Postcards from the Creative Journey

A Dozen Lessons Learned (9 through 12)

Teal Slough - maximum telephoto

Project Managers love to do those lessons learned sessions when every project is completed. What did we learn during the project that we can apply to the next project? Well, here is the third (and final) installment of things I learned from this trip. Profit from my experience.

9. The Long End of a Zoom lens is sometimes necessary and wonderful thing. This is the first time I have ever owned a lens that has a “long reach.” (That would be 280 mm as a 35 mm equivalent.) I have always favored the shorter focal lengths for landscape work. This trip, we had restricted access to our subject matter and I had to use the longer focal lengths. I really liked it. I am surprised by this, but that’s just the way it turned out.

10. There is a decisive moment in landscape photography too. The decisive moment has to come from a commitment to the photograph. When photographing such subjects as fog, you have to make a decision to act and do it immediately. Fog disappears and moves quickly, if you don’t commit, you miss that decisive moment. Another form of decisive moment that requires commitment is our session with the crashing waves. If you are committed to photographing a random occurrence, you must be committed to spending the time waiting for that random decisive moment. If you have to “pack a lunch and stay all day” that is your commitment to capturing that decisive moment. Embrace it.

11. Muscle memory and routine make creativity easier. If you establish a routine when you do anything, you don’t have to think, you only have to react unconsciously. This leaves more mental power to be focused on the creative act. I have a cord on my glasses so I don’t lose them when I focus using the Electronic View Finder. When I was on the Greenhead Slough Bridge one morning I took off my glasses and almost dropped them off the bridge and into the Slough. That would have made the rest of the vacation very awkward. I was trying to rely on muscle memory, but I did not make the necessary preparation. Practice and routine are important.

12. Having to break a routine is tough, but it’s necessary to make improvements. I have a LowePro AW100 sling bag for my camera and accessories. It has two straps across the front. I have always kept the right shoulder to left hip buckle buckled and the other strap unbuckled. It was a pain to put on because I had to slide my head through the strap. In traveling this week I had to unbuckle both straps to conserve space on the plane. When I reconnected the straps, I did them in the opposite order. It was much easier to get in and out of the bag when I reversed the connecting order of the straps. This was much easier and a great revelation to me. Of course, if I read the instructions, it probably would have told me this right away, but I don’t want to think about that right now.

Somewhere along the way, I have to shamelessly self promote this blog. The picture above is the two hundredth image posted on this photoblog. I'm also over one hundred blog posts. That's a pretty good track record so far.

A Dozen Lessons Learned (5 through 8)

Morning, Greenhead Slough

Project Managers love to do those lessons learned sessions when every project is completed. What did we learn during the project that we can apply to the next project? Well, here is the second installment of things I learned from this trip. I have made these mistakes for you. This is not the opinion of an internet crank. This actually happened.

5. Practice with a new camera before you go into the field is very important. Using the camera develops the muscle memory to unconsciously work the camera controls without thought. Knowing which part of the lens controls the zoom and which controls the manual focus does make a difference. Being able to operate and control the camera by feel is essential for you to be ready when the decisive moment is upon you. How to hold and handle a new camera must be learned to avoid pushing that odd combination of buttons that replaces your photographic efforts with a multi-media serenade of your most recent images. Trust me on this. Not knowing this was responsible for more “What did I just do?” moments on this past trip than anything else.

6 The more you come back to the same location the better chances you have of making better photographs of that place. It takes a while to “learn” a location. How the light strikes it when different conditions and in our case different tides gives you the opportunity to make different photographs in the same place. You learn to see what the place is and then you can proceed along to seeing what the place can be and finally discover what the place could represent. That’s why you take much better photographs in areas you know well than photographs where you are just visiting.

7. What type of a photographer are you? Brooks Jensen and I often photograph at the same place at the same time. Our photographs look nothing alike. After about twenty five years of photographing together, I finally figured out why this is so. I photograph places and Brooks photographs concepts. My photographs are literal and what I am photographing is recognizable. Brooks’s photographs may not be recognizable as a specific place because what he photographs represents the concept he is photographing. Things are much different than thoughts. That’s why our photographs don’t look alike.

