A photographic subject, that does not exist.

 

So, you want to shoot a sunset while on vacation at the beach.  Of course you do!  What would a beach vacation be without a great sunset shot anyway?  Oh wait, you are vacationing on the East Coast!  The sun sets west and the ocean is on the wrong side!  What do you do?  Well, you could shoot the sun setting behind some grassy sand dunes.  That would look pretty cool.  But the Ocean is calling out for your attention.  What to do? Well, you are just gonna have to shoot behind the sunset!  Yup, behind it!

Get out of the box for a minute.  Take a look at what you have all around you.  Stand on the sand and just take a look at it.  Let the sun set to the West, as it is going to do no matter what.  Turn around, face east, and just look at it.  Yes, I know that the ocean is there, but look at it!  There is a whole lot of color going on behind the sunset.  This is where you get those beautiful purple and pinks.  Let the west have the orange and yellow fireball, because you have the blue water with white waves being caressed by a soft, cooler spectrum of light.  And then, you get the explosion of color!

I call this the color bump.  If you set up your camera well before the sunset you will be in position to witness the entire show.  You will be able to watch the color bump begin quietly as it gradually rises over the course of minutes.  It will reach a crescendo, after which it will rapidly vanish.  The crescendo moment is when you want to hit that shutter button.  The result is a very different, but just as beautiful, landscape sunset photograph to take home with you.

Here are a couple of tricks to try out when shooting an ocean landscape sunset.  We all know that our photograph needs to have a strong subject, we need an interesting foreground element, and we need something in the distance to round out the “depth” of the final image.  But all you have to work with here is sand, water, and sky.  Hmmmmm.  What to do?  Give yourself some space!  Lots of it!  Take a look at the photography above for a moment.  Yes, I know you have already looked at it!  But seriously, just look at it.  Again!

I have filled up most of the entire upper half of the frame with nothing but space!  By doing this, I have confined the ocean’s waves to the lower half of the frame.  I decided to keep all of the action of the photograph, or the energy if you will, in the lower half of the composition.  This starts to create a focus.  By leaving the upper half wide open, we are drawing the eye to our subject while giving it plenty of room to explore at the same time. I wanted to capture the softness of the light, to enhance its pastel like quality, so I decided to use a long exposure.  This long exposure technique called “dragging the shutter” takes the high contrast details out of the waves and makes them look milky or soft.  The soft white of the water complements the soft color hue of the sunset, which is our subject.

Now, notice the angle of the shore line.  It moves left to right diagonally through the frame.  This is called a leading line and leads you right to the subject, the sunset.  Now, while you can not really see the actual sunset, you may think that it can not be our subject!  Hmmmmm.  Take a look at what I am using as my distant object.  The color in the sky.  By using just a little bit of the color in the sky (remember I left a lot of open room at the top to move around in), reflecting that same patch of sky in the water on the sand right there in front, leading a line right to it, and complementing its softness, the photograph becomes all about the color of the sunset.  The photograph becomes all about telling the story of the main character, our subject, the sunset!

Cold Mountain and Fine Art

 

I still shiver from the cold when I look at this photograph.  The photograph itself is cold.  Perhaps I still remember with clarity my experience on the mountain that night.  I remember how my body witnessed the rapidly falling temperature that started below freezing as the sun set below the horizon and the wind whipping up the mountain side over forty miles per hour.  I remember the solitary grays and blues of the landscape as the earth traded the warm glow of the sun for the cold white light of the moon.  I sought refuge from the wind behind boulders of granite as I watched Mother Nature paint the sky for the final time that day.  Perhaps it is the power of the art that now conveys such an experience.

The earth provides us with an abundance of entertainment.  At any given moment in any given place, the ball of rock that we walk upon generates countless channels of quality programming.  I am not a connoisseur of television.  I spend a considerable amount of time “staring into space”, so to speak.  Much of this time I am simply enjoying the show.  My practice as a landscape photographer runs congruent with my spiritual practice.  Both lead me to the moment.  Sometimes that moment is pretty damn cold.

I do not shoot what I see.  I shoot what I feel.  I shoot what I perceive.  What ends up framed in white mat board and hanging on the wall above the sofa is not a capture of what I saw, it is not the result of a place in time, nor is it a documentary tale.  It is simply an experience, one that continues indefinitely.  Fine art is powerful because it moves us.  It makes us feel.  It reflects us, it makes us think, and it sometimes disturbs us or makes us feel uncomfortable.  When I venture to a location that I want to shoot, I generally have a pretty good idea about what I am after.  In most cases, I have been there before.  What I never know though is what I am going to feel.  I do not know anything exactly.  When I get there I sit.

