moved to meet its appointed time for sunrise, the wispy clouds over the Gulf began to turn pink. I put on the ultra-wide to catch the whole sky. I was really too far from the barge for the most pleasing composition but I exposed the sky anyway. I figured that in the time it would take me to walk closer the nice color would fade, and so it did. In the early light the barge began to show its color, so I dawdled, waiting for the sun to rise high enough to light it so I could make its portrait with its full-moon companion looking over its shoulder from a distance. I knew that the old dead trees on the beach were still in the shade. They’d wait.

When I did come to the old dead trees, there was a little vehicle in their midst – the ranger cart. Not surprising; the times I’d been here before it had left its tire tracks in my foregrounds, or I had had to pick up my tripod to move out of its way. It was straddling a clump of roots and its right rear wheel had dug itself into the sand, a couple of pieces of wood jammed under it in a futile hope for traction. The ranger was walking away.
“I’ll help you get it out,” I called.
She turned and said, ”It’s okay. Somebody’s coming.”
So we waited; I for the sun to climb and for the cart to be out of my scene, and she for help to arrive. I asked her when the renourishment was scheduled to start on this beach.
“In August,” she said, “after they finish Bonita Beach, down there.” She pointed.
I asked if she knew what date in August. She didn’t, saying it depends on the weather. Shortly, another ranger drove up in his cart. An elderly man walking the beach was eager to help, despite his severely hunched-over posture. We got the cart unstuck. The two rangers went their separate ways, the old man continued up the beach, and I was back to my mission of looking at dead trees.

I finally found what I thought was a good picture of the old trees, looking down the beach. The hunchbacked old man, on the return leg of his walk, said from behind me, “They’re going to renourish this beach, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” I said.
“I don’t know why they’re dredging over there,” he said with an air of consternation, pointing at the dredges out in the Gulf off the pass. Seeing the camera on the tripod, he asked, “You taking pictures?”
No. Whatever would give you that idea? “Yes,” I said, “Do you know when they’re going to start putting sand on this beach?” I asked, still hoping for a more definite schedule.
“In August, after they finish with Bonita Beach. What you taking pictures of?”
“These old dead trees,” I told him, “They’ll probably take them out when they do the renourishment.”
“Oh, they won’t do that,” he informed me, “They’ll only do the beach down there, near the pavilion. Why would they want to do it up here?”
“So the rangers won’t get their carts stuck on roots,” I thought. I could see he was about to continue on his way so I asked him please to hold up a moment and turned to my camera.
“Oh, I won’t hold you up any longer,” he said and strode away. I quickly pressed the shutter button, but not quickly enough, as his arm swung prominently into my frame. So, as I waited for him to disappear into the distance on down the beach, more people came walking along, sauntering, moseying, dawdling, inspecting important pieces of flotsam. Fishermen, wearing Larry the Cable Guy shirts, nosed their boats along the shore, casting their bait nets in the water near the dead trees, coming up empty and slowly motoring on down the beach. I made a few photos with people looking down wondering if that shell was worth picking up and with small boats hovering between the boles of the trees. Photojournalism, I mused; this is what Lover’s Key used to look like, before the beach renourishment project, back in ‘14. I won’t get to be an artist this morning.

After a while, the people and the boats moved out of my frame, or they were hidden behind the trunks of the dead trees. I exposed one final frame and headed back, wishing I had thought to make pictures of the stuck ranger’s cart and the hunchbacked old man.

Sunrise Imperfection

2014-06-02T18:21:00.000-04:00

The weatherman says the weather is going to be perfect in the morning, not a cloud in the sky. Perfect is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. I like a clear sky as much as the next guy, but all this perfection gets to be a little monotonous after a while. I want a sky with something in it. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean gray and overcast. But clouds can be nice - just a little something for some character. For months now, it seems, we've had clear skies nearly every morning - a weatherman's forecast of perfect weather. Finally last week, we started getting the beginnings of the summer rainy season. The skies haven't been particularly impressive yet, but there has been a touch of character. This weekend, Saturday and Sunday mornings, we had sunrises that announced themselves with trumpets of color. Hallelujah! The first decent sunrise sky pictures I've gotten in months. Perfect is fine, but give me character any day.

