Newsletter No. 98: September, 2013
© Chris Harris. All rights reserved.
CONTENTS:
1. Charles Bridge, Prague: Touching base with the Old World.
2. Cutting Hay: Imagining I am the grass!
3. When the Moon Rises: It’s time to play!
4. Photographing with a Paint Brush: Intentional camera movement.
5. Time-honoured Rain: I can’t imagine Bella Coola Harbour under blue sky!
6. From Under the Porch Roof: An electrical storm passes by.
7. The Story Behind the Image: Anticipation, realization, expeditious action.
Hi everyone,
September has hardly begun, but because I will be away from the office for the last two thirds of the month, I’m writing this Newsletter early.
We’ll bounce around this month; from local farms to the high alpine, and from the soggy west coast of British Columbia to a riverscape in Prague.
Enjoy the journey!
Our goal at the Chris Harris Gallery is to share the creative process. Please share this Newsletter with friends. Thank you.
1. Charles Bridge, Prague: Touching base with the Old World.
“Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making commonplace unusual.” – Edward Weston
Rita and I set off one morning on a predawn walk. It was relatively quiet and peaceful. It’s a time when walking through a cityscape is most like walking in the country. The atmosphere seemed ominous, yet the diffuse light seemed enchanted.
I asked Rita to give me a few moments, as I set up my tripod and made our trip’s most meaningful image of Charles Bridge.
The Vltava River & Charles Bridge
| Notes on composition & technique: While walking across another bridge, I kept walking until I included enough trees in the bottom right to balance with the concentrated collection of buildings and dark cloud on the left of the picture frame.
EOS 5D Mark III; iso 200; various shutter speeds -hdr; f-16; 24-105mm lens; tripod |
2. Cutting Hay: Pretending to be a blade of grass!
I got the call from the Horse Lake Community Farm Co-op last month to tell me they would be cutting hay later that day. In short order, I was there.
Cutting hay
| Notes on composition & technique: I first walked half around the field, looking for the ‘cut line’ that would best guide the viewers eye throughout the picture space. I handheld my camera for quick and easy movement.
EOS 5D Mark III; iso 400; shutter speed 1/250 sec.; f-13; 70-200mm lens; handheld |
But then what? How else could I interpret this scene, I thought to myself.
Shooting through vegetation at a centre of interest is an old approach that expresses a very different feeling from that of straight documentary. How would I feel if I was a blade of grass I thought to myself?
With that thought, I dropped down into the grass. Now I was thinking about life and death!
Oh no. Here it comes!
| Notes on composition & technique: I set my focus on manual so I could focus specifically on the tractor and not have a blade of grass interfere with the auto-focus. My biggest challenge was clicking at very specific moments when Glen’s face was clear of any grass stems.
EOS 5D Mark III; iso 400; shutter speed 1/250 sec.; f-13; 70-200mm lens; handheld |
To complete this little drama, I made further images after Glen had passed by.
Whew. I’m still alive!
| Notes on composition & technique: Capturing Glen and his tractor in focus and free of blades of grass was still my biggest challenge.
EOS 5D Mark III; iso 400; shutter speed 1/350 sec.; f-11; 24-105mm lens; handheld |
3. When the Moon Rises: it’s time to play!
An investment broker might say to you, “when people are buying, it’s time to sell”. I say, “when most photographers are going to bed, it’s time to get up!”
There is something wondrous about photographing in the night when most of the world around you has gone to bed. The wonders of nature and the magic of low ambient light take on a heightened intensity that is exhilarating.
Last month, on the night of a full moon, I stood above our base camp in a remote part of South Tweedsmuir Park. With the only people for kilometers around tucked in their sleeping bags, I quietly took out my camera and prepared myself to play that wonderful game, ‘creativity’.
With clouds racing across the sky, the moon was doing its best to illuminate the small creek that ran through camp, and Ptarmigan Lake below. To augment that light (which I knew a time exposure would capture) I pulled out my Maglite flashlight and painted Tiff and Mike’s tents below me.
Base camp under full moon
| Notes on composition & technique: I moved my camera so that the stream flowed from Mike’s tent creating an implied line that leads our eye from the yellow tent through the picture space to the shimmering lake and full moon beyond. If I remember, I painted the tents with light for approximately 6 seconds each.
EOS 5D Mark III; iso 100; shutter speed 90 sec.; f-5.6; 16-35mm lens; tripod |
As the planet Earth revolved, the stars and moon, together with the clouds, were all in motion. I decided to raise my camera above the tents and capture the action.
