2019 - Close Up

There're (at least) two areas of endeavor for which large format capture was/is ideally suited: botanicals and architectural.

The 1^st trip I took with the Linhof way back when was to the Gogebic Range. Mostly I shot botanicals, because that's what I saw. The results were satisfying.

The 2^nd trip with the Linhof was to Switzerland. Mostly I shot vintage architecture, because that's what I saw. Upon returning home, a remarkable percentage of those 120 high risk sheets of 4x5 transparencies left me agape.

Architecture won, hands down. The love affair began. That altered the course of my creative life. And so it's been, for these last decades of work.

Not coincidentally, botanicals often came included.

There was nothing nimble about the Linhof and nothing easy about doing outstanding fieldwork with it. Though my long term shooting ratio ended up excellent, that's because I learned to be meticulous.

Even so, committing resonant, deep focus images via lengthy exposures onto 4x5 transparency film in the wild frequently became a fool's errand. Too much light. Not enough light. The wrong kind of light. Or simply the slightest breeze could and did ruin any given day's entire effort.

Happily, I chose architecture. Mostly, that doesn't move. 'Least not while you're looking.

*

The last few years, digital capture's proven every bit as personally and creatively transformative as was large format film. Except this time the revolution's not exclusive but inclusive and rather than arrive as a sudden epiphany, the transformation rolls on.

One thing leads to the next, everything interconnected. Unexpected only in the moment. Familiar upon review.

January of last year, I swapped out a fine specialty lens that didn't get much use for another that might. Boy did it ever.

It was as if I'd opened the happy version of a photographer's Pandora's Box. Now I see the world different. In a sense, through child's eyes.

An image need no longer be tack sharp foreground to infinity for to be considered excellent. Indeed, it's often better when it isn't. Nice way to embrace a tool's limitations…

Of course, it's still convenient when the object at hand doesn't move.

Yet it's no longer a prerequisite. My newfound nimbleness is occasionally faster than even the jumpiest life.

No less the boldest and least afraid. Next spring we'll be on maybe our sixth generation of Great Black Wasps since they first arrived. My special garden companions, because they're great & black and utterly indifferent to me.

And neither is impossible light the hard barrier to success it once was. Previously, I'd have never looked twice, at this...

For an old transparency shooter, that's like a freakin' miracle. At the very least, digital capture and processing constitutes yet another in our long list of modern technology's many wonders.

I've not left architecture behind, as you can see. But it remains 400+ miles to Superior country and for myriad reasons, I travel less these days. It's good to find work close to home.

It's also healthy to finally focus on something other than the past – those remnants of generational failure that have for so long been my specialty. It's almost a surprise that fresh air needn't necessarily come laden with despair.

Yet for as radically as the tools have evolved and my opportunity has broadened commensurate, the basic subject's unchanged. It's the light. Only and ever the light.

Now, today and tomorrow. It's always about chasing light.

And being both meticulously prepared and nimble enough, to perhaps capture a fleeting moment when it's positively perfect...

Winter Solstice, 2019

Many ancient peoples recognized the exact moment their dark world tilted back toward the light.

Sometimes gathered at massive stones erected in great circles constructed expressly for the purpose, they watched and waited, then together celebrated the turning.

It's easy to think these folk knew the world mostly through primitive intuition. Much like we used to believe about animal awareness - called intelligence, so to better separate us out from our animal cousins. Except intuition doesn't account for those stone circles, built precisely to purpose. As is often the case, the easy answer's wrong.

Remnants of recent stone construct are frequently ambiguous. Transience befitting purpose. If you think abandonment/dissolution weren't built right in, think again.

Modern science reveals that the day after tomorrow will gift us with one measly second of additional light. No one should blame us, if we don't mark it. We've a damnably complex compendium of critical tasks at hand, rather than spare time for to celebrate an obscurity.

Even considering science propelled by reason and a vastness of knowledge we should resolutely be using to replace old ways with new, our collective path forward appears fraught. At best, uncertain.

Naturally, uncertainty breeds fear. Populist bullshit would have you believe fear unites and through unity makes us stronger, but that's what fire tells wood until wood's reduced to ash and can no longer hear.

Social science informs us that despite seeking unity through fear, as individuals we've rarely if ever felt more isolated from the common tribe. Instead we feel alone, set adrift and left at the mercy of a cold, darkening world.

Were we at least as smart as pagans or even your average green plant, we'd intuit that it's our essential nature to collectively survive dark times by individually putting our shoulder to the wind and pushing forward until the world we've made turns back toward the light, where under its many blessings those who survive the effort might thrive.

Should we do that together, perhaps we'll again appreciate exactly what it was primitive people saw fit to celebrate, during their world's apparently darkest day.