Before I set up my camera gear, measure the light, look for a composition, or anything else photographic for that matter, I just sit.  I watch, I listen, I feel, I smell everything around me.  After some time the photograph begins to build, inside me.  It is the experience that is the powerful component.  While it can not be captured, it can be conveyed.  Just like a story, once learned, can be retold, it is the experience that I aim to convey when I press the shutter button.

Photographer as Presenter and Protector

The finished photographs hang on white gallery walls.  A new landscape collection of horizontal images is matted and framed.  The room is full of warmth, light and color.  The photographs seem to sit on the wall in solace, but with an abundance of energy they seem to dance on them at the same time.  These photographs showcase the Earth’s beauty and bounty through Mother Nature’s sometimes fury and sometimes caress.  Patrons and art collectors mill about in the pleasantly warm room to enjoy the finality of capture.  They speak of emotion, contrast, humility and awesomeness.  But are they truly aware?

Why do we do it?  Why does anyone do it?  Why does anyone do anything for that matter? What is it all for anyway? Is it for a capture of supposed time? Is it the quest for the prize-winning photograph or the million dollar image?  Is it to see what has not before been seen.  Is it to share with others who otherwise may never see? Is it a quest for the quenching delight of true understanding? Is it part of a journey toward realizing the nature of emptiness? Or is it simply a practice of awareness?

While photographic art is undoubtedly viewed in comfort, it is very often created through discomfort.  This could be either physical or emotional discomfort, or both.  In many cases, this discomfort had escalated into pain.  This suffering was part of the creation of the art itself, but often it is not conveyed into the final piece.  As a landscape photographer, I understand the requirements of a good photograph.  A photograph that invokes the viewer and one that places her into the scene.  As if she were standing right next to the photographer.   The photographer is not the creator of the landscape scene, but is humbly the capturer of it.  He often is also the protector of the viewer, so long as the landscape scene is being viewed.

As much power as a photograph can employ with regards to communicating emotion or relating to the senses, it simultaneously protects the viewer from such.  Landscape photography is challenging to say the least.  Not only is it incredibly difficult to sell landscape photography at the level to sustain a decent living, much less repair and replace the gear required,  it requires a tremendous dedication of the photographer to capture great shots.  The wonderful photograph that hangs on the white gallery wall, the one being admired by countless viewers, the one that adorns the magazine cover, the one that shares with the viewer a far off place that was previously only available through imagination, is the photograph that was……….

……..shot by a photographer who likely traveled at great expense to a particular destination for a particular shot a couple of dozen times before conditions warranted the pressing of the shutter button.  The photographer who camped in sub-freezing weather overnight to then hike for many miles through biting wind or blowing snow in the dark to arrive before daybreak so that he could properly prepare for the rising of the sun.  The photographer who scrambles up rock with over thirty pounds of gear on his back, balancing his weight at he navigates dangerous terrain for the best angle.  The photographer whose hand and fingers are so cold that they can barely operate the camera’s controls while in the Arctic, or who is fighting searing heat or humidity or the relentless attack of insects to expose the wonder of the jungle.  To this effect, the photographer brings to his viewer a beautiful landscape scene while also protecting him from it.

The question remains, why?  Why do we do it?  What is the gain, if there truly is any? Some may say it is a love for something.  There is no place that I would rather be than in the great outdoors.  There is no other physical activity that I enjoy more than those that take place in the great outdoors.  I am an artist and I create art.  When I combine all of these loves together, I behave as a landscape photographer with not a single care in the world. My work often takes me to extremes.  Some are measured with pleasure and some are measured with pain.  All of them are not for any purpose, but at the same time none of them lack any purpose at all.  All of them are part of my training to become more aware.

We are all participants in this world (dream) that we find ourselves in.  How we participate is a matter of our own personal journey.  Great photography captures an indescribable essence.  Great photography conveys what falls short of speech.  For the photographer, sometimes it is not so much the capture that is the reward but the journey of the capture.  When sharing a part of this journey, we become the presenter.  When we produce the art through our experience of the affiliated suffering, but that suffering is not transferred to the viewer, we become the protector.