June wrote recently about the story we tell of our personal history in art. On a smaller scale, there’s the story of a particular idea or even a single piece. There may not be a coherent tale in most cases, but it happens that there is (or I think there is) in the case of several photographs I made a few days ago.
Hiking with visitors last week, I finally got into the mountains for the first time this summer. Because of the long snow season, waterfalls were running fuller than I’ve ever seen. Despite my predilections, the second day found me standing among waterfalls uninspired. So I played around photographing the water on the lake, looking at ripple patterns reflecting the sky. I moved to where these were shaped by flow around a rock, breaking into smaller fragments with the turbulence. From there, it wasn’t long before I was back at a fall. But now I was interested in the instantaneous constellations of bright points, rather than the veils woven with longer exposure. My eyes, being slow, still saw more the latter, but the former could be captured by the camera using a short exposure time. It saw, while I imagined, a starry cosmos.
I recognized right away that pedigree of this idea went back well beyond the day’s play. I think the notion of stars in such a setting first occurred during experimentation with Jay’s stream photograph. And thanks to this blog’s search function, I found I mentioned “constellation of streaks” in a waterfall post a year ago. Once I even discovered a “star” in a frozen waterfall. Still, despite other recent opportunities, I don’t think I ever explicitly made the waterfall-cosmos connection. Once conscious of it, I made further photographs with that image in mind. Not many that day, but I’m sure I’m not done with it yet.
What similar sorts of connections or metaphors or insights have come to you while making art?
Steve:
Very interesting. To my mind this goes beyond the waterfall theme. One thing about it, careful composition seems almost extraneous as the camera appears to be picking up a bulk effect. The resulting image is not so much the finished product as it is a sort of Rorschach test, bidding the eye to find patterns as does the starry firmament (always wanted to use that term).
Well, I just made a letter “A” from clear Plexiglas. Trying to work the idea of transparency into my Q and A theme. Does that count?
Funny about my stream photo, as I was seeing stars as well. In my case it came from laboring up the walkway at the Flume.
White on black solves the problem of the limited range of the camera dealing with light. I will try that on my photos.
Recently, I also looked at the streaming of water. But it was on an overcast day so that my camera did not have to deal with sun spots.
My connections, as June pointed out
I almost always see a human context in your photography , relate to humanity.
Jay,
How ever did you get the idea of transparency? Intriguing but hardly logical. Can you remember how you came up with it?
Steve:
But very logical. I had a sheet of clear Plexiglas hanging around and it struck me that it could be made into a Q or A representing the theme of transparency as understood in terms of openness and lack of guile.
Steve,
Fascinating. Thanks.
I will be offline for a few days, starting as soon as I finish writing this, but want to comment more when I’m able — the end of the week, probably.
Another interesting post with images that I am drawn to in part because I have some similar pics. Check out the images in the middle of this gallery if you like: http://www.mcgrawphoto.com/art/thebleakandthebeautiful/index.html
I took them all from a bridge 50 feet up. The pics are actually of ice, rather than running water.
I enjoy coming back here. Keep up the good work. -Mike
Mike,
Those are lovely photographs. Clearly we share an obsession with water in all its forms (not so rare among photographers). One big difference–even though it’s not necessarily evident in each image–is that almost all of mine are of very rapidly moving water, while yours are nearly static. No doubt it’s at least partly accessibility: here there are lots of streams with rapids and falls, but relatively few lakes (and those often artificial). Whereas you may have more lakes and big, slow-moving rivers. Any other thoughts on that?
I’ve had less success creating the look I want with the fast moving water–that’s why I like ice. It moves a bit more slowly. In the Summer it is a pretty fast and dangerous river, though.
I specifically want the look of space and the ice definitely helps me with that. One of the images is of 4 inch crystals that have formed on the surface of the frozen river. Very star like.