One of the advantages of having a great place to photograph close to my home is that I can always quickly get there. Brooks Jensen – one of the photographers I highly regard – likes to say “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity”. Well, I’m always prepared. All my photo gear is in the car. As soon as I see a great sunset, I hop into my car and take off to those flower fields that I mentioned in the previous post.
Here is one of the lucky moments I think:
Chamomile at Sunset
Sometime all it takes to get a nice photo is to step out of your door.
I live in an area that had a lot of construction sites in hey days of housing bubble. When recession started a lot of them were abandoned. In just a couple of years nature reclaimed them and turned them into meadows with a beautiful display of wild flowers. There are lots and lots of different kinds of flowers. What’s interesting is that every year there is a predominant flower. This year is a year of lupines.
Now I don’t need to drive or fly far away – it takes only 5 minutes to get into a wild flower meadow. I guess there is something good about recession after all.
Not Like Others
Recently I got a link to a somewhat interesting article Preparation In Fine Art Landscape Photography. While I found it interesting (I do myself lots of the things listed in the article and find them useful), at the same time I thought it is too simplistic and pragmatic.
The most important thing I do in the field is missing from the article’s list: connecting with a landscape. Before I even take my camera out of a bag I spend time observing landscape that surround me – from tiny flowers to tall mountains to high sky up above. What’s interesting in it, how do I feel about it, is it a happy place or a sad place, is it powerful or weak? I spend as much time as I need to feel the things that surround me, walking around or simply sitting. I may even close my eyes and focus on scents or sounds of birds singing or waves crashing onto the shore. Can you imagine that – a photographer with his eyes closed?
Call me naïve and romantic – because quite frankly that who I am – but when I photograph I don’t follow any specific list of steps, I follow my emotions.
Two Trees on a Hill at Sunset
With all the advancements in technology I still find that in a lot of situations it is easier to set exposure and focus manually. It does not mean my camera is broken. The camera simply does not know what I want to photograph. I always have white balance on manual and often use manual focusing. During last trip at some point I’ve also realized that I was fighting with automatic exposure with compensations, and eventually gave up and set it to manual. After that I could do much more and better photographs easier.
This reminds me when back in high school I had completely manual rangefinder camera. Then my parents gave me SLR with a built-in exposure meter as a birthday present. I was relying on it completely… and have not had a single frame with good exposure.
Automatic settings are great for casual photography but when I try to get an image as close as possible to the one in my mind’s eye automatic settings often get in my way.
I admire stormy skies. There is just so much energy, power, emotions in it. Sometimes I just take pictures of such skies. On my last trip to California I saw just that kind of skies, when you can actually see a storm front with a blue sky on one side and wild darkness on the other.
The question that I here the most is where do I get an inspiration. The answer is simple – I don’t get it, I wait for it.
When I’m on a photo trip I start photographing without inspiration, even without clear goal in my mind. I’m photographing and waiting; waiting for that one image after which everything becomes clear. Suddenly, my mind and my soul opens up to the world. I start seeing everything differently. The world becomes part of me and I become part of it.
Here is that photo from my last trip to California. After it I started seeing beyond flowers; seeing lines shapes and light.
What if that doesn’t happen, you may ask. Well, that means I was not in tune with the world was around me. Maybe next time or next place.
Remember the times when we were kids and it was so much fun to run into the middle of a flower field and lye down on your back and look into the sky? I remember it.
The same works very well in photography too: get down to the ground, to flower level and feel the connection. Look at the flowers, breath flower scent filled air, listen to the field.
In the morning the ground is cold and the air is fresh. Dew drops are covering flowers that are still asleep. Air is filled with birds singing.
As the sun gets higher it gets warmer. Flowers open up and flies wake up. Buzzing is all around.
When it gets closer to the dusk the field goes to sleep. It gets quieter and quieter. Flowers close up. Only lonely crickets disturb the stillness.
When I go on a photo trip, my photography starts on a plane. I take my camera out of a bag and start photographing thru airplane window. It is a great way way to jump start my creativity, get into photographic mindset. And sometimes I also get some interesting photographs. Here is a couple of photos I took from the plane on my last trip:
Sometimes you can find inspiration where you least expected. My inspiration today was coming from my four year old son. On his third birthday we gave him a point-n-shoot camera as a present. Since then he has been photographing his day-to-day life – people and things that surround him.
Today was a beautiful warm spring day. I offered him to go to botanical garden to photograph flowers. He happily agreed. On the way there he was photographing all kind of ordinary things that we got used to: “Lake!” – click, click, click, “Boat!” – click, click, click, “Puffy cloud!” – click, click, click.
Then we walked the paths of botanical garden taking photographs of flowers. He saw a mom with a son about his age and asked me:
– Why they were not photographing trees and flowers.
– Maybe they did not know how. – I told him.
– It can’t be. – He said and I asked him why.
His answer was:
– Because that’s the way the Nature meant to be.
…
I envy him, I envy his ability to see extraordinary in ordinary, I envy the voyage of discovery he is going thru. He teaches me to see the world around, see thru his eyes, see it in an awe inspiring way.
…
Here is today thru my son’s eyes:
It is spring outside. It is time of renewal and inspiration. And it is time to wake up from a winter hibernation.
I find it hard to push myself out of warm comfortable home into windy, rainy, cold winter. That’s probably the reason I have so few winter photographs.
Now it is time to wake up. I’m already planning a few photo trips this year. The first one is beginning of April.
Also this year I’m going to try selling my finished work at art fairs. I’ll share more details about this once I have them.
vitali prokopenko | fine art 