The Moon and the Lighthouse, Again

2014-03-30T13:21:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago I finally managed to catch the full moon setting behind the Sanibel Lighthouse. The lighthouse and the moon has been an ongoing project. It seems I've blogged about it incessantly: August, 2011; October, 2011; January, 2012; June, 2013 .

I went out yesterday morning to catch the crescent moon rising above the lighthouse. The moon would rise about an hour before the sun. There is a place I could position myself to get the crescent almost directly behind the lighthouse from about a mile and a quarter away. It was raining when I awoke. The radar showed a narrow band of rain, but I hoped that it might move on by the time the moon would rise, so I headed out. It rained. I sat in the car. It rained. Eventually I convinced myself that the sun must be up by now. The sky was gray and gloomy and opaque and it rained all morning long. So half of my quest has been satisfied - the full moon. The project continues, to catch the crescent. At the rate I'm going it could keep me intermittently occupied for years to come

Caloosahatchee Manuscripts

2014-01-29T18:07:00.002-05:00

This neoclassical revival building in downtown Fort Myers began life as a United States post office in 1933. In the 1960s it was converted to a federal courthouse. When the federal judiciary left, they turned off the power and locked the doors. The roof leaked. Eventually the neglected deteriorated building became the Sydney & Berne Davis Art Center and a years-long renovation/restoration began.

In 2001 Florida Power & Light commissioned sculptor Jim Sanborn to create the two bronze cylinders, known as the Caloosahatchee Manuscripts. The western cylinder lists the Latin binomials of some of the plants Thomas Edison collected locally in his search for a local source of latex, for the making of rubber. The eastern cylinder recounts, in Native American text, a story from Seminole, Creek, and Miccosukee history.

As an artist, I have qualms about photographing the work of other artists to claim as my own, but as a documentarian I can hardly help myself. This light sculpture is so compelling I find myself returning to it again and again.

The earliest of these photographs I made about four years ago. I had the help of enthusiastic passersby to keep drivers from parking their cars on the street front while I waited for darkness to show the lights. The most recent was yesterday, in a predawn fog.

Merry Christmas

2013-12-20T12:14:00.001-05:00

I haven't been very diligent in posting to this blog lately. It's due to procrastination, which is my best thing, and also due to not having any new photographs worth showing to anyone. I hope the latter will change in the new year. I'll work on the procrastination when I get around to it.

Merry Christmas Everybody!

© 2013 Buck Ward The Photographist www.buckward.net

Announcing an Exhibition

2013-12-03T18:43:00.000-05:00

Art Walk is the first Friday evening of each month in downtown Fort Myers (now promoted as The River District). The streets and sidewalks are filled with winers and diners and art oglers. Arts for ACT is one the the best galleries in The River District. Beginning January 3, 2014, the first Friday in January, and continuing until February 3, Arts for ACT will be featuring an exhibition of my photographs.

Thomas A Edison Church

The exhibition will consist of 23 black and white photographs, mostly of downtown Fort Myers. Some of these photographs have been seen here in the postings of this blog over the past couple of years. Rather than repost them here, I'll just post links:

November 12, 2013 - First Street, Model A

July 31, 2013 - Centennial Park, High Point
September 17, 2012 - 1619 Jackson Street
May 21, 2012 - Ford's Garage
March 25, 2012 - Fort Myers Beach Pier, Raised Wing Gull
August 11, 2011 - High Point Joe's

In addition to these there are sixteen others, large and in person.

If you live near Fort Myers, I hope to see you at Art Walk in January.

A Change of Mind

2013-11-12T18:35:00.000-05:00

I blogged about the morning I made this photograph a year ago. I expressed the opinion that I usually preferred fog pictures to be in color rather than black and white. Well, I changed my mind in regard to this one, at least. Historic downtown Fort Myers is marketed by city fathers and their pitchmen as The River District. I will have an exhibition there in January of black and white photographs featuring The River District. (I'll announce the exhibition in a later blog.)

