Walking to work I came across these beautiful waves and snapped them with my new point-and-shoot camera. I bought this lovely little Leica when I started walking to my day job because carrying a heavy DSLR camera in addition to my laptop on this 4-mile round trip had made me feel like a pack-ass.
I am snapping such photos on the way to work to learn about water waves and to have potential motifs for painting. I do not expect ducks to co-operate and post for a pleine air portraits.
I am surprised how well these shots turn out because earlier, I used to ‘make’ photographs with my DSLR without preprogrammed settings pretending to be professional photographer. I learned to think ‘make’, not ‘take’ reading about Mannie Garcia, now famous for his iconic Obama photograph. On iht.com, he was quoted
“I have told that to people for years, ‘I don’t take photographs, I make them’ — using the tools that are necessary,” he said. “I have very expensive cameras. I could put that on all programmed settings and automatic — that’s ‘taking a picture.’ I control everything, control the f-stop, control the speed.”
Beautiful shots indeed. I especially like the last one of the series for the clear reflection of the trees on the yet unrippled water. As for making vs taking of photographs I would suggest that controlling f-stop and speed is a long way from controlling “everything” :)
I’m always a sucker for reflections, especially in water. Printed large, I could look at the patterns for a looong time. Your duck adds a fun element that messes with the water/sky ambiguity in a slightly surreal way. In the first he’s swimming out across the water; in the second he seems to head up a vertical wall toward the sky (leaving a rocket trail behind); in the last I’m looking up and he’s paddling by overhead!
Thanks, Cedric, I too like Picture 3 a lot.
Steve, Surreal!
Capturing the pictures from a bridge helped. I just realized that I reversed the order in which I took the pictures. I ran to the other side of the bridge after taking picture 3. Decolorizing the 2 ducks in close-up may have helped with the surreal element.
Ducks in Germany are less colorful.
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Angela, I just approved your comments. Some were stuck in the spam filter, Birgit
Birgit:
Duck #3 for sure. There’s something electric about the reflections of the trees in the still water to begin with, then the duck cutting a vee and then the wake, which is unusually clear and complex. The overall premise is so simple, yet the outcome gives so much.