8. Back away slowly when you are “finished” photographing. A while back I blogged about how important it is to pay attention to how you leave the area you are photographing because you never know when you are finished photographing an area. We photographed Teal Slough for about two hours, packed up and were driving away. Brooks saw something, stopped the car, unlimbered his camera gear and went back to make his best photograph of the safari. Paying attention to your exit is a very important thing to do. You just never know when you are truly finished photographing at a location.

A Dozen Lessons Learned (1 through 4)

Quay and Tree, Willapa Bay

Project Managers love to do those lessons learned sessions when every project is completed. What did we learn during the project that we can apply to the next project? Well, here is the start of about a dozen things I learned on this year’s photo safari. Profit from my experience.

1. Big Memories are really great. I bought 8 Gb cards for my new camera. That’s not big enough. I should have bought 16 Gb cards. I forgot that my new camera creates bigger files that my old camera. While I thought I was getting a higher capacity card, I did not. The card was twice as big as my previous card and so are my new files. No real change in the number of images per card. That’s not real smart. Oh, and that new “high speed burst mode” that you thought you would never use? You’ll use it. A lot. It will make your lack of card capacity even more acute.

2. Since I skimped on card memory, I figured I could download to my computer and make up for the lack of card capacity. This worked really well until I ran out of hard drive capacity. Old laptops do not have really big hard drives. So, in addition to a computer, an external hard drive or USB memory sticks will be on board before the next extended photo safari.

3. I blogged earlier that I had to figure out which 20 pages of the 145 page camera I needed to learn how to use my camera. This is incorrect. I have to go back and learn the entire camera manual. This is so I can learn how to deal with the unexpected things my camera does when I mistakenly touch the wrong buttons and the camera does odd things. (See the blog post rom September 8.)

4. Technology is a very good thing and can be used to keep you from wasting time and gasoline. One “app” that we relied on was an electronic version of the traditional Solunar (aka tide) table so we knew when low and high tide occurred. The second one was the “sun tracker” which calculates where on the horizon the sun would rise and set and the corresponding time. That app allowed us to pre-visualize where the sun would be, where the light and shadows would be and how much of the cocktail hour would be missed if we stayed to photograph.

Stay Tuned for next week's installment of Lessons Learned.

It’s a Matter of Timing

So much of photography is about timing. This past week, I have raved about the solunar table app for the Android and how it made our trip more efficient. Timing issues can also occur with activities other than tides. One of the things we noticed starting on Wednesday were hot rods and custom cars cruising around the Long Beach Peninsula. I wrote the sightings off to the resort culture here on the Peninsula. I was wrong. This weekend is the annual Ilwaco “Slow Drag” and the Ocean Isle “Rod Run.” Hot rods have taken over the Peninsula. People set up folding chairs on the main drag just to watch the hot rods cruise the main drag. All the cars of my youth were parading in front of me last night at dinner. I could have spent a whole weekend making pictures like this:

Little Red Roadster, Rod Run 2011

Fender Detail

Happy Days

But, our timing is off and we are leaving just as all the hot rods are coming to town. As we left the Peninsula, it was kind of odd passing all the hot rods and cars of the 1950’s and 60’s rolling into town.

Because you’re never quite through photographing, we took a side trip to revisit a little fishing village at the south end of Willapa Bay.

A fog bank was just rolling out so we made a decision to photograph the oyster stakes in the fog. Our timing was good, because the stakes and their reflections were interesting against the background of fog, but as soon as the fog lifted, the graphic elements of the scene disappeared. As we were getting ready to leave, a small flock of sea birds flew directly in front of us. I caught some of them in flight, but by then the fog had dispersed and I was rewarded with a near miss. Sometimes the timing isn’t there.

 Oyster stakes, Willapa Bay

Those were the last pictures of the safari. Tomorrow, there is just a long trip from Seattle back to Raleigh.

 

 

Random Thoughts From This Week’s Photo Safari

Last weekend I worried about using my new camera. It is a great piece of gear, but reading about it, using it at home and using it in the field are very, very, very different things. How you hold the camera is important because (like many new digital cameras) my camera is studded with button and if you accidentally hit an odd combination of buttons when you pick up the camera sometimes weird stuff happens.