So, in rummaging through my archives for black and white River District pictures, I came across this one. Although I initially said I like the way the warm glow of the streetlights gave this the look of a monochrome sepia-toned image, I have since seen it on various monitors and it usually looks too yellow, or too orange, or, ugh, too green. I came not to like it very much and so decided to convert it. My custom printer and my framer both commented favorably on it, and it has grown on me, too. So I take it all back. I renege. Well, not really. I did originally say that fog pictures in color were my usual preference. So, this is the exception. Who knows, maybe I should change my mind about my usual preference.

Proof of Concept

2013-07-31T19:34:00.000-04:00

Something I've learned about photographing is that when you see a picture, you should get it then. If you put it off, it may not be there when you go to get it later. Other people change things without consulting you. So, when I saw this picture, I stopped and photographed it. Conditions weren't ideal, but I wanted to get it then, while I was there, just in case. There is a bridge behind me that casts its big shadow across most of my foreground. I also had a problem with casting my own shadow and the shadow of the camera on the tripod into the lower corner of the frame. I could have stayed and waited for the shadows to shift out of the way as the sun rose higher in the sky, but I had other places to be. The hazy sky and wan clouds weren't particularly to my liking either, but maybe it would look alright, I had hoped. On the whole, the picture isn't satisfactory to me.

A week later, we had a great storm in the night. I knew that puddle would be there in the morning to give me a reflection and I could wait an hour or two later for the shadows to move out of the way. When I got there, I was glad to see that there was no public activity going on that would have added people and clutter to my scene. Workers had just mowed the grass and were cleaning up with those obnoxious blowers with the motors on the workers' backs. My sidewalk was covered with grass clippings. They were all in my puddle, too. One of the workers came and blew most of the grass clippings away from the walk, except for a few and a cigarette butt and a bottle cap, which I picked up. He didn't blow the clippings out of the puddle.

The picture of the second attempt is better than the first, although still not good enough. I prefer the higher positioning of the camera that better defines the curve of the railing and shows the water of the river and the horizon and the mooring piles. In the first picture the piles look like something plopped on top of the hand rail. Also with the shifted camera position, the lamp near the left edge of the frame is separated from the palm - a small detail, but I prefer it. But then, they had trimmed the palms. I like the look of the untrimmed palms in the first picture better, the way the fronds kind of frame the roof of the building. Maybe it was the palm fronds that had made me choose the lower camera position in the first picture, to keep the fronds from overlapping the building. I can't remember for sure. My wish for a better sky was granted, but now maybe it was too much. I would have liked more well defined billowy clouds with more distinct patches of clear sky. The grass clippings in the puddle aren't as deleterious as I had thought they would be, but there was a fresh breeze blowing and that is what mussed my nice reflection.

So, this is my method and my madness. I am an iterative photographer, trying again and again until I get what I want, or settle for what I've got, or give up. The next time we have a storm in the night or in the morning, the puddle will cover the walk (unless they fix the drainage) and I will try again. Will conditions be more favorable? Maybe not. Will I ever get the photograph I see in my mind's eye? Unlikely, but I do have proof of concept.

Like a Box of Chocolates

2013-07-21T18:50:00.000-04:00

On my way to the beach I saw lightning in the predawn darkness. It gave me ambitious photographic thoughts. But by the time I arrived, the lightning excitement was over, with only a few distant flashes in the clouds out over the Gulf.

The thunder had quieted, but the clouds promised me they would be magnificent. When the sun lights them up, I mused, there will be great drama. But as the morning grew lighter, the thunderheads drifted away and began to dissipate, without a glance over their shoulders to me and my expectations.

When the sun cleared the horizon behind me, it painted the sky with golden light for a few brief moments. And then, as the glorious glow faded, a rainbow gradually arched across the sky.

Forrest Gump reminded us that you never know what you're going to get.

