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Ideas about landscapes, Part 2

The "landscape" formally has always been about the "stage." Perhaps the greatest creator of landscapes, Frederick Law Olmsted, made a career out of creating stages, not the least of which was Central Park in New York City, the most contrived of "natural" landscapes that ever has been. Poetic landscapes have been the subject matter of painters and landscape architects alike. While the painting genre was formally recognized in the 15th Century it wasn't until the early 19th Century that the idealistic scenes as depicted in most landscape paintings began to impress on the ideals of society. The elements of compositional rules were similar with forgrounds competing with backdrops, standards in proportion, and even when complete wilderness was depicted there was often an allowance for human occupation or a destination within the image or quite often a description of a voyage from one part of the image to another.

This photograph is another study in this medium that I previously proclaimed little affinity for. The elements of the composition in the forground act to frame the background and the bench is quite a literal invitation to occupy the space but its position and orientation directs the viewer to look back or out of the frame. The elements seem, well, elemental. This (the image in the top right corner) seems nearly identical compostionally though it's not a painting I would say I like. But also consider that Asher B Durand, a 19th Century landscape painter did this similarly composed image a long time before I took that photograph today.

The landscape as a formal exploration is something that continues to be a challenge. Looking at the work of Vancouver photographer Roy Arden is a good example of that, the compositional building blocks are distorted or minimalized and yet the proportions and framing are all too familiar in his photographs, Landfill, being one such example.

I suspect there will be more to this tangent than I first anticipated when I rode out into the bush with a camera on my back a week or so ago.

Ideas about green and landscapes

I am first and foremost not a landscape photographer and it's something I rarely try. And a dark and misty day is probably the worst day to attempt something that at the best of times I am dismissive of. Trees. Big whup. A babbling brook. So what. But it should be said that taking pictures, err, photographs of landscapes is no easy task. These are proof. You can haul a bag full of exotic lenses out into the bush on your back and Photoshop the greens to boggle the mind because the photos rarely do them justice and in the end still get moderately reasonable photographs but certainly nothing mind boggling. So why post them? Well, probably to keep myself honest. I'll attempt this sort of thing again probably sooner than I care to admit. There has to be merit in understanding the subject matter and capturing it effectively, it can only make one a better photographer.

Organic Matters

You can't use a box of crayons if you're going to create a masterpiece though that is probably giving this one too much credit. I took this picture with a different camera for a different project and there is a large difference in quality. The other picture has more to do with this and the pictures that I take along those lines aren't about technique or metaphors or much really, but more about pretty things I see along the way. Hugh Crawford took a Polaroid every day from 1979 until he died in 1997. His photographs tell an amazing story without words. There are no names, no addresses, just pictures but, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and after 18 years of daily photographs there are a lot of words implied.

More random images

Tree


Storage

I may take this one off of here, it's a little...

Ivy



Night Sky


Fireworks


There's little direction to these images. There's little consistency in subject matter, style, theme. I suspect I'm distracted by other things but I still carry my camera, or two cameras, with me everywhere. The days are getting exceptionally short and, of course, we passed the day that it was figured it would be a good idea to shift the clocks an hour so it's getting dark at around 5pm. The light we get in winter is often delightful, the soft, cool, low light, but it's scarce and there's the rain to deal with here in Vancouver which isn't the best thing to expose cameras to. Still, the pictures are coming, slowly, and the metaphors are there, the little narratives.

random images

I have a new camera and a couple of new lenses and, like a new pair of shoes, they are taking a little while to break in. You sometimes forget that the new "tools" don't always automatically bring better results. It's like a television, you buy a new one and it's bigger and brighter and flatter with better sound and the remote is really cool but the crap you can watch on it is the same crap that you could watch on your old television, only it's clearer crap, brighter crap, crisper crap, with better sound. That being said, here's some crap from the last few weeks taken with a camera that's getting more and more comfortable in my hands every day.

The Argument



Self Portrait Number Eight (thank you Nikkor 50/1:1.4D)


Nostalgia (this is the same picture that I took some ten or twelve years ago, I have the original and I will scan it in the near future and attach it here)


Ed. There are very few photographs of Ed.


