3.02.2010

Accidents & Purpose

Yesterday was my first day of walking outside in the cold Pittsburgh air since returning from our trip. Shoveled the driveway and went through a month of mail and then magically life returned to normal.

Received some very nice comments on my nature dreamscape photography, which felt good. The style and approach to this body of work had a specific shift in my method to photography.

First, the approach…accidents happens. I forgot to pack the tripod base (the part that attaches the camera to the tripod). I take the slow photography movement approach to creating images. For that to work you need to have a tripod, a good heavy tripod. I ended up buying a cheap lightweight tripod from Wal Mart, I died a little inside making that purchase.

Second, the style…accidents can have purpose…it was very windy, daily. High winds and a cheap tripod created camera shake, typically this is not good. I discovered that creating exposures around 2 seconds (traditionally I try to create 30 second exposures to slowly burn deep focus into the image) would allow me to capture slight windy blown trees and water to produce brush strokes in tandem with a long enough exposure to capture light shifts and color change.

Next, I need a new project….any suggestions?