Postcards from the Creative Journey

701 The Questions Worth Answering First Published 04/28/2019

A while back I attended a contemporary art exhibit. The memorable aspect of the exhibit was an explanatory sign on the wall of the exhibit. The sign informed us artwork explored, “the political relationships among gender, culture, religion, labor and social codes.” I was wondering what ever happened to art that was about illuminating the universalities of truth and beauty?

Then I remembered someone told me Art was about questions. If contemporary art poses questions about “the political relationships among gender, culture, religion, labor and social codes” I thought maybe that’s why I am not too interested in contemporary art. The confusing thing to me about this artspeak is determining if all five characteristics have to be in a simultaneous relationships or is it possible to have multiple simultaneous relationships among fewer than all five at any one time and then on top of that, how to make all these relationships political? This is a lot to ask of a work of art. I have a difficult time even understanding how this all works out. I don’t believe I am alone in this puzzlement. Maybe that’s why the only thing I can remember about the exhibit is that little note telling me how difficult it is to understand contemporary art.

Photo Safari XXXIV Last Day on the Road.

Today’s quest into the unknown started by driving to a small town, buying some snacks and finding the nearest dirt road out of town. In other words, today was just about like all the other days on this year’s Safari. The Google Lady was trying to find the fastest way to get where we wanted to go, but we turned her off because we were not after fast. We wanted to see the land. Or, in today’s journey a lot of water. It was the Snake River on  the map, but the signs said Brownlee Reservoir. Either way, it was a spectacular place. 

Many years ago I started a tradition of acknowledging the Diety’s creation by exclaiming, “Way to go, God!” when encountering a scene of celestial beauty or grandeur.  I figure God needs to hear a nice word and a thank you every so often from me. Our first view of the place was this single frame image. I made a four or five panel panorama of the reservoir just to capture the scale and  grandeur of the place. It was pretty spectacular. We began an almost sixty mile trip down a dirt road to our destination, Huntington, Oregon. It took us about six hours to make the trip. One must drive slowly on a gravel road and we did take some time for lunch and, of course, stop and make photographs.

We encountered rocks and water in wonderful arrangements and took advantage of the absence of other people to thoroughly enjoy the experience. During the entire day we encountered no more than ten other vehicles. It was quiet, peaceful and beautiful.

This was our last full day of photography. Tomorrow we will start photographing our way back to Spokane so I can catch an early Friday morning flight back home. This is the last day I will be posting daily photographs from this safari because I must return my borrowed chromebook. 

I’ve shared the “dailies” with you on the blog and there are still a lot of photographs that need a level of processing that I can’t do with the software included with the chromebook. So many of my photographs do not look at all like the image I recorded. I also made more than a few panoramic photos on this trip and I can’t process them until I get home. Once that is done, I will share them with you. 

Thanks again for reading my blog posts from the road. I also invite you to come back when I’m not on safari and see what adventures and other observations from the Creative Journey.

Photo Safari XXXIV The Gulch and the Reservoir

It was about 17F this morning when we woke up and not too long after that we headed for Hell’s Canyon. We planned to take about an hour and a half  to make the trek from Baker City to Copperfield, Oregon. We did not include the photo factor in the drive time. The photo factor means you will not make it as fast as you thought you would because you will stop and photograph along the way. 

That’s what we did. It took a couple of hours because we can’t pass by places like this:

The route we took followed this small creek about the whole way. Well, actually it’s not a creek. The map says it’s a gulch and it changes names several times during its journey to the Snake River.  I guess that if a gulch runs through your ranch you can name it.

Upon getting to Copperfield we decided to head down the Oregon Side of the Hell’s Canyon Reservoir. We based this decision on the direction of the light and that the road was about five or six miles long. The light was very, very directional as we went down the Canyon. A lot of photographers claim the best images can be made during the “golden hour,” (the hour after dawn and before sunset). While this is true, we have found that when photographing in twisting canyons, the changes in directions can make interesting shadows no matter the time of day.

At this point in the river it is a reservoir, so the water is very, very smooth. We made it down to the end of that road, had a nice picnic lunch and made our way back to Copperfield. We headed down the Idaho side of the reservoir which has better roads and more development. We went as far as the Hell’s Canyon Reservoir Dam. We turned around and headed back. By that time the light had changed a bit and illuminated the Oregon side of the canyon.We figured correctly on the light today and that worked out just fine for us. 

We hung around until the light was pretty much gone. We made a direct route back to Baker City with only a stop or two for some moonrise photographs. I don’t know if my version of “Moonrise, Eastern Oregon” will be successful until I get home and can use a full complement of photo editing software.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out the blog photographs. Your support is appreciated.