I thought I was making a photograph and I must have offended the gods of cameras because instead of making this picture my camera started playing some new age guitar music and began a Ken Burns “pan and scan” slide show of all the images on my memory card. It was quite a scene, me in the forest primeval and my camera, on a tripod, entertaining me with a slide show and music. I was not upset. I started laughing because it was one of those surreal moments visited upon you by the complexity of consumer electronics. Why in the name of Daguerre would a camera have such a function? About five years ago, my primary camera was made of wood and leather. I carried a fifteen pound tripod and about forty pounds of film and other paraphernalia. Now, my camera serenades me. I call that progress and I am glad I live in America.

Trees, Fog, Music, North Head

At the North Head lighthouse there were some very limited photographic opportunities because of geometry and geography. Geometry, because lighthouses are tall and skinny and does not fit any known photographic aspect ratio. Geography, because once inside the lighthouse, there is not much room to maneuver. There was one photo opportunity inside of the lighthouse, so I made the best of it and this was the only picture I made.

Spiral Staircase, North Head Lighthouse

Heck, this is the only picture everyone can make in the lighthouse, because right below my camera is the “the stairs are closed, you may not climb to the top of the lighthouse” sign. On the walk back to the lighthouse keeper’s house, I was thinking that there was something wrong with the photograph. It did not seem correct. It’s nicely composed, and the curve is graceful. Then it struck me, the curve is going the wrong way. The spiral staircase is ascending in a clock wise fashion. Traditionally, spiral stairs ascend counterclockwise, the tradition borne of ancient castles which made the attacker fight left handed as he ascended the stair while the defender fought right handed.

We drove a certain stretch of road around Willapa Bay probably a dozen times this week. We always looked at it and wanted to photograph from that vantage point, but it just didn’t seem to want to be photographed – until this morning. We were on our way to meet the appropriate confluence of tide and the sun at Teal Slough at the appointed “magic hour” when we rounded the curve and had to stop. That particular place in the Universe needed to be photographed. So I called for a command stop, got out and made the photograph.

Fog at Low Tide, Willapa Bay

Persistence is needed to make a good landscape photograph. Well, I guess sometimes luck is needed if you are only visiting for a week. If you think about the great landscape photographers, they lived very near where they photographed. The most prominent example of this are Ansel Adam’s great photographs of Yosemite that defined several generations’ views of that National Park. It also helps to know that he lived in the park for several decades and made those photographs “in his backyard.”

A Long Strange Trip

Ilwaco Shipyard

What a long strange trip this has been. This has been one of the oddest photo safaris I have experienced in many years. We have photographed many different subjects on this trip. Beaches, sloughs, rocks, surf, fog, an old church, an old fort, and (today) a boat yard have all been in front of my camera at one time or another over the past six days. I am not sure if this is because we have not focused (pun intended) on a particular project, but have been photographing a particular location. The difference is between photographing a specific subject (Fort Worden, Hell’s Half Acre, the Heckman Farm) or photographing a specific place, in this case, the Long Beach Peninsula. We did not have a specific agenda or plan, but just kind of went with the flow and photographed whatever the time, tide and weather let us photograph. The results seem to be unfocused (another pun) but we’ve had a great time.

Being repaired

I have never tried to photograph in a boatyard. I had no idea what to expect. It was a pretty interesting way to spend a morning. This old gal is a beauty. I would like to see her when she’s done.

I think we have photographed everything we want to photograph on the peninsula. Now we have to try to figure out what to do with the next day and a half. I can see the end of the vacation. I measure that by how easy it is to get all the vitamins out of the bottle. It’s getting real easy to get all those different pills out of the bottle. That means it’s getting close to the end of this photo safari.

