Cloud Verse IV
County Fair Week
It’s county fair week here in Jackson.
Get your corn dog, head down to the midway, shop the cattle and livestock, and check your gut at the Tilt-a-Whirl.
Gueorgui Pinkhassov
Gueorgui Pinkhassov (via A set of photographs by Gueorgui Pinkhassov | Pavel Kosenko’s blog (English version))
Numbers 11, 23, 33, and 73 (above) are everything I love about color film photography. Just perfect.
People Behind the Event
Hot air jubilees, including the annual one in my hometown, are great for photography material. The colors, the shapes, the ambition.
But it’s hard not to fall into cliché. If you’ve seen one soaring balloon, you’ve probably seen them all. And unless you have an in-basket view, there’s only so much you can do from the ground.
It’s why I like focusing on the people behind the event – who puts these things together? What are their jobs? Is there any struggle?
Or, what if you took the colors away? And just focused on the shapes? Hence, this shot from just before sunset.
Portraits Taken in the Shower
MMM Interview: Manjari Sharma’s Beautifully Intimate Portraits Taken in the Shower
A really lovely, dramatic series.
Burning Cathedral of the Summer
“I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer.” – Violette Leduc
Changing Summer Light
The summer light is changing here in late July. The sun is rising a little later, the light is a little more golden, and the mists are gathering in the low spots.
It’s been a weirdly cool summer. A few hot days, but mostly May-like temperatures.
The way the light bends around the field, through the tall grasses – it’s almost like September already.
Summer Breeze
Abandoned House – Albion, Michigan
Thanks to fellow photographer Matt Lockwood for the heads-up on this place. I’ve photographed the exterior before, but never the interior.
Fangorn Forest – Flowerpot Island
We take the ferry out to the island at a leisurely pace, seeing shipwrecks as we travel in Lake Huron, on a bright and sunny July day.
Things are different up here. There’s no sandy beaches, and the water is a degree or two above freezing. It’s just rock and water and wood. A peninsula jutting into the Georgian Bay, surrounding by little uninhabited rocky islands.
We get to Flowerpot Island, and there are tourists everywhere on the initial beach. Well-dressed Asian ladies and children scrambling over the limestone shore, into the freezing water.
But as you go deeper along the trails, away from the “flowerpots” that named the island, things are quieter. No screaming kids, no well-dressed Asian ladies. It’s just moss and rock and cedar trees.
And little trails of mottled light that reach the forest floor.
It reminded me of one of Tolkien’s forests, full of story. The trees here aren’t nearly as old as Fangorn because their roots can’t get a good grip on the limestone rock, and so they fall. No tree here is ancient.
They are hardy, though, and they grip to life through terrible winters and stiff winds from the lake.
The sunlight reaches the forest floor in patches, highlighting a felled tree here, or a moss-grown rock there. It’s dramatic, and on parts of the island no one ever sees it.
I had a lot of fun stopping at the more lovely light patches to grab a few photos. Shadow and light – the mix was addictive after hiking along the trails, and I had to stay in the back of our group so I didn’t hold anyone up.
It was worth it. The photos have a mystique to them. Places without people often do, and that’s why we go there.