Wednesday is our last full day of photography. Thursday is a combination photo and travel day to get me back to Spokane for an early Friday morning flight. 

Photo Safari XXXIV "Rural Scenes Like Magazines"

Big travel day today, driving from The Dalles to Baker City. We didn’t spend too much time on the Interstates going for the backroads to take a more leisurely route. Good conversation, good music and sunny weather and some greater scenery on the way added about three hours to the trip. It was all worth it. We arrived in Baker City just before sunset. 

Here are some rural scenes like magazines*

Running parallel to I-84 is Oregon 206 and some really nice roadside scenery. We had been on the road about twenty minutes and this was the first photo stop.

There aren’t a lot of signs on the back roads. I think this is a section of the Powder River. 

Getting closer to Baker City.

Many thanks to the hundreds of you that are stopping by my blog to check out the “dailies” from Photo Safari XXXIV. Your support is greatly appreciated.

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*From “Running on Empty” by Jackson Browne

 

 

Photo Safari XXXIV It’s All About the Clouds

We decided to explore north of the Columbia River and head a little bit east to see what was up on the plateau. We’ve photographed the area south of the Dalles and across the Columbia toward Lyle and up the Klickitat River, but we haven’t explored the area between The Dalles and Goldendale. That’s where we went  today. 

There are days when no matter how hard you try there’s just nothing there to photograph. The opportunity always exists to “work something into a photograph,” but when you create something like that, it looks like you tried to manufacture a photograph. It may be a technical success but it looks like it was manufactured and has neither soul nor feel. 

Today was one of “those days.” This area has no distinguishing landscape features. It’s relatively flat, but does have the Big Sky so common to the great plains of the American West. Once you get out away from the mountains the most important element of the landscape is the sky. The most important element of the sky are the clouds. 

The whole thing is about the clouds. A great sky can save a photograph. The quest is to find the right type of clouds, the right number of clouds and (of course) the right lighting. We didn’t have any clouds today so the problem to be solved is how to divide up the sky to avoid the blank areas.

The big wind farms gave me a way to divide up the sky and create some interest.

Or, another choice is to eliminate as much of the sky as possible.

The third option which I cannot create is to compose a panoramic composition. I make one with a lot of windmills and power lines. 

Tomorrow, we will take a long non-expressway route to Baker City. We’re in no hurry because we have not photographed in this area before and will be exploring as we travel. That, and it will still be really cold in Baker City tomorrow.

700 What to Do with the Rest

(Continuing from Thursday's blog...)

Most of the images photographers make are forgettable. That’s not a bad thing. Forgettable images are doing just what they are supposed to be doing; not making an impression and being forgotten. Not every photograph is a winner. Some rise to the level of art, some are just visual clues for some great memories and some are questionable. That would be questionable in the manner of “Where was I when I took that photograph?” not the questionable that was a breach of good taste.

The trouble with selecting these days is purely a question of volume. In the past, if I would go out with my view camera for a week of photography, I would be happy with forty exposed sheets of film. Selecting and editing with that quantity of images was fairly easy to do. With my digital camera it would be easy to get about two thousand images after a week. Then the problem becomes one of selecting and editing. A much more complicated and time consuming process just because of the number of images is so much larger.

And then once you have figured out how many images are “good enough” what is going to happen to the rest?

Photo Safari XXXIV The Unexpected Things

This morning’s forecast was dark and rainy, hardly the most beneficial outlook for photographic activities. It was a good point in the journey to gather a whole handful of quarters and head for the laundromat. At least that’s how the day began. By the time we finished the laundry (I am trying to dispel the myth of the glamour of art photography here) it was still rainy and cold and quite miserable. We took off, for the land south of The Dalles hoping the rain would stop and the clouds would part and we could make beautiful photographs in sunny weather.

It did stop raining, the clouds still covered the sky and it did not get any warmer. Here is evidence of the cold for you:

Yup, that’s snow. We drove on.

Last year we did a brief stop at White River Falls State Park. It seemed like a good idea to see if I could add to last year's images and maybe make a small project about the place. I followed the trail down the hill and stopped at the bottom. Rather than continue to the dynamo building to the right, I took a path off to the left. The trail kept going and so did I. It was then I heard some low rumbling water. I wondered if I was getting some bounced sound from the canyon walls. This was not the case. I found another waterfall. Not as big as the one everyone comes to see, but a waterfall nonetheless.

