The Way We See It: April 2013

Monday, April 29, 2013

Found It!

Fairy Falls - Stillwater, MN
Canon 5D mark iii + Canon 17-40L @ f16

On March 23 my blog was a plea for some relief.
Winter 2013 had us all by the short hairs, its relentless grip was wearing on the collective psyche. While climate change deniers are likely to hail this frigid blip as evidence of global cooling, I'm not up for the debate nor the battle, I just want spring.

To celebrate a respite from Minnesota's longest season, I took a hike on this 64 ℉ day. Birds chirped a hesitant song in a way that mimicked my own trepidations. I've been the fool too many times this year, and I fear that its not over yet. Sure the trees were budding, but while walking up this river carved canyon, I couldn't help wonder if the weather gods were still planning a bit of fun.

I found spring... it's warm today, but I'm not predicting anything about tomorrow.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Happy Earth Day

Greetings from Moro Rock - Sequoia National Park, CA

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Deep Knowledge

Wet Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) - Banff National Park, Canada
Canon 7D + Canon 300 f2.8L IS

Cliché warning.... the world wide web is the great equalizer.

New information streams at a unattainable rate, so I resort to summary sources to fill the immense cognitive vacuum; born is the literate poser. Original works take too long to digest, are cluttered by their obtuse detail, and often mask the bottom line. A three hour investment on the source yields deep knowledge of minutia and little else. Science Daily and Science News are my crutch, I am a poser.

Crane Lake - Lake Country, MN
Canon 7D + Tokina ATX-II 12-24mm f4.0

Today’s world of bits, bytes, and data create an opportunity for many while diluting greatness that might be lurking among the throngs of web participants. In the near past, it was easy to sort through the trash and find nuggets of gold. Outstanding works of art, literature and science seemed to radiate from within the pile, but today’s trash heap is so dense that the singularities are buried too deep to see.

Spring Crane (Grus canadensis) - Manning Trail, MN
Canon 40D + Canon 300 f2.8L IS + Canon 2x Converter Mk II

Like many, I am web junky. I frequent the usual sources like the NYTimes.com, Politco, HuffingtonPost, ScienceDaily, TechNews, and DPReview. Far from knowledgeable, I know a little about everything and a lot about nothing. Knowledge is good, but deep knowledge is better. In teaching biology, I find that my years of investment in the field, lectures, and labs are the platform for my classroom creativity. Deep knowledge serves me well when working with neophytes, but the farther I am removed from my formal training, the shallower I become. I try to leverage my losses with a voracious appetite for the ubiquitous glossy summaries available to us all... the web is the great equalizer for a homogenizing society.

Gondola Sunrise - Venice, Italy
Canon 5D Mk I + Canon 24-105 f4.0L IS

The context for my lament points directly towards my passion for seeing nature and being a participant in this world. The skills I developed with film are the foundation from which I now work the digital platform. Exemplary work, once relegated to the few willing to invest the sweat to learn, is now readily available to the masses. Like the world wide web, digital is the great equalizer. Average shooters become experts in months instead of years, and images that once took years to conceive are produced and shared freely every day. Deep knowledge serves us well when striving to be the best, but remedial skills coupled with amazing technology now makes fools gold glitter with brilliance.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

An April Diary

April 28, 2005
Canon 1D + Canon 200mm f2.8L @ f2.8Average Temperature 45 ℉, No Precipitation

As winter yields to spring, the vernal equinox foreshadows an inevitable change. The long nights become long days, and the repressed are free to bask in the warmth of spring.

April 5, 2008
Canon 1D mark ii + Canon 300mm f2.8L IS @ f2.8
Average Temperature 45 ℉, .1" mixed Precipitation

Having spent my adolescence on the west coast, I was not prepared for the schizophrenia that is April. In California, April is just another month of warm days and cool nights. The equinox was an irrelevant date on the calendar, and spring was cooler than summer. In contrast, the oppressor, winter, punishes the plebeians who reside in the middle of the continent. April is our reward for endurance, but we mid-continentals, are nothing more than April fools.

April 16, 2011
Canon 7D + Canon 300mm f2.8L IS @ f2.8
Average Temperature 35.8 ℉, .11" Precipitation

Today is April 14th, it snowed, hailed and rained all day. My income taxes are due tomorrow, and the high school prom I coordinate is on April 27th. My students now behave like caged rats, and the drive to work has more pocks, cracks and shifts than the San Andreas Fault. I hate April! April is the greatest fallacy there ever was. Spring is not relief from winter, spring is just winter after winter.

April 7, 2012
Canon 7D + Canon 300mm f2.8L IS @ f3.2
Average Temperature 50.3 ℉, No Precipitation

April is as schizophrenic as my rant; it is unpredictable, unforgiving and a wild ride. Every year I look forward to April’s migrations, buds and renewal and each time I am bewildered by its unpredictability. Who is this deviant we call April?... your guess is as good as mine.

April 14, 2013
Canon 5D mark iii + Canon 17-40mm f4.0L @ f14
34 ℉, Rain, Sleet Snow

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Impressionism V (End of Series)

The Lake's Edge
Canon 5D mark I + Canon 20mm f2.8 @ f16

It's April 11 and we are in the middle of a "Winter Storm Warning." I awoke to sleet, snow and reckless drivers. Stories of spinouts, flipped trucks and gridlock greeted me during the morning commute. We are hardy folk in MN, but we're ready for the respite the accompanies spring. This has absolutely nothing to do with impressionism, it's simple a brief vent in the midst of another endless winter.

Bokeh
Canon 40D + Sigma 120mm-300 f2.8 HSM @ f2.8

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Impressionism IV

Reflections of the St. Croix - St. Croix River, MN

See the leading post about Impressionism HERE

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Impressionism III

The Drake and The Swan (Anas platyrhyncos & Cygnus buccinator)
Canon 5D mark iii + Canon 300mm f2.8L IS

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Impressionism II

Wildebeest B&W (Connochaetes gnou)
Canon 1D mark ii + Canon 300mm f2.8L IS

This wildebeest (Connochaetes gnou) is a tight portrait I made while on safari in Tanzania. We were immersed in a sea of ungulates when I realized that I was too close to make the images I wanted. With dust everywhere and the feeling that the moment was I about to end, I chose to continue working with my 300mm lens rather than waste time switching out cameras. Below is the original pic that has sat in the reject bin until now. I decided to rework the photograph for this post by applying a "creative" black and white digital filter. Here the emphasis has been placed on the tonality in the fur rather than the actual animal. All processing began with Aperture 3.4.3 and was finished in Photoshop CS5. The lead image was further manipulated with Topaz B&W Effects II to produce the painterly-lik output that is pictured above.

Wildebeest (Connochaetes gnou)
Canon 1D mark ii + Canon 300mm f2.8L IS

Friday, April 5, 2013

Impressionism

Lake Kabetogama - Voyageurs NP
Canon 1Ds II + Canon 70-200 f4.0L

During my Project 101 series I suggested 101 tips for making nature photographs. While none of my ideas were revolutionary, I tried to challenge set paradigms for image making and offer suggestions that might spark the inner creative. The articulation of my process was a great reflective exercise that continues to influence my own photography.

Sol Duc River - Olympic NP
Nikon D100 + Nikkor 50mm f1.4

I find picture making to be an intensely personal experience, as it often exposes a sensitivity to the world that I tend to suppress in my public life. With this in mind, I will use the next five posts to share some work that I rarely show. These pictures exhibit purposeful imperfections of technique in order to suggest something a bit more. The “it” in each image is less significant that the whole that is displayed. More than anything, these pictures are more about light, shadow and pattern than anything else.