Honestly


And Then

One We Were Here

I have an infatuation with temporary artifacts, small cues as to what might have happened not long ago, fleeting moments that seem so insignificant as they happen but are more important than they let on at the time. It's the little things that are important and it's usually the little things that get skimmed over.

Dining

I should have stopped down on this one a bit, the depth of field is just a hair shy of getting the candle and the lace table cover over the front edge of the table. One stop is all it would have taken I'm sure. But still the image does most of what i wanted it to.

You rarely think about video and photography together but I found this video about a favourite photographer Todd Hido and then there was this video about John Chiara that is pretty inspiring. John is a new one to me and I look at his process and it boggles the senses that he goes through such a convuluted effort to come up with a single image in a day but the images are pretty emotional and chock full of narrative which is something I struggle with in a lot of my photographs. Even though I think I missed today's image technically I think I got the emotion and narrative I was looking for which is why it's here. I'll take it again one day soon and see if I can get the technical side down as well but for now this will do.

hiatus

New camera, a need for software to understand it, and life. It all makes taking photographs confusing. Maybe I should buy a film scanner and be done with it. It was so simple. The day I get CS3 I search the internet for the RAW converter for my cutting edge technology digital camera only to find out I'm already obsolete, that CS4 is rearing it's ugly head to make those of us new to CS3 feel that much more out of date. And a new computer with an uncalibrated screen. For all I know the image for today is lime green and pink. Oh well. I'm sure I will be up to speed shortly and maybe I'll even find a day to take photographs again. That might be alright.

Birthday Jam

Here's the rest of the set from the Birthday Jam.

portraits

A good friend of mine lent me a Leica M3 film camera. "When do you want it back?" I asked. "I'll let you know when, let's leave it at that," he said. It's an amazingly soulful piece of equipment, heavier than you would imagine, and it feels very good in your hands. Since the camera was generously loaned to me by a friend I figured a reasonable first chore for it would be to take pictures of my friends with it. It's been fun but I'm not done yet. There's still film in the camera and it goes most places with me. For now this is a good start. I would suggest clicking on the slideshow button to view the set.

Jarvis

I should take more pictures of people.

An aside, I was recently made away of Elliot Erwitt. He's one of those photographers we all know but didn't realize who he was. A surprising number of his images are very familiar, we've all seen them before, but at least I have never given him credit, never realized they were all the product of one man.

Birthday Jam

Johann turns 40 this year. It's not that big of a deal to him but everyone else is making a big deal out of it asking him what he wants for his birthday or what he wants to do. He's a drummer and been in a number of bands but sold his drum kit a while ago before going to Austria for a few months. For his birthday he thought it would be pretty cool if people didn't get him "stuff' but rather if he could get together with a few of his musician friends and "jam" for a while it would be pretty amazing.

More images from the jam to follow.

Later that same day...

They were closed but I would have bought a refreshing beverage if they were open.

castles

There are interesting tensions in this image. The idea of sending out for food which is brought by a servant of sorts to your home that is protected by a buzzer board. It's public vs private, and the blue sky reflecting in the window subverts that relationship somewhat by embodying quite visually the metaphor of freedom through isolation and rejection. But that's where the delivery guy comes in, despite the fortress, despite the safety, there will always be risks, the need to let others in.

found

introspective

as opposed to retrospective.

more random images

Two more random images. The first image was inspired by another one I saw of an intriguing doorway. There's something about the directional door handle plates that I really like. I'm not sure I have much to say about the second image except that it makes me happy.

Laura

I've just gotten some film scanned. I forget I even took this photograph of my friend Laura.

Random Images, err, well, not so "random"

I'm not sure where these fit in. There are long discussions to be had about what makes a good photograph, what makes a good picture, what makes art. The first image is the easiest to address an underlying narrative to, the other two may simply be compositional exercises. I see the irony in the fact that I get more obsessive about the images as they get more vague. The top image, the one of the baggage carousel, it took quite a while to fix the distortion that the lens put into it, and it makes me covet the $1800 lenses I see available for my camera.