The Supermoon is Made of Rain

2013-06-30T05:37:00.001-04:00

Last Saturday, the supermoon would rise about 10 minutes before the sun went down. Lately folks have been calling the full moon at perigee the supermoon, because it is at its closest approach to Earth. But really, it looks just like any other full moon. My ephemeris (TPE) told me that from the causeway, the moon would rise near the lighthouse, so out I went. I chose a location I’ve chosen before. When I arrived, well before moonrise, there were great clouds on the horizon, thunderstorms out over the Gulf. I expected not to be able to see the moon through the clouds, but one never knows; and clouds and storms often make for dramatic photographs. I went ahead undaunted. As I walked along the low-tide beach at the base of the seawall, I had to duck under the lines of folks who were fishing from up on the seawall. I set up my tripod on the little sandbar under the bridge. I could see the pillars of rain under the distant clouds. The sun over my shoulder still brightly lit the buildings on Fort Myers Beach, three or four miles across San Carlos Bay. There was a big storm out there, moving our way. The rain slowly marched across the land and the water. Distant lightning was followed a few seconds later by the rumble of thunder. Fishermen began collecting their gear and migrating back to where their cars and trucks were parked, back on the causeway. Now the buildings on the beach didn't shine in sunlight and they became indistinct as they were shrouded by rain. The breeze freshened and Fort Myers Beach could no longer be seen. The rain moved across the water and approached the lighthouse headland from the Gulf. Small boats scurried for shelter, leaving their bright sunlit wakes in front of the advancing dark wall of rain.

The wind picked up. The edge of the rain was coming close. “Looks like it’s about time to run for the car,” I said to the guy fishing from the bridge support, as I lifted my tripod and closed its legs. "We’re staying put,” he shrugged. Just then, rain spattered my face. “Looks like I am, too,” I said. I clambered up onto the concrete base of bridge support number 27. The wind was really blowing now. A couple who had been fishing from the seawall moved their folding chairs way back to the far side under the bridge. Even under the bridge, I was getting wet from the blowing rain. I took off my photo vest and tucked it under the little cubby in the center of the bridge support and collapsed the tripod and put it there too. The lighthouse had vanished in the downpour. The sun, still visible above the horizon as a dull fuzzy yellow ball, was extinguished as the mass of falling water moved toward it. The two guys fishing from the support scrambled to get their paraphernalia. They planted it in the cubby with my camera gear. The wind was becoming a gale. I sought shelter in the lee of the bridge support and sat on the concrete base with my back against the support. The two fishermen joined me, squatting. The stinging needles of rain were moving horizontally. We heard a shriek and turned to see the couple on the seawall trying to keep their chairs and stuff from blowing away. They were drenched and losing the battle of the flying chairs. We hunkered in our tiny sheltered space, still getting wet from the spray flying around the concrete corners. The wind screamed. Thoughts of tornado twisted through my head

The peak of the storm passed and the wind eased a bit down from it's heart-thumping chaos. I tried to check the radar image on my iPhone to see if I could figure out how much longer we'd be trapped. The younger of the two anglers pulled out his phone too. He showed me a picture he had taken of the storm as it approached. “What a great picture!” I exclaimed, “Better than anything I got.” We got to talking. There's camaraderie among refugees. The younger, Jake, showed me on his phone some of his drawings and paintings. He's really good. His older brother, Chris, is visiting from Kansas and plays in a band called Slow Burn. We passed the time as the storm calmed. The crazy wind regained its sanity and the rain began falling downwards again instead of sideways and eventually it stopped. It had just been a scattered thunder shower, as the TV weathermen call them. “Oh no!”, Jake cried. "Everything's wet.” Our gear was soaked, sitting in half an inch of water. My vest is water resistant, so most everything was okay, and the cigarettes Jake had stowed in his shoe were dry, so no harm done. We could still see rainstorms off in the distance in the deepening dusk. I gathered up my stuff to go to the car. Jake and Chris stayed. Chris hoped to catch a shark, a bucket list thing. I wished them luck.

I never did see the supermoon. When I got home, the streets were dry. It hadn't rained at all.

Digital Filters for Black and White Conversion

2013-05-27T16:43:00.000-04:00

and a rant on grayscale

Several years ago, I was in the Everglades with a photographer who was using a large format film camera, you know, the old boxy kind where the photographer puts his head under a dark cloth and views the scene on a piece of ground glass on the back of the camera. He stopped the car on the dirt road we were following and got out and set up, composing a scene of a cypress dome under a blue sky with some clouds. I did the same, but seeing the scene through the viewfinder of my digital SLR, it looked kind of ho-hum to me. “Can I see what you see on your ground glass?” I asked. Instead of inviting me under his dark cloth, he took the red filter from his lens and held it in front of the lens on my camera. “This is what I see,” he said. Through my viewfinder, everything was red, but I was amazed at the difference in contrast. Later he told me that he could see the light bulb go on over my head. It was indeed an epiphany. It was after that that I started doing black and white digital photography.

