‘The Light Is the Story’
“Bad light can rob even the most incredible scenes of their visual interest, while good light can transform the most mundane subjects into a thing of beauty.” – Cameron Whitman (via Twitter)
photography
Shoot for the Moon
“If you adopt that notion of linear progress, if you expect that your life will just be one straight rocketship to the moon, you will be so disappointed and disoriented when you fall off course, when a tank explodes, when the moon moves and it turns out to not be where you plotted.” – Austin Kleon, in a great Twitter thread.
Amen. I think about how, as we settle into winter, I take fewer photos this time of year. It happens every January, and I know this slow, quiet season is coming.
The thing is: do you accept the season, or try to rebel? Often I’ll pick up a different creative project in the winter – photographer interviews, say – and when spring blooms, I get started on photography projects in earnest. Summer, with it’s light and long days, provides more opportunities to make actual photographs. Toward autumn, I fall in love with the weather and the landscape and the light, and create some of my favorite work.
What am I up to? Depends on the time of year.
In Case of Fire
I heard a story on NPR about the victims of the Camp Fire out in California returning to their unburned homes, finding everything they own still in its place – just as it was they day they left in early November.
That story made me think of what I would do in case our home ever caught fire. There’s the old trope about grabbing the photo albums. Photo albums, the thinking goes, are the only irreplaceable items.
For me, I’d grab the kids, my diabetes kit, and my backup hard drive. That’s where all my photos live.
Yes, I still have photo albums. I cherish them. But a few years ago I scanned all my old childhood photos and backed them up in several locations: Aperture, a backup drive, and Flickr. I would only the grab the backup hard drive by my desk to grab the few photos I don’t have backed up somewhere else.
This may be a good time for an annual reminder: back up your photos, keep them in a safe spot, and keep multiple copies.
I set a reminder to backup my iPhone photos, too, at least once a month. Just in case.
In case of a fire, I’d still be worried about all my photographs – but maybe not as worried as I used to be.
Autumn Out Back
My co-workers thought I was crazy.
“I’m heading to the woods,” I said after lunch. “If I’m not back in a while, it’s been nice working with you all.”
The woods, they asked? Why?
Because. It’s right out back. At work, our headquarters sits in the middle of a beautiful, hilly forest, with little ponds and lakes all around us. I’ve been dying to get into those woods and explore – dying to get out and shoot, period.
No, the weather wasn’t nice, and no, the light wasn’t perfect. But if felt good to get out and tromp through the fallen leaves on a cool autumn day.
Then my Canon battery died, so I had to rely on my iPhone. Not that that matters.
I made it back by lunch hour’s end, a little wet and a lot refreshed.
Only What You Need
“Take only what you need to survive.” – Captain Lone Starr, Spaceballs
How much photography technique is too much?
Is it good enough to learn the techniques to be able to do what you want to do? To be able to say what you need to say?
What good is any more technique?
The liberal artist in me says learn all you can – simply for learning’s sake. I’m a lifelong self-educator. Part of me can’t help but dive into technique and tools and tips just because that’s how my brain works. It’s a sponge.
But then I hit a skill ceiling. I don’t need to learn much more about Photoshop, or exposure compensation, or lighting, because I have just enough to be able to express myself properly.
From here, with what I know now, the rest is just noise.
Textures of the Season
Out here, where the roads are named after the family farms, we slide into the quiet season.
It’s all warm colors here at Adams Farm: yellows and reds and oranges. A few greens, but mostly the rustic hue of autumn.
The textures are everywhere, from smooth pumpkins and apples to mottled squashes of every different shape and size.
We’re crazy about the foods of autumn. I could live on apples and squash, while the kids transform into sticky hornet magnets with cider and donuts. We wipe our hands of cinnamon and sugar, we feel for the rigid pumpkin stems, and we toss the bumpy buttercup from crate to wagon.
This is what we live for – the texture of the season.
Bright Walls
It’s almost like all this is a bit too cool for Jackson.
International mural artists? Tons of people downtown? Beauty where once there was empty brick?
It all happened, thanks to the Bright Walls mural festival, this past week. But really, it started months ago with one of the best marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen. You couldn’t go anywhere in town without seeing that sunrise-and-brick logo. The campaign worked, too, because people – both Jackson natives and out-of-towners – showed up in droves, slowing down traffic in an otherwise sleepy downtown.
Maybe it’s obvious, but here, right in front of all of us, was the power of art on display. It was a spectacle, sure, but it was also a reason to celebrate.
A reason to believe.
Hobbit Place
This is usually our springtime ritual, heading to the Hobbit Place, grabbing flowers and thinking about landscape decorations.
For this year, we went full autumn: mums, pumpkins, decorative gourds – the whole thing. As a Tolkien fan, I love the greenhouse’s name. As a person who cares about their yard, I appreciate their selection.
Tick tock goes the beat of the year. On and on we slide into fall.