I like the idea that somewhere a bag arrives where it's supposed to but the person who was supposed to accompany that bag changed his mind last minute and decided to go somewhere else. Go home? Go away? Doesn't matter. The bag ended up where the person thought he/she should go and it would probably be an interesting story if there were ever a way to know it.

Untitled

There was a precariousness that was evident. The world, often considered a nemesis of sorts for her, pushed back despite her best efforts to contain it.

Mostly she hoped to not be noticed but there was no containing her. She was too dissimilar. And that’s why he loved her and also why he could never tell her.

Noesis

On the Cusp

Storm clouds are gathering.

Paths and Destinations

Notions of conformity and regularity

This is an old one from Calgary. I haven't had much time/energy to be taking many pictures lately. I do have four roles of exposed film I need to get developed one day soon and a project well underway and a second one that has just begun so I suspect there will be lots soon but for now...

Puddle Jumping

It's pissing rain in Vancouver which really shouldn't come as any big surprise but still, it's getting tired this incessant rain and the cool temperatures. There's been a couple of warm days but for the most part the days get up to 14 degrees and I'm still riding to work with a jacket and gloves on. When they brag about the weather out here it's usually in the winter when the rest of this country is buried under snow and bone chilling temperatures. It was a rare weekend where I got to hang out with my daughter for two days in a row (Christ, it's rare when I get to hang out with her for one full day with all the commuting I've been doing back to Calgary to renovate the old house) and the best laid plans of mice and men, well, we all know how that goes. So there I am looking out the window and cursing the relentless downpour ruining a day when there should have been playgrounds and swingsets and trips to the market down the street when I remember that humans are somewhere between 55 and 70% water and most of our openings are waterproof or at the very least highly water resistant so why wouldn't we go out and find a couple of puddles to jump in? I couldn't tear Sophie away from the puddles, she thought it fabulous, though her jumping skills aren't fully developed yet as she barely manages an inch or so clearance off the ground. Still, it was enough to make a splash and she thoroughly enjoyed herself. Me? I've got to admit jumping in the puddles was alright by me too.

Essentials

Yes, I'm still alive. This is a photograph I took in Paris last summer. It's of LeCorbusier's apartment. When he lived there it was a much more cluttered space. This image is about the essentials. Having just moved (still moving?) I can appreciate the inventory of possessions as seen in this photograph. It looks like a lovely place to be.

paradise...

There's a sign that hangs above the bar in the Cameron House in Toronto that says "This Is Paradise." I imagine driving there one day, from wherever it is I happen to be, not particularly quickly but with purpose. It's been suggested before that life isn't about the destination, it's about the journey, but sometimes it's nice to know where you're going too.

Beauty is where you find it

This is a Regina bicycle chain from around the mid 80's. It came off a beautiful handmade bike made by some small builder that you and I have never heard of. I should have taken pictures of the bike but I didn't. I did take pictures of the chain and some of the components as they came off the bike. This chain, it has hollow pins except for a small grouping where the chain was designed to be broken for removal and installation. You can see a couple of those links at the top center of the image.

It's just a bike chain, yes. But the energy that went into making this idea a reality, the idea of hollow chain rivets, well, wow, that's really cool. And that it was made to last, made to be "owned" instead of "used," well that's priceless.

It's about time I went for a bike ride. Not commuting, not going from a to b, not simply pushing the pedals and making the bike go forward, but a real honest bike ride where you get to close your eyes sometimes, and hit curbs, and run through puddles with your feet in the air. It's about time.

edges

I've not had much time to take photographs lately but I always seem to have a camera on me. Having recently re-found an appreciation for film the process of coming up with photographs has been slowed somewhat. I do have a compact disc chock full of digital scans of negatives but as a part of my new found ludditism (appreciation of the mechanical over digital camera) the computer holding that disc isn't even plugged in so it's trapped in its grip until I get motivated to release it.

These images are all digital and somewhat randomly happened upon taken at different times on different days. There was an idea about "transitions" that was to be an underlying theme with them but it's really manifest itself as "edges."

I should also mention that while I like each one of these images individually as a set, especially as presented here, I'm not very happy with them. Oh well.