Everything in motion
| Notes on composition & technique: In order to emphasize the movement of clouds, I increased the exposure time to 131 seconds.
EOS 5D Mark III; iso 100; shutter speed 131 sec.; f-5.6; 16-35mm lens; tripod |
4. Photographing with a Paint Brush: Intentional camera movement.
The next evening I conjured up a completely new approach to my late evening photography. As I often do, I imagined myself as a painter. I imagined an abstract painting of Ptarmigan Lake and the surrounding alpine landscape, lit only by cloud filtered moonlight.
Ptarmigan Lake; a soft abstraction
| Notes on composition & technique: While handholding my camera during a 10 second exposure, I very slowly moved it across the landscape.
EOS 5D Mark III; iso 100; shutter speed 10 sec.; f-13; 24-105mm lens; handheld |
The amazing thing about playing this magnificent game called ‘creativity’, is that it never ends. We can play until the very day we leave this planet.
When I first looked at the image above, I soon found myself thinking of new approaches to creating soft painterly abstractions. I can’t wait to do more!!
5. Time-honoured Rain: I can’t imagine Bella Coola Harbour under blue sky!
I was visiting the Bella Coola area to photograph the coastal rainforest, but I can never leave the valley without a visit to the harbour. Fortunately it was overcast and raining. It created a fitting mood for a coastal town. I couldn’t have asked for better light and weather conditions.
Bella Coola Harbour
| Notes on composition & technique: I first walked out to the end of the pier I was on, but I didn’t like the composition. Eventually I made it back to where I had started. Here the touch of green leaves and all the marine features lined up to provide me with a sense of balance.
EOS 5D Mark III; iso 200; shutter speed 1/125 sec.; f-11; 24-105mm lens; tripod |
6. From Under the Porch Roof: An electrical storm passes by.
I have never seen a lightning storm like this before.
While walking from the office to the house at 11pm last week, I noticed it wasn’t dark outside like it should have been. Explosions of sheet lightning lit the entire sky at a rate of approximately 5 or 6 every 10 seconds.
I ran for my camera, set it on my tripod under the porch roof, changed the setting to ‘bulb’, and with my remote cable, I started making time exposures in the direction of the storm.
The image below captured a fork lightning in the bottom left, but for the most part, the entire sky was lit by several bursts of sheet lightning. It was like shooting in late afternoon.
Clouds illuminated in total darkness
| Notes on composition & technique: With the lens set at 24mm, I included some tree tops in front of the house for context. Then, opening the shutter, I waited for several bursts of sheet lightning to occur.
EOS 5D Mark III; iso 100; shutter speed 28 sec.; f-4; 24-105mm lens; tripod |
7. The Story Behind the Image: Realization, visualization, expeditious action.
It was 5 a.m. on a clear August morning when Rita, Teresa, Mike and I set out to paddle around Ape Lake. We were about to enjoy the last two hours of absolute solitude and sheer bliss before our Tweedsmuir Air Beaver float plane would arrive to pick us up and fly us back into civilization.
Slowly the darkness lifted and the mountain tops, no longer lit by the full moon, began to glisten with the first rays of sunlight. It was an extraordinary time of heightened emotions.
I was paddling in the stern with a 24-105mm lens on my camera when I realized, and visualized, what elements of a potentially powerful composition were aligning themselves.
Hastily I switched to my 14mm lens, and warned Mike that I was about to stand up in the canoe. I requested that he hold steady and be still.
My thought process for making this image was as follows:
The canoe on my right was moving quickly, and the implied triangle between that canoe, the mountain peak, and myself was about to evaporate. I had little time to make this image.
My slightest movement standing up send ripples out from the bow. They looked beautiful. That was a bonus.
I tried to stand taller so that Mike’s head didn’t merge with the reflected snow covered peak. I couldn’t do it. Out of luck.
I needed a camera setting that would render Mike and my canoe sharp, and that would have both canoes and the mountains in focus.
To accomplish the final result, I pushed the ISO rating up to 400, set the aperture to f-8 which I felt would give me enough depth of field with a 14mm lens, and the resulting shutter speed of 1/125 sec was, I felt, fast enough for me to handhold while shooting with a 14mm lens.
Click.
Sunrise over Ape Lake in the Coast Mountains
| Notes on composition & technique: The complete compositional and technical thought process is described above. I just made the image in time before the canoe on my right merged into the dark mountain, losing it’s definition.
EOS 5D Mark III; iso 400; 1/125sec; 1/250 sec; f-8; 14mm lens; handheld |
I realize my bias, but I feel I captured the spirit of that moment, and the spirit of that place.