“You're eyes were really on this morning. It must be because you're thinking about the workshop,” said Robin, as I showed her my take from the morning. Tomorrow we teach together, for the first time, The Photograph Within. As in teaching the workshop for the first time, and also teaching together for the first time.
Before the rain began I went down to the Fill. The ponds at the Fill are frozen, a rare state, so I'm utterly captivated by the novelty of the ice with the sticks, and the globs of air pockets and dead leaves under the transluscence. Sometimes I feel my excitement get a little out of hand, I'm being too indiscriminate in my shooting, so I pause. I sit on my haunches by the pond's edge, and just look, and feel where I am. I notice the density of textures, the play of contrasts in what is usually water, and mess of beaver-felled sticks. I hear a few finches overhead, a chickadee working the alder above me, and see, over the bay, a Bald Eagle wheeling around. It's probably worrying the coot flock out there, I think. More calm now, I move back into picture mode with a tad more deliberateness.
I'm more attentive to my process today knowing that I'm going to have to articulate it tomorrow. Among my “Photo Quotes” page in the workshop handouts is one from Minor White: “Exposure occupies my mind while intuition frames the images.” It's one thing to be in the haze, finding compelling images laying all about your feet, but there needs to be a witness mind to that state, the one who keeps track of the technical minutia and making sure your feet don't fall off the rock. I'm sensing where I need to compensate my exposure for the whiteness of the ice, or the blackness of the deep shadows. It's a dull overcast day, with room on either side of my nicely humped histogram, so I can be a little loose with my exposures and let the leash out on the right brain side that's finding the images.
Before long I feel done. Another Minor White quote: “If he (a photographer) were to walk a block in a state of sensitized sympathy to everything to be seen, he would be exhausted before the block was up and out of film long before that.”
The Flickr set from the morning is here.
Wonderful photo.
Posted by: Eric Hancock | January 26, 2008 at 02:40 PM