Shining Light on the Prairie - Full Summer

Or, taking my shots in the dark.

After sunset...

Decades ago, I went straight from wielding a 35mm Nikon F to pushing 4x5 transparency film through a Linhof. That was like graduating from a Sopwith Camel to a Spitfire.

There was no forgiving medium format transition for me.

Perspective control made the Linhof ideal for architecture, and there was no better means to shoot botanicals than large format.

Problem was, long exposure times + a fully extended bellows + even the slightest motion in the air made botanical fieldwork a really good way to waste film.

Architecture doesn't move. You know, not mostly. Almost never when I'm there, at any rate.

Shooting large format was hard enough. Failed construct being inexorably eaten by the wilderness over persnickety flowers it was.

I rarely if ever looked back.

The other evening I stepped out onto our porch overlooking the garden. I was gobsmacked by the light. I ran back in and grabbed the 21st Century Nikon, a wizard's tool if ever there was one.

Over the course of a fast fading few minutes, I worked with subtlety I'd have never dared on large format film.

As the sun also rises…

It's always been true that the best light is generally found at the edge times of day, especially during summer's high, too often harsh glare.

While digital capture's certainly mitigated that, it remains by & large true.

The morning after the sublime evening before, I awoke well before sunrise and still thinking of light, over coffee on my porch I noticed not a lick of a breeze. Apart from we early birds, the predawn world stood motionless.

I grabbed my wizard's wand and headed off to the closest prairie remnant, of late so overgrown and untended as to be all but impassable.

In rising light, I bushwhacked my way through.

Finally adept at digital capture in much the same way I was with large format film, today while out on the hoof I see better as well or better than I ever have.

That's in no small part because I can grab so much more of life on the fly, even when cast in nothing like traditionally perfect light.

And now all these decades later, when out in the field I finally get to shoot botanicals, too.

What a life.