There’s a lot of things on my mind tonight. My friends know that I’ve had a lot of challenges to deal with over the past several months. Some of those challenges involved taking a leap of faith, firmly believing that a new adventure would improve the lives of individual people. Then I had to face the reality of that idealism collapsing. Do I regret that? No. Can I go into details? (Reads over the NDA again) No. (spoiler alert: that nightmare is nearly over).
I’ve had to answer the questions: what have you been doing for the past few months? I rested. I got angry. I climbed some stuff. I lifted more, ran more, challenged myself more. This has been a rough time but I promised that I’d stay true to myself.
Duh.
Actually that’s kind of stupid because that’s how I’m wired. “…stay true to myself”… snrrrk, anybody who knows me knows that anything else is unthinkable.
So what have I been doing in the meantime? I read. I did a ton of soul searching and learned some things. I took a class. I got even more exercise than when I worked for the Well Known Fitness Brand. I toughened up some. I loved more deeply. I hiked a lot. I got better at portrait photography. I did some more freelance photography. I got paid to go to a music festival. I finally did that yard work I had been unable to get to. And I completely ignored the complete disaster that is my desk and studio.
No, really. “Clean desk” has been on my To-Do list for the past 4 years. I even have a book about removing clutter… under a pile of clutter on my desk. That’s how much I hated the idea of cleaning up my desk. I have a couple of weeks, I may still get there. I’ll share a picture if it really gets done. Update 5/31/2019: I cleaned my desk. I can see the desktop surface. It’s terrifying.
I caught the sunset at Taft Point with my daughter B last night. I couldn’t possibly have asked for more. #yosemite #taftpoint #sunset #2018 #canon5dmkiii #neverstopexploring #thisiswhyfitness
I spent some more time in Yosemite. I shared a special spot there with my beloved daughter. I climbed up a snowy non-trail with a buddy. I did a ton of day hikes with friends around the Big Sur and the Santa Cruz Mountains.
I also trusted. I trusted my wife Lisa to hang in there with me. She did in her grand and spectacular way. I trusted my savings to hold out. I trusted my closest allies to advocate for me when times were tough. All that came through and I will never, ever let them down. And they know it.
I also forgave.
That’s part of being The Grownup In The Room. Not everybody was that steadfast friend. What now? Forgive and move on. Trust? No, that needs to be earned back. Retaliate? That’s a stupid question; of course not. Move forward a little wiser? Yes.
For the past several months I’ve been feeling a certain restlessness about my creative process. I photograph a lot of surf and landscapes but rarely people. I started to seriously ask myself why that is. Then I thought back to my last trip into Yosemite Valley. Yes always stunning. But there I was standing in El Capitan Meadow fully aware that the scene in front of me has been done. Hell, I’ve done this subject before: climbers on El Capitan. So I’m purposely thinking, what do I do different here? Inspiration arrived but it left me really thinking about what I’m doing and why.
Headlamps from climbers on El Capitan
Aside from the surf photography that I enjoy so much I usually try to capture these pristine natural scenes. Often I’ll either crop out evidence of human activity either in camera or in post. I know why most of the time; for me it’s overhead power lines and aircraft contrails. Yuck. But does that mean remove all human things? I had to really think about that.
An acquaintance recently sent me a box of CD-ROMs from the LensWork series. I happened to be listening to an interview with Larry Wiese. He was describing how he was preparing to show his portfolio at a very nice gallery. He was all ready to show his traditional landscape work when he had an epiphany (and probably an anxiety attack) about what he was doing and why. The interview CD was titled Transition. It was like he was speaking directly to me. I devoured that interview, then I listened to it again.
Essentially he realized that he was producing fine art landscapes not because it was what he loved doing, but I think because others expected him to produce landscapes. He wasn’t excited about it anymore. He excused himself from his meeting, packed up his portfolio, and reconsidered pretty much everything. This made me think about that last Yosemite visit specifically. He mentioned that he had visited Yosemite twice. He researched all the photography topics for the area and pretty much planned on how to copy the work of the masters before him. And so what? What made it his own work? He decided that landscapes were a starting point for him and now it was time to expand his creative process.
I started photographing different subject matter and processing them in different styles. I don’t photograph wildlife much. So I spent a few hours doing exactly that.
Long-billed Curlews (I think…) at Waddell Beach.
I started incorporating more people into the photographs as the sun was setting. I’ve often thought that a photo of the sunset alone wasn’t enough. It needs an interesting foreground. What I usually avoid though was people in the scene. This time I really thought about that. Why? Adding people gives the viewer a reason to connect. A sense of scale. An emotion.
I recruited this group of friends to be the subject. I gave it to them as a gift.
Today was a very rainy day in Santa Cruz. Honestly a pretty miserable day to even consider landscapes but I wanted to explore. I did some street photography which is very rare for me. I processed the photo differently from how I usually would by incorporating some color grading.
Veterans Memorial. Santa Cruz, California
I had another idea incorporating a very wide angle and the patterns in the sidewalk along Pacific Avenue in Santa Cruz. I expanded on the idea by blending three exposures, 2 that were fairly long exposures and a third that was over 240 seconds. Processing the image was well outside my typical style and I’m glad I explored the ideas. Pattern, time, color, and definitely not how you would see the scene with your own eyes.
Long exposures and wide angles in downtown Santa Cruz on a rainy day.
I pushed the idea a little further. I don’t photograph architecture. There’s probably a simple reason for that: I live in a rural area and there’s just not a lot of that. Even in the more urban areas there’s nothing really resembling a skyscraper as such. I thought about that for a while.
I spotted this window across from a reasonably high vantage point (that’s a fancy way of saying “parking garage”). A few things struck me as unique here. It’s a brick facade. Nobody would dream of building entirely with brick knowing that our state’s geology is the rough equivalent of Jell-O pudding. The water draining from the downspout caught my eye. The basketball shoe in the window pane and the warm glow from inside inspired me. I setup my tripod and fitted my Canon 5d Mk III with a 70-200mm telephoto to isolate this subject.
Initially I imagined this as black and white but instead I went with a very different approach. With what I’ll just loosely call “a lot” of masking I brought down exposure of the brick wall while carefully adding contrast to the window. I desaturated the wall itself while adding some split toning to the window. This added some blue to the light tones and warmer colors to the mids and darks tones. Then selective sharpening and vignette. I was very happy with the result.
What’s next?
I’m going to keep exploring. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up on traditional landscapes. The truth is that I love the adventures and the effort. People or man-made objects will almost certainly be more prominent elements. Portraiture has always been an interest but I have a lot of thoughts on that topic that I want to be very careful about. Self portraits will probably happen more often at the suggestion of somebody I admire.
