ku # 606 ~ big sky

Bright cloud over Vermont ~ northern Lake Champlain • click to embiggenThe other day the wife left a comment that stated that it's all just "f8 and be there", to which I dedicate this picture. I did picture it @ f8 and, as luck would have it, I was there - along Lake Champlain near the Au Sable Point marshes - at the same time as that brilliant white cloud over Vermont's Green Mountains.

'twas a sunny day

Au Sable River eddy foam/froth • ALL PICTURES - click to embiggen
Small riverside shaded glen
Small Au Sable River island

Leaves, moss, erratics on the forest floor
Au Sable River fallsThis past Friday, unlike Thursday (see below - singing and dancing in the rain), was a near Summer-like day so Hugo and I took a little hike along the West Branch of the Au Sable River to enjoy the afternoon.

What a difference a day makes.

singing and dancing in the rain

man & nature # 136 • ALL PICTURES - click to embiggen

man & nature # 137
ku # 594
ku # 595
ku # 596
ku # 597
man & nature # 138Yesterday's weather - a brooding gray overcast and a light misty rain - at times heavy and wind-driven, albeit very fine raindrops, gave me cause to get out and play a round of golf. So I donned a black turtleneck shirt, black pants, and black socks (to match the mood) and off I went with a bottle of water, a big chocolate cookie, a banana, my golf gear, and (as always) my camera stuff.

The golf was great and, surprise, surprise, I had the course all to myself. That said, I nearly didn't make to the course because it was very picture-rific everywhere I looked.

What amazes me about a day like yesterday is how dramatically the landscape is transformed by rain. As I mentioned a short while back, for me, the rain is like a "natural" Hue & Saturation slider. Stuff that I see everyday seems almost to literally rearrange itself and present my eyes with a never-before-seen "arrangement".

I am fairly certain that this realignment is due to the fact that the landscape becomes much more colorful in the rain. As some colors become more saturated and/or dark, they do, in fact, create different tonal / color relationships amongst the various elements of the natural world which is the subject of my camera's gaze. To my eye and sensibilities, things just look different than they "normally" appear (and are not "catching my eye").

Do any of you like to get out and picture in the rain?

ku # 593 ~ up in the air

40' above the shoreline of Pelham Bay ~ western end of Long Island Sound, NYC • click to embiggenIt occurred to me last week when I was picturing in the tamarack bog that I would like to have the ability to picture the place (amongst quite a few other places) from a POV about 30'-40' above the ground. That desire was intensified this past weekend when I actually had the opportunity to picture something from that POV.

But, here's the rub - the "tripod" needed to accomplish this death-defying photographic daring-do costs in the neighborhood of $740US (plus mileage) a week. The only way I can make this happen (and keep the wife happy) is to convince a client that they need a picture of something from 40' ft in the air.

(mostly) ku # 588/89/90 ~ Spring has sprung

Adirondack pine barrens • click to embiggenNow for something completely different - an Adirondack pine barren.

Just a few miles north of Au Sable Forks is the Clintonville Pine Barrens - a sand delta deposited 12,000 years ago by glacial melt water. In fact, the area pictured here is not actually in the designated pine barrens but they are situated just outside the boundary of it. That's why there is evidence of humankind - quad-runner tracks - in the center picture.

The Clintonville Pine Barrens, a 900 acre preserve, is administered by the Adirondack Chapter of The Nature Conservancy and the Adirondack Land Trust. It is open to the public for hiking, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and nature study.

ku # 587 ~ Spring has sprung # 21

Tamarack bog # 5 • click to embiggenReturning to the notion of hand of the photographer, invisible-wise, Wright Morris also had this to say:

In photography we can speak of anonymous as a genre. It is the camera that takes the picture; the photographer is the collaborator. What we sense to be wondrous, to occasion awesome, as if in the presence of the supernatural, is the impression we have of seeing what we have turned out backs on. As much as we crave the personal, and insist upon it, it is the impersonal that moves us. It is the camera that glimpses life as the Creator might have seen it ... [I] would personally prefer that the photograph was stamped Photographer Unknown. This would assure me, rightly or wrongly, that I was seeing a fragment of life, a moment of time, as it was. The photographer who has no hand to hide will conceal it with the least difficulty. Rather than than admiration, for work well done, I will feel the awe of revelation. The lost found, the irretrievable retrieved.

