Today is a special day. Not only because today is 11/11/11 but also because today is 11th anniversary of Elia’s and my marriage.
That 11 years of joyful moments. Thanks, Elia, for being by my side all this time. Thanks for supporting me in my photographic endeavors. Thanks for being the best and most honest critic. And most of all thanks for our son.
My son Adrian turned five three days ago. It is a big milestone for him and for his parents. Now he is old enough to participate in family activities. Last summer I took it on a photo trip with me. He has a lot of fun. He had his own camera taking pictures as well as pressing a shutter on my camera.
Here Adrian explains that he took a photo of a beautiful flower on a chilly morning:
Next year we’ll do several trips like this. Especially, since he expressed specific interest in certain things. Like he wants to see how wheat grows. So, several trips to Palouse will help him to see it.
I just got back from 3 week vacation and… it is a second time I lost all vacation photos.
First time I lost vacation photos was due to hard drive failure in my laptop close to the end of the vacation. The problem was mechanical, thus recovering disk content was just too expensive ($2000). I had an external drive with me to make backups but never got around to actually do them. From that case I told myself I’m going to do backups every night on my trips.
A few years forward. This time I have done backups to two external hard drives. Both laptop and hard drives as well as some other valuables were in one very important bag – the most important bag, the only bag not to lose. And I lost it in an airport. Later I was contacted by airport authorities that the bag was found and everything but laptop was in it. I have not got the bag back yet and I can only hope that I eventually get it back with hard drives undamaged. But I was not very persistent about backing up to external hard drives every night and thus a lot of photos are lost for sure.
What I have learnt from this? First, backup should be simple and done consistently during a trip. Second, those backups should be placed to different bags to decrease probability of losing all photos as a result of loosing one bag.
I get this question asked a lot “What DSL should I buy?”. I understand why I’m asked this question. I’m a photographer. I must know a lot about cameras and photographic equipment. That’s true I know some but not a lot.
What camera to buy is a question that you and only you can answer. What camera or lenses to buy depends on what you’d like to do with it. It takes some time to learn that. So, my answer is always buy the cheapest. That’s what I did when I started.
I don’t follow what’s current in photographic equipment. Rather than follow the latest trends in cameras and gear I spend time learning history of photography, work by old and contemporary photographers, reading books about photography. It is more satisfying to me and allows me to grow myself, my vision, rather than acquiring more gear.
And if you’re in photography because you are into photographic gear. I’m not the right person to ask for an advice; there are plenty of photography gear magazines and websites out there.
Light – the basic principal of photography. That’s why so many photographs made during day when we have a lot of sunlight. But photographing at night in moonlight is just as much fun for me (or maybe even more fun).
Night photography is full of surprises. I only have a general idea of a composition since I cannot see as much at night as in sunlight. Then experimenting begins. First, I need to find the right exposure, then find an actually interesting composition. Each attempt lasts for minutes – that how long exposure needs to be.
Then the fun with artificial lights begins. Adding flashes or flashlights to lit up some elements of landscape. There is no limit for creativity, except time.
On my last trip to the Palouse I spent about 5 hours photographing one night, mostly to get this photo. Each exposure was 5 minutes. Once I found exposure I noticed streaks of clouds moving in the sky. I thought it would be cool to align them with the tree, so they coming from behind the tree. Took me about 10 attempts to find that spot. Another hour is gone. Then I started experimenting with two flashlights lighting up the crown of the tree or creating light spots in the field. Eventually I stopped at this image, right around 1am.
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
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.
Lots of things are waiting to be discovered right around the corner. You just need to make the first step toward them.
I adore photograph made in fog. At the same time there have not been much fog where I live. At some point I share my fog obsession with another local photographer and she suggested me to go to Carnation Valley in fall.
It is only about 10 minutes drive from where I live. To my surprise even when it is clear sky and sunshine outside the valley, the valley itself is filled with thick thick fog. This is likely because there are a lot of marshes there. Driving downhill into the valley is like diving into the fog.
From that point on I always go to Carnation in fall. Here are some photos I’ve made this year:
Just finished watching a documentary on Monet’s life and his art. One of the things that captured my attention was that he closely followed research of a chemist who was doing research on relative perception of color by human. That research in part influenced Monet’s impressionist paintings.
This makes me wonder what research would Monet follow nowadays and what he would do with photography.
vitali prokopenko | fine art 