Postcards from the Creative Journey

476 Sixth Annual Lessons Learned From The Latest Photo Safari

In the Sun Yat Sen Garden

Here we are again with a listing of what worked and what didn’t work during this year’s photo safari. I barely came up with that tenth thing I learned from this year’s safari right before posting this. Maybe I’m not paying enough attention, maybe I was just having a good time. I guarantee it is not because I know it all.

Here’s what I learned on this photo safari.

1. Camera bag selection is an iterative process. My latest try, the Lowepro slingshot AWC 300 is not cutting it. It's just too big and as a result when I swing the bag around to my front, the bag sits too high and I can’t get to the lenses easily. It’s great for carrying lots of stuff around, but I pretty much have to take the whole thing off to change a lens. I may have to go back to the slingshot AWC 100 and figure out how to carry anything else I want when I am out on Safari.
2. The Panasonic Lumix G85 is simply a wonderful camera. There is nothing else to say. Well, OK, I will say a few things. It’s easy to use and the set-up and operation is consistent with my previous camera, the Panasonic GH2. I’ll know more when I make some prints, but I am very enthusiastic about this camera.
3. Brooks brought along his new 12-60mm Panasonic Lens. He raves about that lens. I didn’t even want to “try it out” because it would make me want to buy one for myself.
4. Thinking out of the box can be humorous. I wanted to borrow Brooks’ 45-200 lens that was mounted on his camera. Rather than going through the whole moving lenses back and forth, I switched memory cards. Our file sequence numbers are out of whack for a few frames, but that was a quick and clever way to solve that problem.
5. PBWA (Photography By Wandering Around) is a high risk improbable reward situation. Spending a lot of time driving to hope you can luck into a good photo is not a real good use of time. After years of Destination Location Photography we realized how many opportunities we had wasted both this week and over the years by just driving around looking for subjects to photograph.
6. We should have done better research on what we wanted to photograph and made sure that we went to those locations. Would have saved us some time and gasoline. We would have made more photographs, but had less time to talk about photography.
7. Landscape photography is a crapshoot if you are a tourist. We went to Hoh Rainforest this week and we were treated to sunny, cloudless days where the temperature was 70F. I would think that the weather was not always quite this wonderful on the Olympic Peninsula. So, my experience in the Rainforest is probably not typical.
8. The folks at Adobe continue to amaze me with the way they can move around 0s and 1s. This LightRoom mobile and LightRoom on the web make working in the field very easy. I will have to head to the Apple Genius Bar to see if I can get by with my camera and an iPad Mini. That would be wonderful because the less I have to lug around the happier I am.
9. As cool as LightRoom mobile is, the weak link will always be where you are located. A good photo safari location has no cell phone service. Small motels near good photo safari locations have wi-fi so weak you can barely do email. Uploading hundreds of 16meg image files is just not going to happen. It’s always something.
10. Oh, great. The week after I get back home Apple has a new iOS that is supposed to be the answer to all our prayers, especially file management. I’ll wait a few weeks until all those bugs are discovered and squashed and then we’ll see if there is an improvement in what the little guy can do.

475 I Can’t Wait to See What I’m Going To Do Next

Bulldog Pottery,

Seagrove, North Carolina

I am a forward looking person. I am more interested in the future and what is going to happen next than to looking backwards at what I have done. I’m also an impatient type of person that wants to get to the future so I can enjoy it.

When I finish one of my projects, I really don’t give it too much of a thought. I want to move on to the next project on my list. (Wait, you say, “You have a list of projects you plan to create?” In response I say, “Of course I have a list of projects. I also have them prioritized.”) This is the residue of an engineering education. We tend to over-organize.

This facet of my character probably should be toned down a bit from a creative standpoint. Looking backward can be valuable because you might discover things like an unfinished project that you completely forgot about because you became infatuated with another image or two. You also might find an “undiscovered project” made up of those square peg images that might have something in common you never thought about. Mining old images might be interesting because if you are working on something subconsciously you just might need the advantage of time or distance to clearly see a new project.

Scroll Down the Blog a bit and look for the posts from earlier this week. I finally posted them this morning. 

474 And the Craic Was Good*

North Bay, Low Tide, Fog

*Conversation

The last full day of photography and we revert to PBWA Greys Harbor (Both North and South Bays) in search of subject matter. With nothing in particular in mind to photograph, I will note that’s exactly what we found; nothing in particular. It may have been a general lack of commitment to a specific project at this location, or maybe visual fatigue from the past two weeks of photography.

