In my last post I mentioned that I don’t often photograph wildlife—but couldn’t resist the little warbler. And far less commonly than wildlife do I ever photograph heavy industrial complexes and refineries—but this week I couldn’t resist.
On Thursday morning (the 19th), thick smoke from forest fires burning in BC rolled in, covering the city in a dim, orange-y haze. While a big problem for asthmatics, unique lighting/atmospheric conditions like this are a great opportunity for landscape photographers. So I headed out of town with my camera, thinking I’d go to out to Ministik or one of my other favourite natural areas east of Edmonton. But as I drove out of town, the effect of the filtered light and the thick smoke obscuring background details, caught my eye.
I’ve noticed the interesting, almost abstract, shapes and lines of the refineries for a while but the high-contrast surfaces and limited colour palette never quite inspired me sufficiently to grab my camera (and I’m usually on my way out, or back from, a beautiful walk in the forest and I don’t feel like staring at refineries). Brooks Jensen, editor of the excellent photography magazine, LensWork, once spoke in a podcast (click here to listen to it) about the concept of the “decisive landscape moment”. Borrowing the idea from the late, great street photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, Brooks suggests that we need to wait for something unique to happen on the landscape in order to make an interesting photograph—a simple idea, but definitely worth keeping in mind. And on Thursday, the refineries east of Edmonton had their “decisive moment” and I had a lot of fun trying out making photographs of an entirely different subject matter.
I made a good number of photographs that I’m pretty excited about and perhaps I’ll share some more of them here. Leave a note in the comments to let me know what you think—I always appreciate hearing your reactions to any of the photographs I post here.
I don’t normally photograph much wildlife (I don’t have the long lenses and patience usually required), but I couldn’t resist this little bird (a Yellow-rumped (or Audubon’s) Warbler) that I watched feeding along a small mountain stream for nearly a half hour. It was very early in the season and there had been a little snow overnight so the air was cool and damp, and the insects this bird was after were moving really slowly. He would perch on these willow saplings over the creek, turning his head to watch and then dart out to grab his meal from the air or the underside of a new leaf. It was a lot of fun to watch, and—employing the time honoured, fine-art, “shotgun” approach to composition—I filled up a good portion of my memory card trying to get just the right shot.
I know this photograph breaks a couple “golden rules” of composition—you’re not supposed to centre your subject (rule of thirds) or have the subject looking out of (rather than into) the frame. But I think it works this way (I even cropped in a little from a more “traditionally” framed shot). I think the shadowed area in the top-left balances the light, empty area at the bottom, and for me, the bird’s out-of-frame gaze gives a bit of the feeling that he’s just about to leave the frame himself (which in fact he did). Let me know what you think—just click below to add your thoughts. Thanks!
I’ve recently upgraded my computer to a newer machine capable of processing the beautiful high-definition video files that my 5DmkII can produce. It’s a lot of fun to learn about the whole new world of video capture and editing, and I’m just starting to get a bit of a handle on things.
One thing I’ve been doing recently as a first step into working with video is to make a photograph and a video of the same subject. These are basically still photographs, with motion. What I like about making shots like these is that sometimes, the motion in a scene is an important part of the “essence” of the scene, and now I have a way to try to capture that too.
In this example (compare the video in this post with the still photograph in yesterdays post), I used a long-ish exposure for the still image (1/2 a second) to hint at the movement of the water, but I also captured this short video clip. I tried (somewhat successfully) adding a vignette effect to match the processing of the photograph. What do you think? Is there something additional in the video that’s missing in the still photo? or does the video just add complexity to the image without adding to the “essence”? In any case, it’s fun to experiment with, and that’s the whole point. I hope you enjoy it.
It’s been a busy summer, but I’m slowly starting to work my way through all the photographs that I made during my time in Banff and in the boreal forest of north-western Alberta. This photograph is of one of my favourite things to come across while walking through the forest—a small creek flowing over a little waterfall. You can usually hear them a few steps before you see them and it’s such a peaceful, relaxing sound—birds in the background, cool morning breeze in the tops of the spruce—beautiful.
One of the big challenges of photographing in the boreal is that there is so much detail—understory plants, fallen leaves, twigs, etc. that it is sometimes hard to concentrate the focus of the viewer on the intended subject of the photograph. In this case, I used a fairly heavy vignetting in post-processing to darken the detail from the corners and concentrate the attention to the water and moss. I have a portfolio of boreal photography where I used another, more experimental technique to achieve the same goal. Click here to have a look at that portfolio.
A quick post to let you know about an event coming up next week where one of my photos will be exhibited. The Visual Artists of Alberta Association is hosting a juried art show at the Kaasa Gallery at the Jubilee Auditorium (11455 — 87 ave) from August 12 to September 23. The opening reception will be in the evening of August 12, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.
For those (like myself) who aren’t yet there, here is the VAAA’s description of the event:
Visual Arts Alberta is pleased to present the third annual photography competition & exhibition, Open Photo 2010, exhibiting some of Alberta’s finest photographers.
Visual Arts Alberta received an overwhelmingly positive response to this open call to Alberta photographers. Over 300 photographs were submitted to our jury for consideration. Sixty two pieces were chosen, and Visual Arts Alberta is pleased to present to you the jury’s selected work.
Guest Juror Thomas Willock will choose the best over-all photographer as well as honorable mentions in the evening of the opening reception.
Awards will be announced at the opening reception at the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton.
All are welcome / Artists will be in attendance
I, and many of the other artists, will be in attendance for the evening and would love to see you all there.
I had a great time camping and photographing in Banff National Park, and now I’m back in town for a few days and then off again to do some bird surveys in the boreal forest of north-western Alberta.I haven’t had much chance to go through the many photographs I made while there, but I thought I’d quick share this one to tide you over until I get back to posting more regularly.
I took this photograph along the lower section of the gorgeous Johnston Canyon, just a half hour north of the Banff townsite. The path through the canyon is normally packed full of tourists, but I had the pleasure of being there mid-week and early-season, giving me plenty of time (and room) to do some photography. This photo shows the beautiful clear, green colour of the water flowing through the canyon, and gives a feel for the almost claustrophobic closeness of the overhanging rock cliffs.
I will be away from posting for a little while (although to be honest, I haven’t been posting a whole lot anyways—sorry), as I’m off to Banff National Park to go camping for a couple weeks. I’m pretty excited—I spend most of my time photographing in the Rocky Mountains in Jasper National Park, so it’ll be fun to explore some new areas (with my camera along the whole time, of course).
Hopefully, I’ll be able to share some new work with you once I get back, but in the meantime I thought I’d post this photo taken half-way between Jasper and Banff, along the Icefields Parkway (one of the most beautiful drives in the world). We parked near the Icefields Interpretive Centre, and climbed up along the Wilcox Pass trail on the other side of the valley as the glaciers. What I love about this photo is the scale of the view. If you click to enlarge the image, you can just see the trail running down to the right, and there’s even a couple of (very small) hikers on it.