It fed into a nice little canyon and finding this unexpected waterfall was a nice surprise. 

Happy with that little bit of serendipity I backtracked to the dynamo building only to find that in the ensuing year, the parks people installed heavy steel gates at all the entrances and secured them with heavy chains and padlocks. There was a way in (isn’t there always?) but I was not willing to take the chance for photographs. I already had a pleasant surprise and a few nice photographs, so we moved on. 

As we wound our way back to The Dalles, we decided to take a detour down an unpaved road. There was no plan, no checklist, we just turned down a random dirt road. We do this a lot. Sometimes we find something neat to photograph. This was one of those times. 

I’m not quite sure what happened, but my guess is, whatever happened packed a lot of force to knock down a high voltage transmission line tower.

When you come to photograph at a specific place and time, you have no control over just about everything. We’ve been very lucky to have had great weather (so far), but there are times when you get unexpected weather and improvisation is necessary. Sometimes you can’t do what you want and like today, you get lucky and find the unexpected things that make the day worthwhile. 

It never got very warm today and promises to be cold over the next few days. We’ll stay on schedule and hang on around The Dalles on Sunday and then leave for Baker, Oregon on Monday. 

Photo Safari XXXIV Unfinished Business

Some of the unfinished business from last year’s trip to the Dalles came from a trip up the Klickitat River. I saw something off the side of the road and it turned out to be a canyon with a river at the bottom. We didn’t have time to know how to get there or have time to explore it. Eventually, I found out my discovery was Beeks Canyon. We found out what roads we needed to take to get there. Today was the day we decided to photograph Beeks Canyon. 

Sometimes, you’re the windshield and sometimes you’re the bug. For the most part we were the bug today. There are places that welcome your photographic efforts and there are places that make it very difficult to photograph. Beeks Canyon was not cooperative today.

(This is Beeks Canyon not being cooperative. I’m just trying to arrange things to fit in the frame; and not doing too good of a job of it.)

We were driving along not being very happy with the way things were going until we heard the sound of rushing water. This sound was not the same as the water running over rocks in the river bed, it was the sound of falling water. That is a much deeper pitch and a fuller sound than the sound of a river. We looked through the trees and could barely make out a waterfall. As we pulled closer we found a little path wide enough for a single person. Some kind soul cut a path though the brush barely wide enough so a single person could view/photograph from that vantage point. So that’s what I did.

(The vantage point did not manage to trim away those leaves in the lower right corner. I will remove those when I get home.)

We finally reached the point of return and found our way out of the canyon. As we started our way home I wondered if my research did get us to the proper place. We could see the top of the canyon walls from the road through the trees. We stopped several times and I tried to look through the trees.

 One time I was successful. I found an abandoned camp site and was able to make an overlook photo of where we were. From that picture I could see why it was one of those places that looks impressive, but it is almost impossible to photograph. The canyon was steep, heavily forested and had limited access to vantage points. At least we had an enjoyable day exploring.

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Here’s a photo Brooks Jensen made of me photographing at Palouse Falls yesterday. HIgh is good and not having any type of fence or railing in front sure makes composing an image a bit easier - as long as you know how far close to the edge you are. 

Photo Safari XXXIV - On to the Dalles

It’s moving day and we started our drive heading west and south to eventually reach the Dalles. Before we leave the Palouse, here’s one last “good bye” photograph that I forgot to post the other day. While that photo is pretty wonderful, what it does not convey is the wind and 37F temperature on top of Steptoe Butte early in the morning. Ah, the things I endure for photography.

On the way to the Dalles, we had to stop by the Palouse Falls, because, well, because it’s there and we need to see it. The photographs you can find on the web make it look like the eighth wonder of the world. Well, it’s not, in fact I overheard it was the fifteenth most beautiful waterfall in the United States. Our arrival at the waterfall was not at one of these wonderful times. The light was harsh, at the wrong elevation and we got there mid morning. So, photographically it was not the best, but it was really interesting in that you have to be right up on top of the place to see it because the falls are below grade.

 

The gorge eroded out by the waterfall was more photogenic than the waterfall itself.

 

We were pretty much dedicated to getting to the Dalles by late afternoon so we didn’t stop more than a few times. There were very few clouds in the sky so we didn’t have too much of an incentive to photograph the landscape.

 

I am happy to tell you small town America still exists. You just don’t see Courthouses like this anywhere else but in small towns. I almost expected to see Professor Harold Hill addressing the townfolk from the steps of the Courthouse.