But the craic was good. The prime topic became the nature of the photo safari and how it might change in the future. The essence of the discussion was to change the focus from making photographs to making art. In our past, making photographs and creating art were synonymous because we were taught the single photographic print, mounted, matted and hung in a frame on the wall was the completed art product. (I hate that “art product” thing, but if you do produce something, the result is a product.) This was fine for us thirty years ago, but today, our art is now contains many individual photographs, is virtual, project based and distributed as PDF files on a web site.

It was a really an important topic and a disruptive thought because the shift (evolution?) in what we do moves from making photographs to creating art. Maybe we stop PBWA and concentrate on making art. This is an acknowledgement the single photograph is not the end of a project, but the beginning.

And that’s some good craic.

Tomorrow it’s a return to SeaTac and back to North Carolina.

North Bay, Low Tide, Exposed Pilings and Sea Gulls

472 We Interrupt this Blog...

View from Cape Flattery 

I've been done in by weak internet service. We've found that internet capacity at small town hotels is not powerful as those we have at our homes. Internet access can be intermittent, weak and non-existent no matter what the motel advertises. It's been this way for the past three days. I have enough signal strength to make some blog posts, but not enough to upload images to the adobe cloud, edit them and post them to the blog. 

Sunday we made it from Port Angeles to Forks, Washington with a side trip to Cape Flattery. I'll get some photographs inserted in this blog post when I get back home.

Tree, Cape Flattery

473 The Hoh Rainforest – Two Views

Rainforest, contrasty and chaotic

Well, what rotten luck we have in trying to photograph the Hoh Rainforest. I gear up for the daily rains that I was promised (including purchasing a new light weight rain jacket just for this trip) and what happens? Do I even have to tell you? Sunny, cloudless days with a high temperature in the low 70’s F. This is almost as atypical as being flooded out of photography in the Desert Southwest. Well, what are you gonna do? I guess we’ll just suffer through the wonderful weather.

We gave photographing in the Hoh Rainforest a shot, but we were not all that successful. I will lay this to two reasons. The day we were there, the light was harsh, contrasty and moving quickly. HDR is mandatory, but the light moves so quickly it was difficult to get sufficient widely exposed pictures without the light moving on the subject. The second is figuring out how to isolate the essential elements of the image in what is a chaotic and “noisy” setting. The rapidly changing harsh light makes it very difficult to achieve this goal.

Photographing something well the first time you see it takes a certain set of circumstances and skill. I don’t think I had too much past the obvious photographs today.

The Hoh River

Sunny, clear and warm. Lovely, but not what I expected.

471 I Don’t Know Why I Made That Photograph

Brooms, The Star Works 

Star, North Carolina

These brooms were leaning against the wall at the Star Works, an artist incubator located near Seagrove, North Carolina. I was photographing a pair of artists creating beautiful two toned whiskey glasses. During a break in the process, I noticed these brooms, walked over and made the image before returning to photograph glass making. It’s there all by its lonesome in my LightRoom loupe view. Many photographs of a single topic on either side, it is the square peg surrounded by round holes.

This image doesn’t belong to any project, genre or much of anything else that I have done. Something about this place told my subconscious make a photograph. I did that. Eventually I will figure out how to use this image.

One of the advantages of digital photography is the ability to “take a flyer” with a photographic situation. In the days of view cameras there was a huge investment in time both (in the field and in the darkroom) and in money to make a photograph. With digital photography, the time invested is small and almost no cost to record a scene. In the past I would have ignored the muse, but now I listen to her every word.

470 It's Moving Day

Moving Day means that you're moving your possessions from one home to another (as my daughter is doing today). Professional Golfers call Saturday Moving Day because a good round on Saturday will move them into position for Sunday's final round. For me, moving day means moving the photo safari from Anacortes to Port Angeles, Washington. Our moving day is getting us closer to the Hoh Rain Forest and the Washington Coast. Travel is the priority, photography is a close second.

 

 

469 Another Day in Another Garden

Sun Yat Sen Garden, Vancouver, BC

We drove up to Vancouver, BC today to photograph in the Sun Yat Sen Cultural Center and Garden. It was a wonderful day, but it took a very long time to get there. We photographed in the garden a few years ago and when we decided on places to go this year, SYSCC was the top of the list. I had a great time there and I think I made enough photographs to populate a portfolio. Success in the Japanese garden was based on my preference for photographing the landscape. I was able to integrate both landscape and architecture elements in the Chinese Garden photographs.

Pond, Flowers and Fish

468 A Day In the Garden

Japanese Garden, Seattle

Today we photographed Seattle's Japanese Garden. It’s a place I had never visited, so I approached the place with both trepidation and anticipation. I had no idea what to expect and was also excited to be in a new place. If you are an aficionado of color photography, this place will be absolutely wonderful in a few weeks when all the maple leaves have changed color. Today the leaves were just beginning to turn yellow. I would love to be back here in about a month. Smoke from the forest fires continues to provide us with a very soft, orange colored light. This light was absolutely perfect for today’s efforts.

