Superior Spring - 2025

Officially, meteorological summer began June 1^st. Most years on the prairie, ‘summer-like’ conditions roughly coincide then settle in for the duration.

Around Superior, hidden cuts along rivers and other sheltered spots might still harbor snow. That was the case this year in the Northwoods, right through at least the end of May.

Way back, an old timer told me Upper Peninsula summer is three days in July.

He’s not always been wrong.

Superior spring, whether late arriving or overstaying her welcome, typically overflows.

And many times, the finest treasures are well hidden.

Or not.

Whichever, seasonable resurrection exacts a perennial price and the true splendor of spring ‘round Superior is that it wakes up so very, very hungry.

For instance...

At a hidden place, a small creek emerges briefly from deep woods to help feed my favorite lake and other things besides.

Didn’t know the spot existed until fairly late in the game.

First time I lugged the Linhoff in was strictly a learning experience. There’s not much stable footing back there. Light proved problematic and the complex visual geometry doesn’t readily lend itself to the limitations of a frame.

I went home with no usable film of this well-hidden place.

Second year’s effort was a complete & utter failure.

No sooner had I set up my gear than a fierce cloud of mosquitoes set about eating me alive, so I hightailed it back to the car lickity split. No fool me, eh?

Way back, an old timer told me U.P. state bird's the mosquito.

He was and is right. But I was determined. Stupid mosquitoes.

The following spring, I ventured in wearing a biting insect hazmat suit.

It was clumsy. Inconvenient, especially the netting across my face, which made focusing through ground glass via a loupe a novel experiment. Then I shot a lot of film, just trying to be sure.

Third year proving the charm, I finally did capture on 4x5 transparency a reasonable facsimile of the seasonal wonder that for three springs running, inexorably drew me back.

 And here that hidden place is, less marauding mosquitoes.

Shining Light on the Prairie - Spring '25, too

 

I was tempted to shrug and say, just ‘cause.

Except now it’s a couple fleeting weeks later.

And in the interim, it rained.

Not enough to break the drought, it’s true.

But still.

Shining Light on the Prairie - Spring, 2025.

 

Land looking.

Finally.

Running late, the prairie is just now greening.

It deals differently with drought than shaded woods.

Caught in gentle half-light, the forest floor ripples with life.

Along the demarcation line between prairie and wood

where sun/shade sharply comingle,

at last…

spring explodes.

Waiting on spring to get sprung

By special request, a not quite random selection of work drawn from my large format back catalogue. Have added some notes, along with a single digital image for good measure @ the end. Also captured in situ, as of course was the film.

No VFX need apply in real time, or until authenticity is made irrelevant by progress.

Until then, that's why god created perspective control:

My 1st ever shoot with the Linhof consisted of ten exposures, all Ottawa National Forest botanicals. That's where we were and what was there. Seeing the film later, I could sort of tolerate three of the ten.

The next step on my large format learning curve came when I hauled 120 sheets of 4x5 transparency with me to Switzerland. Even though I'd barely any clue as to what I was doing.

In for a penny in for a pound, I guess.

After three weeks of guessing plus another week waiting on the film, not only had I succeeded @ a better than 2:1 ratio, what I’d be shooting going forward had been set in stone.

And so much for spending a lifetime working from my knees, praying for some plant to stop moving, finally clicking the shutter, then finding out days or even weeks later whether or not it actually had.

I took my master class in large format, architectural fieldwork primarily @ two separate, though hardly equal historic sites.

Old World Wisconsin, a collection of vintage structures plucked from other places, gathered together and preserved as a museum exhibit:

And the old copper mining town of Victoria, the very definition of vintage aging in place.

This is called 'Victoria Flies' for good reason, not readily seen via your phone:

It was @ an historic site along the north shore of Lake Huron that I figured out Ektachrome could shoot high contrast imagery in the mostly dark. Though if you look closely enough, you’ll see that even dead geese waft in the slightest breeze.

Unleashed, I found other treasures in the wild field. Shipwrecks don’t move per se, except sometimes Superior swallows them. When you make it all the way in lugging 50# on your back and find it hasn’t, you damn well better score.

I was there to shoot something else and this property’s private, not abandoned, so I passed it by three times in the rain before at the end of the day pulling over on the public road, jumping from the car and grabbing a quick shot just the same.

Turned out, this single sheet of film is far better rendered than any of the other work I’d gone there to do.

Take advantage of every opportunity as presented, since the next time what you see might well be gone. This black beauty was, when I returned.

Grab excellence whenever you can get it, even if ad hoc & on the fly…

Once we’d traveled up the Bayfield peninsula for to shoot, but the skies poured down rain. We sat in a lakeside café while I bemoaned cruel fate.

Then this appeared. I bolted, threw my gear together on the sodden pier, and desperately fired off four sheets.

It’s the only 4x5 I ever paid a specialist to scan, as no one including myself could get out of the film what I knew was in there.

Avoid filling your phone with sunrise/sunset images. While those can be undeniably gorgeous, they're just memories that outside the moment become indistinguishable, one from the other. So live it, instead.

Except on that rare occasion when the magic hour creeps in on little cat's feet and you're there well prepared, hoping for exactly that.

Then, strike.

Don’t neglect your roots, those nourish and inform you. But never tie yourself too tightly to those, either.

Consider that as corporeal time itself runs short, all construct fails with time.

And when chased down by the pack of ravaging wild dogs we call progress, by all means spit in its face by acing your last chance.

Then let it go.

Because when clinging tight to what was, what will be turns even the wisest old owl to stone, rendering it useless to ongoing need.

But by embracing the future come what may, even old men might again learn to fly.

Mourning Dove Under Glass

Fun with Fungi

Otherwise known in some circles as mycography.

A burgeoning niche these days in creative fieldwork, given the magic lightning rod of digital capture and attendant flexibility at our ready disposal.

I might've  pressed this shutter were I still shooting film, but film would've failed:

I might’ve shot more ‘shrooms back in the day with the Linhoff, except working that beast @ full bellows extension required an entirely different skillset from the one I chose. Too little time remained to convey what was with every passing season being forever lost.

At some point, abandoned construct's just another undifferentiated pile of debris. Along Superior, there was but to locate, assess and interpret. Even revisit, as needed and/or able.

So I did what I did. Long enough to outlast much of what I shot. Which I suppose is why I've a body of work, not just more pictures.

Context matters.

These last few years striding through woods while keeping an eagle eye out for the telling detail that appears everywhere in a living/dying constantly birthing mess of forest led me to adapt the visual values I learned when shooting failed construct over to naturally perpetual regeneration, where and when I can find it.

It was a neat trick. Trust me. I've seen a lot of ruin in my time. Life is better.

Speaking of abstract...

And too bad that's not a well lit, 24" giclee print on a wall for all to really see.

Certainly, failed construct being eaten by wilding earth and fungi working constantly to sustain that same earth are each complex subjects in their own right. Yet both are answerable to a similar approach so to convey their richly organic character in situ.

Besides, in what other active pursuit is a big-assed slug such a happy bonus?

But so enamored are we with our newfound macro vision, too many shooters neglect that inside the proscenium frame, visual context is typically where the broader story's found.

The late, great teacher and backwoods poet Patrick O’Neil likely spent as much time closely land looking the wild floor as anyone I’ve known.

Death is life, Patrick O’Neil wrote.

No less than humble, ubiquitous fungus proves him right.

That's life. Death, too. And life again, etc.

I’ve recently upgraded my gear. Am very much looking forward to the continued pursuit.

Hello, meteorological spring.