Reading and reading and reading again, this passage brings to mind an experience of a certain artist-photographer of my acquaintance. He was given the opportunity to show his work to one of the prime mover and shakers of the Photography as Art world. Long story short, the aspiring artist-photographer was both stunned and chagrined that his audition lasted all of about 2 minutes - that's about how long it took for the gate-keeper to look at and dismiss his portfolio (not as worthless, just as worthless to him).

Upon hearing about this encounter, my first thought was something about the notion of the self-important-pompous-ass kind of thing - and there was little doubt that there was an element of that just by the manner in which he comported himself - but, on the other hand, the man was most likely just evidencing his personal likes and dislikes. Likes and dislikes that were no doubt derived and tempered from years of experience of either feeling the awe of revelation or not.

Now, I must admit that feeling the awe of revelation, the sense of (re)discovering the lost found, the irretrievable retrieved, or even to glimpse life as the Creator might have seen it - all of these sensations are what I crave and most enjoy when viewing pictures. And, above all, what I most seek and enjoy when making pictures is the feeling of seeing (and picturing) what we have turned out backs on.

And, in should go almost without saying, that I like those sensations and qualities in a picture best when I feel, rightly or wrongly, that I was seeing a fragment of life, a moment of time, as it was. A feeling that puts me squarely in the camp of reality-related picturing, picturing in which the hand of the photographer, if not invisible, is at least an excellent example of visual léger de main, aka - slight of hand. The only thing I want to know about the hand of the photographer is his/her idea of what is important - that is to say, picturing making is, first and foremost, about the process of selection.

IMO, pictures are best when the picture maker simply shows me (and shows me in a simple manner - the notion of an "impersonal" view of things) what it is that you want me to see. I am not all that interested in his/her experience of the thing pictured because, as a human being, I "crave the personal" but I like it best when I am left to my own devices when it comes to decyphering why it is the "impersonal that moves me(us)".

There is a great irony in all of this "impersonal" view of things because, IMO, the best pictures are most often created by a picture maker who, on one hand, is very personally connected to his/her subject but, nevertheless, on the other hand, manages to make pictures that appear to be (léger de main) coolly impersonal glimpses of something that they see that the rest of us are missing. The picture maker thereby offers the viewer, not propaganda, but rather a kind of inkblot test from which we can draw our own conclusions.

ku # 586 ~ Spring has sprung # 20 ~ floating through the Adirondack version of a coral reef

Tamarack bog # 4 • click to embiggenI am not alone. It appears that James, who lives nearby but I have not met, seems to like bogs as well:

I couldn't agree more regarding your comments on the rare beauty of a tamarack bog...and considering your eye for decay Mark, I'm not at all surprised by your interpretation.

Of all the places I've explored here, I just can't get enough of Bloomingdale Bog. The naturally occurring "rusty hues" and glowing lichens feel so supernatural to me, during late fall and early spring especially.

There is this duality here as well...so much decomposing matter being absorbed back into the earth...at the same time, I've never been in a landscape that felt more alive...like floating through the Adirondack version of a coral reef.

I enjoy just completely losing myself in the alders and grasses and tamaracks, etc. I love that you chose to ignore the sky, choosing instead to immerse the viewer completely in the skeletal, soggy details of the place. I hope you also plan on picturing during that initial burst of lime/neon green that seems to pass so quickly...unbelievable addition to your ku Mark.

As an aside, if you've never experienced paddling Twobridge Brook through Bloomingdale Bog this time of year, and don't mind battling the alders and beaver damns in spots, I highly recommend it. My brother and I paddled from 86, crossed "under" the bog corridor near the opposite end, passed under Bloomingdale Rd, and continued on until we reached some tiny road in Bloomingdale whose name I never caught...can't even begin to describe the wildlife (otter, beaver, countless birds, etc), not to mention the grasses and islands (or whatever you call clumps of spongey earth in a bog) filled with wildflowers...last May we encountered the largest patch of swamp marigolds I have ever seen...also found painted trilliums, etc. But in the context of these bog islands/forests, it's just incredible.