Sand, Fog and Pelicans

Not only are the weather forecasts suspect, they are only good for general forecasts, not the micro forecasts that tell you what it’s going to be like at a specific location you are visiting. Today started off with foggy mist (a Pacific Northwest specialty) where we are staying and was a deadly boring dull overcast. Because the weather was so ugly (not inclement, just ugly enough to eliminate all shadows) we decided to explore Cape Disappointment State Park. This was aptly named by Lewis and Clark because they had to spend the winter at that spot. When we hit the park, it was completely enveloped in fog. Photographers like exceptional weather and fog is exceptional to us. We broke out the cameras and went crazy photographing(because you never know how long fog is going to last). We photographed trees in fog, rocks in fog, trees and rocks in fog, rocks and crashing surf in fog, rocks, pelicans and crashing surf. We photographed till we either wore out the batteries or filled the cameras memory cards. We took a breather and went to visit the North Head lighthouse. I asked the docent at the lighthouse how often the fog was that thick around North Head. He said they had about 150 days per year of fog. Well, at least we know where we can get fog photographs about half the time.

Technical note: You might have a problem with these photographs on your browser. The fog mutes the contrast of the light and there are subtle gradations of gray throughout the image.  I have noticed on my browser (Firefox) that the gradations of gray are definitely noticeable. It's an issue with color management and the browser. (I know Firefox has a color management plug in, but I haven't installed it on my browser.)

 
Rocks, surf, fog and Pelicans!

 
Some crashing surf

Clearing fog, North Head,

Cape Disappointment

Just a Really Dull Day

 

Here on the Washington Coast the weather forecast is always suspect. Today was supposed to be 73F and partly cloudy. The part that was cloudy was the entire sky and it never made it above 57F. The overcast/foggy sky was God’s soft box. It rendered the landscape with a perfectly diffused, shadowless light until about 6:00 PM. At that time, the clouds finally burned away.

What to do on such a day? You have to have a back-up plan because this type of day will always show up when you go out to photograph. Our “plan B” was to drive up the peninsula to photograph the Oysterville Church. I had been there about thirty (yikes) years ago with another group of photographers. We went back just to see what it looked like. It hasn’t changed. The real question though, is how have I changed and what can I bring to the subject now that I couldn’t bring to it thirty years ago? That’s the challenge to the artist, to take a subject that he has seen or a subject that others can see and try to see something new or different that no one else has seen so far.

The Oysterville Church

Interior of the Oysterville Church

Piano and Flowers

In the afternoon, it was an early laundry day because the light was not suitable for the landscape photography. So after yesterday’s really long day, it was a day to chill out and just relax and then late in the day take a stroll along the dunes and make a happy snap or two to celebrate the return of the sun.

Late afternoon, Long Beach

Photos by Appointment Only

Brooks wanted to investigate a photographic spot he saw on an earlier trip to the area, so we took off very early this morning for the North Side of Willapa Bay. On the way, we were sidetracked at our usual haunts, Greenshead Slough and Teal Slough. Once we arrived at our scouting location, we determined the subject was worthy of our attention, we consulted the solunar tables and the sun tracker to determine the time for high tide and sunset. From this information, we found the "best" time to photograph was between 6:15 PM and sunset. I joked that we needed to make an appointment to photograph this spot. It’s almost like the “leaf peepers” that make their reservations to view the fall colors in Vermont and New Hampshire. We passed the rest of the day scouting the area (who knew Westport was such a happening place?) and returned at the designated time.

All great photographic locations usually have this sign.

We did what all the other vacationers there did – ignore it. We did need to get some height advantage to take the best view of the scene. We scrambled over the rocks and waded through some Himalayan blackberries to get to the spot with the best view. Here’s how Brooks added some height to his photographic perch.

That's my shadow in the foreground.

 We photographed from that vantage point at the appropriate time and then we crawled back over the rocks and through the berry patch and went down to the beach. The light continued to improve.

Photographed at 6:20:37 PM

One of the things we are supposed to do as artists is see the world differently than the rest of the world. We spent a lot of time checking out the best spot and elevation to get to this vantage point and make “the best” photograph. My photographic rule of thumb is this, when everyone is pointing their camera in one direction, point your camera in the exact opposite direction. Once we got out on that big rock, I turned around to photograph the tree from the ocean side.

Same tree, different photograph. (6:55:22 PM)

We stayed until the sun almost went down and drove home in the dark. The drive home reminded us that we are away from civilization. We had to slow down on the trip home to avoid hitting four deer, two elk and two porcupines.

