The winds blew stiff and true; 20+ mph sustained if I had to guess. The bluster working over Cedar Run Dock Road salt marsh out of the northeast. Marsh grasses undulating southward in a great pulsing bow, unable to hold sway against the rushing tide of air. Ceaseless the weather worked; gray clouds building from south to north, fought back only by the winds intent upon a rearguard action.
By June standards temperatures were brisk. The skies were dark and brooding, and yet observing I could help not but notice the life and energy present. The greening salt marsh juxtaposed a dose of color and lightness against a looming scene. The bending marsh grass, most noticeable in the foreground, shows movement—shows wind. It is a testament to air power. This movement, too, depicts the green of new life renewing the marsh in spite of darkened gray skies. It is a fist of defiance against a marsh mood full of ruination.
Life lessons lie in layers. It is a long game building individual layers unique to our person as we grow juxtaposed with peeling back layers of those with whom with we grow with. With time comes age and with age comes complexities. The layers of life encasing us in ever expanding experience in much the same way a tree adds rings as it marks time. Good, bad, indifferent, our layers of lived experience mold and shape our true self. They mark our journey, adding dimension with shades and highlights of color. Layers are our memoir.
This is where my mind drifts when I observe flowers loaded with layers. I imagine the story each small piece has to deal. I am tempted to pluck away at each petal, enticed to sit, listen, and learn. Tucked away in each fold are countless stories, some good, some bad—some happy, some sad. Yet even with the hardship and strife mixed in with joy and triumph, it is the great whole rendered beautiful and perfect. The stories of our lives are deep and complex, and all the endless layers lend testimony to that.
It is still a bit soon to call the slump busted proper, but I am pleased my photography is getting back untracked. The past six weeks or so has me getting back to a more regular groove of shooting, blogging, and sharing my work. Aided big time by a high quality spring bloom, flowers aplenty have given me ample ready made subjects to shoot.
My front yard peonies are a favorite subject, and I was not going to miss out on their time in the sun this year. Captured about two weeks ago this photograph has been sitting in the hopper waiting for a proper unveiling. I am drawn to the simplicity of this photograph. 35mm lens, wide open aperture at f/1.4, a single peony blossom, low key lighting, and lots of white space above and around the peony. Propped up by the out of focus hint of a stem, the flower holds a singular focus a shade below frame center. It’s marked further with sharp focus holding fast to two petals closest to the viewer. It offers a ledge for your attention span to hang upon. From here the bulk of the photograph falls into nothingness, precisely the way I like it. It’s open season on flowers and photography once again, and I am damn sure happy to be back in business.
Hit the Pavement — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
Get low. You will come across this command often in your development as a shooter. It is especially common for us plying our trade in the landscape photography niche. Get low. Get the shot. Get the viewer in. Throwing a quick and dirty best guess out into the universe, I would ballpark I make some 75% of my landscape photos at a camera height around two feet. So yeah, I follow conventional wisdom to get low.
Shooting on Dock Road a little over a week ago, about a minute or so after I made this shot, I decided to get low, all right. Hella low. The sunset was in max fire mode at a northwest exposure, which is in perfect perpendicular alignment with the west bound direction of the road itself. And so I used what my environment gave me—the asphalt. With careful placement of my camera on the road surface, spaced even between the yellow lines and using the road as a de facto tripod, I made seven brackets facing right into sunset supreme.
The low as you can go orientation brings us to the literal ground floor. Terrapin turtle crossing level. This shrinks the viewer down, in turn amplifying the magnitude and prominence of the road surface. We are so close to the action in this shot, we encounter farsighted focus leaving our immediate contact with the road blurred. This allows the viewer to climb into the frame and scan down the road, ultimately finding sharp focus on what was a potent sunset burn.
Leading lines help to further guide our vision. First and most obvious we have the center weighted double yellow lines. This sends us right down the frame. Added to that we have the converging lines of the two sides of the roads. Flanked by guardrails and power lines on the right side. This line work coupled with the smattering of houses along the horizon pulls everything to the vanishing point of the photograph. Here it all meets in the middle. Underneath the high drama of a sparkling sunset.
Remember to get low to get down with great photography.
Despite my deepest wishes the flowers you see here—lily of the valley—are not late 19th Londoners bustling about Trafalgar Square. Nor are they doffed bowlers hung about a proper mahogany coat rack. No, they are something more than all that—beautiful flowers crafted by nature. Tiny reminders to look small to better see the world; to focus in to see out.
Through the years these little flower hats have caught my eye but never enough to grab the gear and make a proper photograph. That changed earlier this month. It was later in the day and the sky was overcast setting a pall over the evening. Color, light, visibility were all subtly muted adding a proper aura of melancholy. With my macro lens fixed I made it down to ground level to make frames of what I would later learn are lily of the valley flowers. Thanks Instagram friends.
I am satisfied proper with how this photograph turned out. Even before post processing I knew there was a win here. The first frame straight out of camera was money. With eight frames in all it was old number one that best hit the resonant tone of selective focus, bokeh, and light coupled with sound composition. From there it was off to Lightroom finishing school. A smidge of cross processing and contrast tweaks to finalize our array of English gents in hats. In the meantime shall we safety dance?
Plane of Remembrance — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/5
Memorial Day 2019. We remember. Think upon the story of our lives and remember the ones who fought and died for peace. Our national story writ large on our sacred fallen. Throughout history honored souls of women and men offered everything to a cause greater than themselves. Yes, there is a paradox in fighting and dying for peace and freedom—but in a world of human debasement it is a fallacy in the greatest need of redress. Heroes of all color and creed step up to give it all. This is the living ideal of what America can be.
