Class Assignment

Josef Sudek

Well, I'm taking another photography class this spring.  This week our assignment was black and white, particularly looking at photographs by Josef Sudek.  He's got some pretty moody images; things I'd love to work on if we were in our foggy season, and he's also got lots of still life images.  My absolute favorite is the one I've included to the right side of this post: the drinking glass and egg reflection.  I have no idea how he got it looking like this! I tried, but couldn't even come close.  So I ended up working on another of his subject matter with water bubbles on the side of a vase.  He gets a lot more detail without making the lighting quite so harsh as I did.  My heart wasn't in this one.  Maybe if I were house-bound for a while, it would be something to experiment with more.  Anyway, class is tomorrow, so I'll have a new assignment for next week.

Lacy Duck Pond

Today I found a new parking area to access the Salmon Creek Trail. This little pond sits adjacent to the creek along the trail. I was eyeing it on my way out, the algae a bright green and the water reflecting the trees on the far side, but didn't stop for a photo. On the way back though, the back lighting made for a ready-made black and white. Guess I just liked how the algae looked like lace in this light.

Dog-Walking Paradise

Just off I-84 in Oregon, I've driven past this fence-edged field many times and seen cars parked along the side of the road and people walking in the field with their dogs.  I finally made time to stop here on the way back from a Hood River trip, and my dog Clover was very happy that I did. It's a wonderful series of trails through the Sandy River Delta that are completely dog friendly, as in dog off your leash, running around greeting and playing with other dogs.  In short, a dog-walking paradise!  From now on I will make time to stop here for a walk with Clover every time I'm heading back from the gorge. 

Linking to Good Fences.

Mt. Hood Study 2

Klickitat County Fence Line

The side of this wavy fence had a great glow in the setting sun yesterday afternoon.  I had an afternoon appointment in Hood River, which put me in the gorge at a much later time than I usually go, so I decided to head east to Goldendale and see how the sunset would look. The sunset wasn't that great, but the light was sure pretty along this corridor to eastern Washington.

Linking to Thursday's Good Fences meme.

Mt. Hood Study

My cropped version

Michael Kenna: Huangshen Mountains Study 47 (2010)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this week my artistic photography class is working in black and white.  And our teacher suggested that if we had been studying artists so far, we should try studying a photographer this week.  So I am studying photographer Michael Kenna, who does very ethereal, high contrast, black and white images. There was a bright, thick fog at the Washington State campus when I returned Thursday morning, and I was particularly interested in the scene I've captured here, because fog created such a large tonal range from white to dark. That range made this a good photo to use for a Michael Kenna comparison!  It reminded me the most of the series he did from Huangshan, China, because all those images were diffused with fog and mist. I've read that his photos are often made during nighttime, with exposures up to 10 hours long!  This accounts for the dreamy quality his images achieve.  Mine certainly lacks that feel. He also shoots with a medium format camera, giving a square image, so I've cropped my photo to a more squarish format (which is against the law in my photography class, so we'll see what comes of that!)

Refrain

It's black and white week in my photography class, so this will be tough for me.  I'm going to try to at least shoot with black and white in mind.  I'm not sure I'll always post in black and white, mainly because color just makes me so happy.  For today's photo, black and white wasn't that difficult; the scene was essentially B&W to begin with.  I was back at the WSU Vancouver campus the day after my sunrise, and sure enough I encountered exactly the same fog!  This time though I was there around 9am.  I thought it would be interesting to post photos of last week's sunrise scenes, but this time in daylight lighting. Today's photo is almost the identical scene from yesterday's pastel photo, just slightly to the left.  I guess I wanted to keep the lower evergreens out of the image, although I'm not sure why. (I think I saw this as a more effective Michael Kenna composition...more on him in tomorrow's post.) Still, it's an interesting high key scene, and it does show the level of thickness in the low lying fog. 

Central Valley Sunrise

This week I accepted a challenge from a fellow photographer to photograph only in black and white for a while.  Actually the challenge was to do 100 calendar shots converted to black and white, but I don't take the "calendar shot" often enough on the blog for that to be worthwhile.  So I've decided to do 100 blog shots with my photo converted to black and white.  This does pose a HUGE challenge to me, because I know my photos usually rely on a certain few elements, and color is VERY high up on the list.  I use it a lot to create mood, which is probably what I like best in a photo.  And while I do hope to become a better black and white photographer, the idea behind this project is to improve my color photography by focusing on some other elements for a while.  And also to have the challenge :)

I have to admit I have a bias against black and white photography.   It's usually not that interesting to me.   In only three days of trying to shoot black and white, I realize that I am completely dependent on the light, and I think that is what makes the shots boring to me.  So for now at least, my challenge is to simultaneously find good light and something that I would be interested in photographing.  I expect that I will be VERY critical of what I'm doing for a while, and I'm apologizing for that up front.  This is actually how my blog started out...as practice and self-critique, and I've gotten away from that in the past year.

Anyway, later today I'm going to view a new exhibit at The Crocker in Sacramento.   Brought to Light: Masterworks of Photography from the Crocker Art Museum.  I'm hoping I will see some interesting subject matter, and I'm especially interested to view the black and whites and see what inspiration I can take away.  (And also I wanted to post before I went, because I bet I'll be more critical of my photos after the exhibit!)