Palouse is very popular place among photographers. There are a lot of photographs of fields and rolling hills. What I like is also is how the fields look inside – all the vertical lines, some slightly tilted to different angles. And that’s what I like about this photograph. It has rolling hills and fields but it also has a slice of the field and gives a peek inside the field.
Field Inside
What this photograph is about? It is about light. Sometimes the light is so visible and interesting that this is all what we see and photograph.
Sunlight Breaking thru the Clouds
I’m always drawn to photographs with low contrast. They don’t immediately “pop” into your eyes. They slowly draw you in and ask to explore. This one from the last trip to Palouse drew me in:
Anticipation of Storm
It did not pop, I skipped it at first, but then I stepped back because there was something in it. As I looked at it more I got a feeling of storm anticipation. A huge storm cloud was coming on, while viewer cannot see the cloud, he can see a shadow of it moving in. You almost sense heavy humidity that condenses right before the storm.
If a photograph communicates feelings in my mind it is a good photograph. I tried to make it pop by increasing contrast, vibrancy, saturation and it was ruining that feeling. The image was too static and too obvious.
The first day of the trip I’ve experienced a dust storm for the first time. I’ve never been in a dust storm before. At some point of the driving to Palouse I had to stop completely because there was no visibility at all. Then I started moving slowly ahead hoping there is nobody ahead and nobody will smash into me from behind.
When there was visibility it looked like this:
While visually dust storm was as interesting a fog, it was practically impossible to photograph. Strong wind was knocking off my camera on a tripod. I was trying to shoot handheld but I could not stand still because of the wind. Dust was getting everywhere – into my ears, nose, eyes and, worse of all, into my gear. I had to give up.
It is nice to have a photo archive. Mine just crossed 100,000 photos mark. Do I visit my archive often? No. It is practically impossible to find a photograph of a particular subject or even a place there. But I still keep all the originals – raw or jpeg files. As technology develops I might want to revisit some of the photographs that I’ve picked long time ago.
Just today I recalled that there is a photo posted on my website and mentioned in one of my blog post – https://blog.vitphoto.com/2010/03/26/to-shoot-or-not-to-shoot/ – that had strong vignette. I remember I spent lots of time trying to correct it as much as possible. Now we finally have ability to automatically correct vignette in Photoshop for some specific lenses. In no time I was able to re-develop the image and get much better result. The change might look subtle for some, for me the difference is big – it opened up the image:
While there – I mean while being in photo archive to pull original raw file for this photograph – I’ve discovered a couple of other photographs which I found interesting. Both are taken at the same place and same sunset.
For I don’t know which time I learn over and over not to give up on a sunset too soon. It is not over until it is dark.
We were photographing Half Dome in Yosemite Valley at sunset. The Dome was partially covered with cloud. Golden rays of a low Sun were breaking thru the clouds. That’s when I got this nice moody photograph of the Dome:
And after that the light completely disappeared. We packed our cameras and tripods and went to nearby small village to do some shopping before leaving to our camp for the night.
Just as were leaving the village I saw top of Half Dome lit up with this gorgeous purple light. The setting Sun has found its way thru the clouds for the last time for the day. We sharply turned around and parked. As quickly as I could I unpacked camera, set it up on tripod and managed to catch last purple light on a puffy cloud hanging at the top of Half Dome:
Why are we chasing after making more and more photographs?
A famous Russian artist – Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov – spent 20 years on one painting which turned to be his whole artistic life. The painting is absolutely breathtaking.
We, photographers, on the other hand seem to want to produce more photographs per minute than ever. I’m not sure if industry is encouraging us or industry just meets our demand by producing faster shot per second cameras, faster cards, software to go thru photo-editing faster.
Do we produce something great or just visual noise? Is it time to slow down and think about what we trying to get to by doing this? I used to be inspired by single photographs of the past and I still am. Nowadays I’m subscribed to all kinds of digital photography feeds but for the most part all I get is one stream of noise. It seems that photography has become more about inventing something new rather than about creating something beautiful. Now single photograph is not enough, today it is all about folios. Is a folio just a way to unload more photographs into the market?
I wonder what would be an equivalent of spending twenty years on a single painting in photography? How would one work on one photograph their whole life? And what that photograph would be? Maybe a folio is an equivalent of that painting? And it is all about polishing that set of photographs: substituting some of them with other, reshooting some of them, redoing post-processing, etc. That seems to make sense, just don’t make me look at a folio of a thousand photographs.
Is a photograph of an art an art? Is a photograph of a sculpture an art? Is a photograph of a painting an art?
What is important in a photograph – an image or how it was made? Similarly for paintings: if we have two visually undistinguishable copies would we value the one that is proven to be original thru chemical analysis higher? Does it mean it is more important how something was made than its purpose?
I don’t have answers to either of the questions. It is just something I find interesting to think about.
Great things happen when you least expect them. Like tonight on my way home I saw this gorgeous sunset. I just had to stop and take some photographs.
The goal on my last trip to Yosemite was to wake up before sunrise every day and be at a point of interest early before sunrise. First day I woke up at four in the morning before alarm even went off. I guess I was refreshed and eager to photograph.
Next day I missed it. The alarm probably went off but I did not hear it. (This type of things happen when there is a load river rushing down just outside your tent. I’ve learnt the lesson and put alarm next to my ear the next night.) So, what do you do in this case? Stay in a sleeping bag for a bit more and let yourself relax? Or do you get packed quickly and move to capture whatever is left of early morning?
At first I wanted to be lazy but then I thought that I came there to photograph and I would photograph. We packed quickly and went to Tunnel View again. And I was so glad we did! When we got to the Tunnel View (for the third time during the trip), we saw fog flowing into the Yosemite Valley and clouds falling down from El Capitan like waterfalls.
vitali prokopenko | fine art 