A local rule of the garden allows tripods only if you purchase a $75 photographer’s membership to the garden. I decided that thrift and dual image stabilization were the order of the day. With the garden’s narrow paths I can see the wisdom in using a “photographer’s surcharge” to keep the pathways free of tripods.

Reflections on the pond.

The Panasonic 12-35 XD has been the workhorse of the trip in the boatyards and Fort Worden. My expectation was that I would continue to use that lens and the 7-14 zoom lens in the garden. This was not the case. The 35-100 XD lens got more than its fair share of use. I was surprised by this turn of events but being restricted to the immaculately raked paths required the long lens to properly frame a composition.

Fallen Leaves

 

467 - Wooden Ships

Caulking Tools, Port Townsend Boat Yard

(Continuing Work on Tools)

Back to Port Townsend via bicycles on the Ferry Boat. It’s kind of different to be on the top of a Ferry Boat rather than underneath them. We’re headed to the Shipyard at Port Townsend. Port Townsend is a great place to have your old wooden hulled ship repaired, re-fitted and generally taken care of. It’s a whole lot closer to the Ferry Boat Terminal than Fort Worden, so travel will be quicker and easier. Oh, and it’s cheaper, too. As an “old dude with a bicycle,” my fare to ride the ferry is a very fair $2.15, one way.

This trip to the boatyard reflected our knowledge we gained from our trip here last year. I think that returning to places to photograph is a great thing because you have knowledge of the place. You no longer have to worry about learning what is around you and can concentrate more fully on the photography at hand. The more you return to a place, the better you can see it and the better you see, the better your photographs will be.

This was a good day photographing because I could continue working on ideas I started developing over at the Dakota Creek Shipyard, namely the importance of numbers and workspaces. I was also distracted by the re-launching of a historic vessel undergoing renovation at the boatyard. It was fun to see a very large ship picked up by a crane and rolled to a berth. (I left before the boat was placed in the water.)

El Primero, waiting to re-launch.

466 It’s Always the Weather

Parallel Halls in Battery Tolles

Our plan was to head up to Vancouver, BC to photograph the Sun Yat Sen gardens. The weatherman forecast highs in the 90F range for Vancouver, so we said, that’s not the way to go. Instead, we drove over to Coupeville and took the ferry over to Port Townsend. The smoke from wildfires in Eastern Oregon and Washington filled the skies today. In the morning, the sun was clearly visible as an orange disc in the sky. The color of the light transformed from a greenish haze to a golden yellow light all day long. The light was softened and was lovely all day. The temperature was shirt sleeve comfortable and it was just a wonderful day to be outside and photograph.

When you take a trip to make landscape photographs, the weather is always the big unknown. Today it worked in our favor.

The fun thing we did today was to leave the car in Coupeville and walk-on to the ferry with bicycles. Brooks took his fancy electric bicycle with a trailer and I rode the standard pedal powered bicycle. Our destination was Fort Worden and it wasn’t too bad of a trek. We photographed at Batteries Kinzie, Tolle and Walker. I enjoy photographing there because it combines architecture, abstraction and allows me to make it into just about any type of place I want it to be. It’s the source location for the Labyrinth photographs and today it suggested a few more ways I can explore alternative landscapes and visions of the place. It’s one of those places where the final photographs will look far different than the ones that came out of the camera. For the most part, photographs I made in Fort Worden are not the end product of the day, but are the beginning of art that will be created when I get home.

 

The Prisoner of Battery Tolles

No Photoshop, no manipulation, no tricks, just some clever use of lighting and having Brooks press the shutter. This doesn't have to wait until I get home to be a cool photograph. 

465 Photographing With Friends

Brooks and I taking a break. 

(Yes, it's a selfie, but since I used a fish eye lens, it is Art.)

So far today we have not been photographing. Not saying we haven’t been photographic, but so far it’s not been a hands on camera, out in the field type of day. This morning I had a ringside seat for the production of a LensWork Podcast and episode of PNC (Photography Not Cameras) video with Brooks Jensen. For my supporting role in the production follow the link below.

Link to the Podcast on LensWork Daily.

There is some pretty great advice on what we’ve learned from photographing together over the past thirty plus years.

We’re getting ready to start on the second week of the photo safari with a trip up to Vancouver to photograph the Sun Yat Sen garden and then we head off to circumnavigate the Olympic Peninsula. This will be our second attempt to photograph the Olympic Peninsula. The first attempt was cut short when we received permission to photograph the Hastings building in Port Townsend. Maybe this time we will make it all the way around.

Plimsol Lines on America's Finest

The above photo will be part of the folio on the importance of numbers in the shipyard.