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A technical note of limited interest. While I am an adobe fan, the on-line and mobile versions of their apps depend on a very strong and rapid internet connection to work their magic. These qualities are not often found where we are staying. Thus, adobe apps don't always work well. These photos may not be up to my high technical standards, but they appear to be adequate for web viewing. I used the built in gallery app that comes with the chromebook.  It's free of cost and free of angst because it is so simple. 

699 On Selecting the Best - First published 05/05/2019

A seemingly long time ago, (or more recently, depending on how you view the passage of time these days) I had the temerity to assemble a photographic project entitled, Fifty a collection of my fifty best photographs – up until that point in my life. The motivation was the celebration of my fiftieth birthday. As I assembled the project I thought a lot about the selection process. Here’s what I came up with.

How rare is a great photograph? With the almost limitless number of factors that influence the outcome of a photograph, it is a wonder that good photographs exist. Consider the variables involved in making any photograph (especially the film and prints that made up Fifty). Timing is everything – remember f/8 and be there? In the real world, everything happens only once (and often too quickly). There is no instant replay in life. This is even true in photographing the landscape. Despite protestations from the uninitiated, the decisive moment also exists in landscape photography.

The answer to the question “How rare is a good photograph?” finally came to me. I look back on the work included for the collection of fifty images and cumulatively, they account for no more than ten seconds exposed film over thirty years. Good photographs are that rare.

While great photographs are rare, that should not be a cause for despair or lack of motivation. You can never tell when the next great photograph will be made. It very well might be the next time to pick up your camera to photograph. (More this coming Sunday!)

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What type of photographer would I be if I didn't give you a link to the Fifty Project? I would invite you to download the Fifty Project and don't view it online. Most web browsers have a "helper" app for viewing Adobe Acrobat documents. These "helper" apps are not compatible with all Acrobat functions. Several of the special features included in the Fifty: Revisited project don't work with these "helper" apps. Download the Project and enjoy it the way I designed it. Thanks again for stopping by. 

Photo Safari XXXIV - Photography at the Edges

We started out the day by heading to Wawawai State Park to photograph along  the Snake River. The Google lady couldn’t understand our pronunciation of Wawawai and came up with several totally useless suggestions. Rain and storms were predicted for the day and we wanted to start on the Snake River because we had good luck with it yesterday. (Note our scientific method to select locations to photograph.) The wind was blowing, the clouds were rapidly traversing the valley and the dappled shadows appeared and disappeared with alarming speed. The storm approached.

We followed the Snake River to Lewiston just ahead of the storm, grabbed a burger in a bag and headed back north into the storm. The clouds were low and threatening.

The rain really let loose on us as we headed back north to Moscow. We endured the fast moving storm and took off on some side roads when this part of the storm passed us by. We could see the next storm coming and decided to keep photographing. 

Life got interesting as this storm hit when we were far away from civilization driving on gravel roads. We were going over hills when the rain, sleet, hail and snow hit us. We did make it back to Moscow safely. 

Photography is lived at the edges. The edges of the day (morning and evening), the edges of the water and the edges of storms. Static is not good. Changes, especially extreme changes are where dramatic photographs are made. 

Tomorrow, we start to photograph our way to the Dalles, Oregon. The weather will be warmer and the food will be much better.

Photo Safari XXXIV - On the Loose in the Palouse

Morning from Steptoe Butte

Photo Safari 2020 (Volume XXXIV) commenced with the first full day of photographic wandering throughout the Palouse on October 20. For those of you not familiar with the Palouse, it is very Eastern Washington west of Pullman, Washington. It is rolling hills full of huge wheat farms. Except right now, the wheat has been harvested and the stalks of this year’s harvest are all that remain. Not being wise in the ways of wheat farming, our guess is that the winter wheat has already been planted so it can be harvested in the spring,

Yesterday morning (today’s photo) is from  the top of Steptoe Butte, just west of Pullman. The view is commanding because the land here is not heavily forested. From there we just started driving around with no destination in mind. We carry snacks, water and have a full tank of gas. Whenever one of us (the driver is Brooks Jensen, of LensWork fame) sees something worth photographing, we stop and photograph. It’s worked well for over thirty years so it’s just how we work. By day's end we wound up at Wawawai County Park on the Snake River. We made our way back to Moscow and had a forgettable dinner there. It served as a reminder that Eastern Washington is a culinary wasteland.  

Evidently, this area is very popular with photographers, but in the summer months, when the skies are blue and the fields are full of golden wheat. Now when winter is starting to threaten, there’s not too many photographers around. We kind of like it like that.