 

It's All About the Gear. Pain and Suffering with a New Camera

Rice Museum, Georgetown, SC

I bought a new camera this year. It’s just about taken that long to get it, too. The company I work for has one of those employee “deal” web site that offers a good deal on an assortment of products or services. One electronics company that participates in this service sells cameras. The price for my desired digital camera was several hundred dollars below “street price.” What a deal! I ordered it in early April. My lens and spare battery showed up a few weeks later. The camera finally arrived at the end of July. The goal was to become proficient with all the functions, buttons, menus, sub-menus, programs, pre-sets, modes and other options before I head out on my annual photo safari with Brooks Jensen, um, three days ago. Maybe by now I am increasingly proficient with the camera. I know I have spent a great deal of time with the camera manual. I really do miss the days of simple camera operation and having only to master putting “the stick inside the doughnut.” (If you know what I am talking about, you are pretty old.)

There are improvements in camera manuals for which I am almost grateful. Instead of having a 200 page manual containing instructions in three languages, I was now able to get a 145 page manual in English. There were two other similarly sized books in French and Spanish in the camera box. I guess that’s the default instruction package for North America.

The only issue I have with the 145 page manual is that I really only need to know about twenty pages out of the 145 page manual. That’s the good news. The bad news is I have to figure out which twenty pages I need to learn and figure out how to disable the most annoying functions.

I really don’t need a lot of bells, whistles, doo-dads, gimcracks and other high tech features. Most of my photographic career has been spent using a view camera. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. While I am very sure that using a digital camera has made me a better photographer, I just don’t like the pain and suffering that goes with the purchase of new equipment.

Time, Tide and Technology

We need to learn how to use our solunar tables a little bit better. The estimation of when low tide was supposed to be was a bit off - by about six hours. There was still a considerable amount of water still in the sloughs. You can see a bit of the difference in water levels between low and mid high tide.

Greenshead Slough, low tide

Greenshead Slough, about half way to high tide

Well, we still photographed. You get up early in the morning, to out to where you are supposed to photograph, so you photograph. It’s why we’re here.

Island in the Bay

 

Greetings from the bridge over Greenshead Slough

(long shadows, golden light - keep reading)

Most landscape photographers tend to time their photographing around the edge of the day, both early morning and evening. The driving factor is to have light that strikes the land at an angle to create long shadows and to use the “warm” light that gives everything that golden hue. During the middle of the day, light comes from above and minimal shadows. That leaves the middle of the day free to scout locations (or write blog posts). We found such a location today that has promise. We determined it was an “afternoon” photographic location. The big question is when do we come back to catch the afternoon light? There’s an app for that. Brooks pulled out the android and found out we should be in position around 6:30 pm. We’ll go back and see if the software is right.

The software is pretty accurate. We got to our spot at the right time. We were able to get "good" light on the trees, the tarn was in the shade and the breeze was quieting down near the end of the day.

Time and Tide Wait for No Man

 Greenhead Slough, low tide

Willapa Bay is for lack of a better term, a tidal flat. It is not very deep, but the tides that flow in and out of the bay are very deep. At low tide, there is lots of visible muck and mud. Tidal grasses fall over in the most interesting patterns. At high tide, the water covers most of the grasses. Photography of the Bay takes place at low tide, a time when the bay is very interesting photographically. Happily for us, the sunrise and early morning light (favored by landscape photographers) and low tide coincided this morning. We went out after breakfast and photographed while the layer of Marine clouds broke up and gave way to a clear blue sky. We had two nice events (time and tide) work for us this morning. According to the solunar tables, we should have similar luck for the next few days. If the weather cooperates, we should not be at a loss for opportunities.

Greenhead Slough, low tide

Landscape photography is all about where you stand. When photographing the mud flats you have very few places you can stand that aren’t paved. The grasses are deep and when they are lying down, they look sturdy, but they just might be covering up sink holes. Most of the photographs were made from turnouts or the edge of the road.

Tidal Flat, low tide

These are pretty much an abstract take on a landscape photograph. There's not much in color in mud, so you pretty much have to use your imagination to make up compositions as you go along. I fear that abstract vision may be a bit too persistent. On the way back to the hotel, I thought I saw a vision of Jesus on a rusted gas tank.

Vision of Jesus

(on a gas tank)