My 2019 has been a dive into the past. Our martial past. Audio books have taken me on quite a journey. It began with a two excellent explorations of leadership: Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin extrapolate the hard lessons learned serving with Seal Team 3’s Task Unit Bruiser during 2006’s Battle of Ramadi. Their learnings at the cost of lives to their brothers apply to business, life, and the human spirit. They enforce a critical lesson that leadership and personal ownership up and down the chain of command can overcome any obstacle in any walk of life. Even in Ramadi, then the most dangerous city in the world besieged by a terror force hellbent on holding ground at the total cost of civilian Iraqi and American lives.
From there I pivoted to a rewatch of HBO’s excellent Band of Brothers. Immediately followed up with an audiobook listen of Stephen E. Ambrose’s eponymous accounting of E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne. An exploration of sacrifice, brotherhood, and hardship in the critical liberation of Europe from Nazi oppression.
Next I took a dive off a cliff and began a study in the depths of evil. Starting with William L. Shirer’s tome The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany. Shirer, a journalist on the ground in Berlin during the rise of the Reich shares lived experiences in and among the Nazi power base. I piggy backed this 57+ hour listen with the first two books of Richard J. Evans trilogy on The Third Reich: The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich in Power. The two accountings have been nothing short of a descent into madness. As horrid and omnipresent as I assumed Nazi power always had been was somehow not strong enough. With cold, calculated, and controlled consent of the people in deference to Party, a complete and total shroud of evil was born in central Europe. Only to metastasize and spread east and west. Capitalizing on a thirst for power, redress for perceived World War I exploitation, fear of bolshevism, stark economic hardship, longing for authoritarianism, racial hygiene, and naked anti-semitism, the far-right ideology of the NSDAP took hold. It’s been a cold reminder of the absolute worst in humanity. It has affected me in ways I cannot articulate, but my mental discomfort is nothing. This is about those who rose up to fight and die against evil in its final form.
Our thanks will never be enough. Our remembrance will never be enough. But then again patriots never made this about themselves. Yet our world would be unequivocally worse with your sacrifice. I leave you with Jocko Willink’s, Remember Me. Please listen.
On the Side of Light — 14mm | f/8 | ISO 100 | 7 Bracketed Exposures
Sunset, oh how I have missed you. It’s been a long time since my last sunset. Months. Several months. We are talking near on four whole months. A quick look back at the archives has February 2, 2019, as my last trip out. Back when the old marina on Great Bay Boulevard found itself locked in ice. Yeah, it’s been a minute. No investigation required to know it’s my longest sunset dry spell since I began photo making in 2012.
Two nights ago I hit up Dock Road with my girlfriend and her soon-to-be three year old daughter. It was a family affair and it was nice to be back at my old haunt with special people. Spring green is popping in the marsh and you know that has me excited. It adds intensity and dynamism to any composition. Storms were in the area and they came bearing dramatic sky gifts. The mix of fiery color, intense clouds, newborn marsh, and pastel anticrepuscular rays came together strong on the side of light. It was a stunning scene made all the better by a well placed reflection in the tide pool.
Having been back out there I have rediscovered the burning desire to make more sunset photographs. I can’t wait for my next opportunity—and I will not let four whole months stand in my way this time.
Waiting on the Winds of Change — 35mm | f/1.4 | ISO 100 | EXP 1/8000
To weed, or not to weed, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the lawn to suffer the blades and clippers of outrageous trimming…
OK, let’s bring it back. I am no Shakespeare (duh) and this sure is no Hamlet. But I would like to wax about on dandelions, perspective, and how it all changes. As a child, like many children I suspect, I partook of the cult of dandelion. I’d run about my grandparent’s lawn collecting the golden flower tops with aplomb. On my best day I may have even slapped a small bouquet together for eager delivery to Mom. On my worst day I’d roam the lawn with friends, pluck a dandelion or 12, and intone, “momma had a baby and its head popped off.” Yeah, the indignations of youth.
Of greater mystery, however, were dandelions in their gray puff ball evolution. Like the one I photographed above. These airy beauties offered the greatest fuel for play and imagination—and lacked an evil jingle. Countless hours spent holding up the cloud like seed heads into the wind watching the air carry them away. Little men holding umbrella parachutes they’d travel in unpredictable air currents toward parts unknown. The charms were boundless. When the air was still it was mouth powered air travel filling in for the wind’s absence. This was the first lesson in the power of breath.
Fast forward to adulthood and like all things once wondrous the cynical world soul crushed joy into avarice. In this case the greed for a perfect lawn. There is no place for dandelions in a perfect lawn, you see. And thus my childhood dandelion friends found bottomed out status as weeds. Weeds! Unwanted growing things to excise with fascist impunity. This world view held sway for years, until I learned a thing or two. On the one hand what is a perfect lawn and who needs it anyway? And on the other hand, our pollinator bee friends are fond of the dandelion. And bees need our help. And so, in my world, dandelions have regained proper status in the land of growing things. Oh, and they photograph and taste great, too.
Breathe. Slow yourself. Inhale. Find yourself. Take in the soul stirring scent of lilac. Exhale. Calm yourself. Let the burdens of the day fall from your lips. The lilac boon is a perfumed pathway to rest and rejuvenation. It’s an essence of spring and its annual promise of renewal. The sweet bouquet infuses our air and our soul with the essence of all this world can be. Let it be a balm to your weariness and a fragrance forging our fortitude. So let the lilac’s joy dance upon the air, sweeten our souls, and open our hearts. And as ever, breathe.