I've been meaning to write a blog on this subject ever since it came up in the comments of a blog post, Soft and Hard, some months ago. The digital filters that are available to us in editing software, such as Adobe PhotoShop, let us do the same thing my large-format friend did with that red filter in front of his lens, but without having to carry a set of filters around with us in the field and with infinitely greater variety. We can apply these filters to our color digital photographs after the fact. Then if we aren’t satisfied with the result, we can try a different filter, or with digital sliders, we can alter the effective color of the filter to bring out the subtle nuances of the image we see in our mind's eye. There are other ways in digital editors to create black and white photographs, such as working with the various channels. Creating and manipulating a black and white layer is the method I use, for now.

In his book, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, the great master Ansel Adams often tells us of his use of filters. An orange filter was one of his most used. I usually try first the yellow filter and then the red filter, and sometimes adjust the sliders for something roughly between the two. (PhotoShop doesn’t give us a preset orange filter.) A filter will lighten its same color and darken it's complementary color. A blue filter lightens blue and darkens orange; a red filter darkens blue and lightens orange. See the illustration above. (The purpose of the photos in the illustration is simply to show the versatile tonal editing options available to the digital photographer, and not to demonstrate artistic values.)

A Rant:

Back in the film days, I experimented with black and white film only occasionally. I was almost always disappointed by the prints I got back from the lab. They were bland gray instead of the striking black and white masterpieces I wanted. Since my epiphany I've fallen in love with black and white photography. When I see a scene, I can visualize how it will look as black and white with the effect of a digital filter before I release the shutter. Usually when I see both a color version and a black and white version of the same image on some photographer’s website, the black and white is really just grayscale. The color has been sucked out if it leaving an anemic semblance. It has the same look as those old black and white prints from the automatic lab that so discouraged me. I know that this poor photographer doesn't know; He hasn't shared my epiphany. Aside from photographs that simply can't be printed in color, such as newspaper pictures, I think there is basically only one reason for a black and white photograph. It is for the sake of artistic expression. If the photographer can't make a statement with black and white, he shouldn't bother. Grayscale conversion just isn't the same thing as black and white photography. I've never had a case of "Gee, I can't decide. I guess I'll show both." So please, experiment with black and white, Have fun; be creative. But keep your grayscales to yourself.

Using a Polarizer

2013-05-12T19:55:00.000-04:00

To Reduce Glare and Reflections

These photographs were made with a polarizing filter attached to the lens. For the photo on the left, the filter was set for minimum effect, and for the one on the right it was rotated 90 degrees for maximum effect. As you can see, the polarizer eliminated almost all the glare from the water. Not only did the polarizer remove the glare, but it also removed the reflections. In the photo on the left you can see the reflections of the trees and sky. The highlights in the water are not actually direct sunlight, but are reflections of the overcast sky. In the photo on the right, the water is clear and you can see the bottom. Dialing in the polarizer also eliminated the shiny highlights from the leaves and from the scales of our little reptilian friend.

A polarizing filter will reduce the light reaching your sensor by a stop or two. In that regard, it can perform as a neutral density filter, should you so desire. Some folks are so enthralled by the wonderful things their polarizing filter can do that they keep it mounted all the time, but in most cases I think one should remove the filter from the lens if it isn't needed. In this example, dialing in the polarizer reduced the light by another full stop. Both photos were made at ISO 400 and f8, using aperture priority with +1/3 stop of exposure compensation. The exposure time for the photo on the left was 4/10 of a second and 8/10 for the one on the right. It was an overcast day, deep in a cypress swamp – not enough light for hand-holding, especially so with the filter attached. (Even though the camera was tripod mounted, I'm ashamed to admit that I did not use proper slow-shutter-speed technique, e.g. mirror lock-up and cable release, for these photos and so their sharpness is wanting)

The handsome creature on the log is a cottonmouth water moccasin, a venomous snake. In my experience, the reputation of the cottonmouth for being aggressive is greatly exaggerated.