James, thanks very much for the comments and your reminder re: Bloomingdale Bog. I did an episode for my PBS show in Bloomingdale Bog. It was my first experience there and I have been wanting to get back to it ever since. I am not a birder but the reason I was in the bog was at the behest of photographer Jeff Nadler - he was my birding guide for a piece about birding and avian photography.

I think it's time to get out the the boat and take it for a spin. But Jim, here's the zillion dollar question - what's the water level in the bog? It's been a bit dry this Spring.

ku # 585 ~ Spring has sprung # 19

Tamarack bog # 3 • click to embiggenAs mentioned previously my tamarack visit produced quite a few "keepers" - in the neighborhood of 15 -18 pictures of note and worth. That can be attributed to the fact that a tamarack bog is a very target-rich environment of seemingly endless variety.

That reality makes it very easy to eat up a gig or more of memory card space in very short order - a situation that brings to mind another notion from the essay, In Our Image, by Martin Morris. A notion that I dwell (but not fester) on from time to time - the idea of image proliferation that has come upon the medium since the advent of digital capture together with the disseminative powers of the web:

Images proliferate. Am I wrong in being reminded of the printing of money in a period of wild inflation? Do we know what we are doing? Are we able to evaluate what we have done?

As an antidote to the medium's apparent promiscuity, Morris even waxes a bit poetic about the good ole days of the daguerreotype - the idea that a picture-maker had one shot at it, or, even he/she made several exposures, the resultant picture(s) would be limited to an Edition of One -

After the predictable advances in all areas of photographic reproduction, it is possible that daguerreotype uniqueness might return to photographic practice and evaluation. This counter-production aesthetic has its rise in the dilemma of over-production. Millions of photographers, their number increasing hourly take billions of pictures. This fact alone enhances rarity. Is it beyond the realm of speculation that single prints will soon be made from a negative that has been destroyed?

Leaving aside the author's verbal faux pas that a print could be made from a negative that has been destroyed - one could make a single print from negative that is subsequently destroyed - Morris is essentially suggesting that picture-makers repudiate one of the medium's essential characteristics - the fact that an endless number of virtually identical "originals" can be made from a single negative.

Unlike other art mediums, a picture's rarity / singularity / exclusivity can only be created / enhanced by "artificially" making it so. Endless hours are spent by artist-photographers and their gallery representatives trying to determine how limited a particular print edition should be. This "artificial" limitation is mandated by the Art World's financial fixation on "rarity", not the by any limitation inherent in the medium itself.

But, that particular brand of rarity is not really what Morris (and many others) is concerned about. At its core, the issue for him is the effect(s) upon humanity's perceptions of the world / reality that comes from a populous swimming - one might even say, "drowning" - in sea of pictures.

It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that most of that populous simply does not have even a glimmer of understanding regarding how pictures have changed and influenced the way they see things and, by "things", I mean life.

One example that I will offer in support of that phenomenon can be found in our current economic mess - the elephant in the room that no one is talking about relative to curbing our enthusiasm for wretched-excess consumerism and an economy based upon consumption. A disease that has been fostered and spread by pictures that make up the overwhelming bulk of that ubiquitous sea of pictures (and as it use to state on my business card), photography for commerce. Or, if you prefer, pictures that tell us what to want, how to live, what we "need" for the "good life".

Try this little experiment - tomorrow, when you arise, have a pencil and notepad upon which you kept track of every advertising impression you see throughout the day. If you are observant, by the end of the day, your list of those impressions will number in the thousands. And, the question that arises for many is simply this - how often, if ever, do you actually think about the real message underlying all of those impressions?

I guess that's one of the reasons that I like bogs so much - there's not a single advertising impression / message to be seen.

Update on Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 11:14AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Andy Stockton wrote: For your readers who are interested, there are contemporary artists still making daguerreotypes every day - often inspired by the very idea you mentioned - the "edition of one". You might check out this site if you would like to learn more:For your readers who are interested, there are contemporary artists still making daguerreotypes every day - often inspired by the very idea you mentioned - the "edition of one". You might check out this site if you would like to learn more.

my response: thanks for the link although I feel compelled to state that I tend to shy away from picturing endeavors that seem to require statements such as yours - "I did this (had blood tests) to establish a baseline blood level before I start working with mercury."