ku # 1337-43 ~ 1/5 sec. in my life

40 MPH/ Curve ~ Black Brook, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
roadside tangle #1 ~ Black Brook, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
roadside tangle #2 ~ Black Brook, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
roadside tangle #3 ~ Black Brook, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
roadside tangle #4 ~ Black Brook, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
leaves on ground ~ Black Brook, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
decaying stump ~ Black Brook, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

Over this weekend past I uncharacteristically went out and about with the sole intention of making pictures - as opposed to my normal M.O. of going out and about on some errand or another with my cameras and picturing whatever, if anything, that pricks my eye and sensibilities.

Also uncharacteristically I went out and about with the intention to make pictures of a specific nature (pun alert). My intent was to make pictures of fall detritus which is at peak season inasmuch as there will be nothing but bare trees in very short order. So off I went with a specific destination and intent in mind. Approximately 90 minutes and 40 pictures later - subsequently edited to 28 finals - I called it mission accomplished and headed home.

FYI, while picture making I followed Edward Weston's dictum that “Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.” Although in my particular case, I didn't venture more 10 yards from the car.

While editing / processing the picture, it came to me that, while I was out in field for approximately 90 minutes, the actual time spent making pictures was about 1/5 of a second. I arrived at that figure by adding together all of the various shutter speed settings used in making the 28 finals. The reason, as best I can determine, for that somewhat arcane idea / exercise most likely was instigated by something I had read in the last week or so ....

.... When asked by someone at a dinner party to define photography, Teju Cole (photography critic / NY Times Magazine) said:

Photography is inescapably a memorial art. It selects, out of the flow of time, a moment to be preserved, with the moments before and after falling away like sheer cliffs.

Consequently, I am organizing my final pictures into a new body of work with the title 1/5 of a second of my life memorialized. FYI, over the next week I will be posting 5-6 pictures a day from my fall detritus picture making outing.

Update on Tuesday, October 27, 2015 at 04:47PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: John Linn wrote: "These pictures do not look like much until "embigened" and even then some don't do it for me... but some do."

my response: John - thanks very much for the feedback. Not all the pictures posted / to be posted are going to make the final cut for inclusion in my new body of work. Nevertheless, I am posting all 28 processed pictures from the outing as a sort of interim edit from the original 40 pictures made that day. After they are all posted, my intention is to make one last entry of the final edit.

In this entry there are 2, maybe 3, pictures that I don't think will make the final cut. My intention in posting these pictures as groups was to start "weak" and end "strong". However, I will let you - and anyone else who chooses to comment - be judge of the success of that intention.

Comments

[John]

These pictures do not look like much until "embigened" and even then some don't do it for me... but some do.