Mixed Media

52.365 18mm f9 1/320 ISO 200I didn't know when I started this blog how important writing would end up feeling to the project.  I have debated with myself about whether it's even right to have text as part of it, you know, pictures being worth a thousand words and all.  I have wondered if, on a photoblog, the pictures should speak for themselves.

But I'm a verbal person, a writer by nature and by trade.  I decided that this is a journal of my study of this visual art form - a public one, but a journal nonetheless - and since I'm learning every day it makes sense to take notes. 

I hope the pictures stand on their own.  But if they're made even better by the words, I'd be happy about that too.

Marathon Sprint

51.365 55mm f5.6 1/13 ISO 800This is not what I had in mind when I promised myself to shoot outside on day 51.  But after nine-and-a-half minutes of morning leisure, the pace started to pick up and before I knew it I was running full bore into a 12-hour work day that resembeled nothing so much as session on a treadmill turned two notches too fast.  Such is life, but my office sure doesn't offer much in the way of photo ops.

Hell-bent on not having to mount that flash again last night, I scoured my late drive home for something to capture.  I stopped and trespassed on the grounds of the chichi country club when I saw the entrance lined by carefully lit trees.  Well why not?

Here is what I noticed as I tried several ways to frame the scene: my breathing slowed down.  My mind got quieter.  All the other balls I had been juggling all day dropped while I held this one moment in my attention.  It was probably only five minutes before I jumped back into the car and continued my race home, to heat up something for a late dinner, to process and post, and hopefully to get enough sleep to function in the morning.  But it was the most peaceful five minutes of the day.  And I was surprised, when I was in them, to discover that the photo itself was in a way secondary to the practice of making it.

Oy Vey

50.365 26mm f4.2 1/200 ISO 200Okay, so this is how the evening was supposed to go down:  I pulled out my Christmas card list.  Cleared off my workspace.  Found a favorite pen and the stack of cards just delivered from the printer.  Glass of wine?  Check.  Fresh pomegranate and tangerine for dessert while I muster all the holly jolly I can manage?  Check.

But wait, these fruits are so picturesque!  And I'm supposed to be experimenting with my flash after all!  And I have yet to take a picture for the day!  Could only mean one thing!

Blergh.

Oh but I was tempted to pull out the tripod, set the camera for the longest exposure I could think of and fix the white balance and the noise in Lightroom.  But that would hardly be sporting.

Blergh.  Blergh.  Blergh.

Let's just say that Day 50 kicked my ass.  And then sucked all the merriment out of me.  Gotta get outside on Day 51.

Let There Be Light

49.365 44mm f5.3 1/200 ISO 200I was talking to a friend yesterday about this project and I told her that if the practice of doing a particular thing every day has any merit it is in this: it makes you step outside your comfort zone.  It is probably obvious to anyone who has spent even five minutes looking at my pictures that I am most confident in a space with plenty of sunlight.  I have written here on more that one occasion about my flash aversion.  So if I had decided to create a photography practice where I took a picture when the spirit moved me or when the conditions were right I would shoot only on days when I encountered the perfect light. 

But what I committed myself to is one picture a day and here I am in the middle of winter with a desk job in an office with no windows.  I live in a house that's over 100 years old, so there's not a lot of natural light in here at this time of year either.  I have pushed the high ISO setting on my camera and the noise reduction capabilities of my editing software to their limits and beyond, all in an effort to avoid using a flash.  Finally it occurred to me that this 365 project intersects with Daylight Standard Time at the place where I learn to use supplemental light.

So today's picture represents my leap into the realm of the flash.  It will take me some time to use it artfully, maybe a lifetime, but as I played with changing the direction of the light and the exposure I actually felt like I was having a small revelation.  And then, for the first time since he was born, I took a picture of my toddler in the bathtub that is not grainy or blurred or yellow. 

I haven't been this delighted about a light bulb, well, ever.  This is what the project is about.  It forces me to look squarely at the door I've been avoiding for a long time and then walk through it. 

Englewood Gothic

48.365 40mm f9 1/100 ISO 200 I heard an interview on the local NPR station a couple months ago about mobile slaughterhouses that allow small farmers and ranchers to process the animals they raise without entering into unfavorable contracts with the big feedlots.  These mobile units come to the ranches, which reduces the stress on the cows before their slaughter as well as making it possible for these ranchers to get a fair price for their meat.  They can then sell their meat at local farmers markets.  

I love the idea that we are moving, little by little, away from the industrial food complex and I see signs every day that it is happening.  My husband grows the best tomatoes I've ever eaten in a plot in our northwest Denver backyard.  My brother, Av and his girlfriend Jackie are plotting ways to move out of the city and onto a farm, but in the meatime they get the most exquisite eggs from their urban chicken coop and are totally devoted to practicing the principles of permaculture even in their city garden.  I really believe that these kinds of small steps are the beginning of a revolution in the way we eat. 

In thinking about these things it occurred to me to enlist my brother and his girlfriend in a portrait project.  You might have realized by now that I am a naturalistic, in-the-moment, kind of photo girl.  I am constitutionaly incapable of posing people.  So the obvious option would be to shoot these two working in their garden and see what unfolded. 

But then I got this wacky idea of going the opposite direction:  I wanted use the iconic image American Gothic as a jumping off point.  But where that image is all dour Puritan Dust Bowl, I wanted to put Av and Jackie in their back yard in their dayglow Burner clothes surrounded by their project.  It was a challenge for me to step out of my comfort zone and they were great sports in playing along.  I like the way this image connects them immediately to the tradition of American farming, but also gives a sense of the joy and optimism and creativity I see fueling this movement.  I have an idea that this is what the new American farmer looks like.  And I like it.