The Story Behind The Photograph - Shanty Hollow Morning

Almost every photograph I share has a story behind it. When I take time to browse through them, the memories associated with the moments leading up to their capture often will refill my thoughts with pleasant apparitions. With few exceptions, those memories reflect a sense of nostalgia from times past when moment, preparation, and opportunity combine to create an extraordinary photographic event.

As the second installment of 'The Story Behind the Photograph', we will take a look at one of the most remarkable photo adventure events I've experienced in recent years. This one I call,  'Shanty Hollow Morning'.

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The weight of my Old Town Camper canoe pressed heavy across my shoulders as, long before daylight, I slid it off the rack atop my Jeep to have it settle across my collar, balanced precariously between tipping and riding on an even keel. As I carried the canoe and slowly spun toward the water, the ambient light shimmered across the surface of the straight edge smooth lake and stars suspended themselves in a bowl-like ebony-laced arch high above in the clear morning air.

I always find it comforting in a way to hear again the familiar hollow sound a canoe makes when you lift it off your shoulders, gently flip it upright, and lay it on the water along the edge of a small lake. There is no other sound in nature, especially early of a morning, no other familiar movement that can compare. You feel blessed in a way, for this simple action generates a life long memory so ingrained into your mind it far exceeds the ordinary act used to create it. So it was, again, on this Kentucky morning filled with anticipation of what might come.

Even though summer was deep within its realm, the morning air was damp and unseasonably cool. Indeed, summer mornings in Kentucky offer a canoer/photographer some of the best conditions one can hope for with calm winds and layers of mood enhancing fog. As a photographer conditions like these provide excellent opportunities to capture exceptional moments. They also provide moments of soul heeling we sometimes require.

Leading up to this morning, I found myself caught in what seemed liked a perpetually high level of work related stress. A moment alone with nature was something my mind and body craved from within their deepest reserves for those reserves were depleted to the point of exhaustion. They required a day afield to replenish the low energy levels. As I stood next to the canoe in the pre-dawn light, the heeling process was already at work. Within a few moments, my gear was loaded, and I gently shoved away.

Paddling a canoe under a dark sky creates an odd sensation of movement without feeling like you are moving. The sky hovers motionless, the water appears black and seems to stand vacant and empty around you, yet you feel the canoe gently surge forward with each stroke of the paddle.

The ambient light was bright enough so the surrounding hills formed a strong silhouette against its glow and slowly with each movement of the paddle, those hills rolled behind me. It took about a half hour to reach the upper end of the lake where it arched east and west to form a hammer shaped head. I paddled a short distant to the west toward the dam, then spun the canoe around to face what would soon be a rising sun. 

I attached a wide angle lens, then made a preliminary adjustment of the field of view to include the front half of the canoe, then simply drifted for the next twenty minutes or so, making subtle adjustments with the paddle, absorbing the quiet, relaxing my inner self. In time the sky grew brighter and with the slow ascent of the still hidden sun, the thin blanket of fog began to stir, moving almost ghost-like across, then lift from the surface of the lake. I am always amazed at how nature creates its own path. The coolness of the air combined with the warmer water to generate a dancing fog so light, so airy, the slightest puff of air alters its course which catches the subtle rays of light in ever changing subtleties. As the fog rose higher, a larger cloud lifted above the tree line on the far side of the lake. 

The sun, trying now to find its path into daylight, cast a beam of light through the hovering form and set it aglow. This glow then reflected off the impossibly smooth surface of the lake now filled with uncountable fingers of mist shooting upward following invisible currents of air. Ever so slowly, I turned the canoe to align it with the glow of the morning light, waited for the ripples to settle, positioned the camera angle to just undercut the sky, and snapped the image.

When the image appeared on the view screen, I knew a moment of pure gold once again displayed across my visual imagination. My soul cried internally at the serenity and beauty displayed before me. I lowered the camera and simply watched the morning play, dance and spin in front of me. Later, as I paddled toward the lower end of the lake I felt replenished. Uplifted by the experience I rose above the moment to become suspended by a renewed strength, thankful for the moment God had once again revealed to my heart, reinforcing an understanding to my weakened soul of why I do such things. 

There is more to photography than taking pictures...the stories behind the photographs reveal more than the simple image alone can visually explain. Seeking out such revelations opens the heart of a photographer and fills it with a secreted form of art, one requiring only a moment such as this one to express openly what lay hidden deep within.

The Story Behind The Photograph - Wild White Indigo Sunrise

Every photograph contains two stories. The first one being the visual message you the photographer are attempting to show. The other one being the story behind the image, or what it took to capture the photograph. In many ways the second story can often be the more intriguing of the two but because of its nature, it is almost always known only to the photographer.

Great photographs rarely happen because of random chance. Most are captured only through perseverance, planning, and vision.  Capturing something truly unique is as much about how you manage to place yourself at that point of best potential as it is understanding the fundamentals of photography. Sometimes luck does play a roll, yet simply being there requires a choice. Seeing the opportunity requires you look beyond the ordinary. Capturing it requires the ability to command the moment both technically and artistically.

Over the next several posts we will take a closer look at what it took to capture a specific image. Let's begin with one of my favorites; Wild White Indigo Sunrise.

The damp, prairie grass closely hugged the full length of my legs as I walked in the predawn light into this Oklahoma landscape. Even though it was late spring, the morning air was cooled by a whispering, but stiff breeze as it caressed the upper reaches of the blue stems and the myriad other prairie grasses. With each step I felt my soul move closer to heaven and at once I was transported to an ancient time long before white men trekked across the plains to settle new lands. My senses were filled with the sweet prairie aroma, familiar, yet somehow foreign to my civilized nature. I paused for a moment and cast a gaze toward the sky. Nothing but thick clouds stretching beyond the horizon threatened to circumvent an attempt to capture one of those legendary prairie sunrises.

When I reached a shallow high spot that fell away toward a long valley stretching to the horizon I stopped and placed the camera tripod onto the rocky ground, and extended its legs between the grasses to form a secure platform. My large camera backpack by this time felt heavier than I remember it being and I slipped the straps off my shoulders and gently placed it on the ground. There was just enough daylight forming to allow me to see. It wasn't the dramatic pre-sunrise light I hoped for, but a somber gray mood was cast across the prairie and with it most of my hopes of a great morning of shooting.

Around me prairie birds began to stir warming up their songs to announce the arrival of dawn. There were no other sounds but the breeze, the birds, and my labored breathing. The morning breeze rose toward a wind causing the loose material of my long sleeve cotton shirt to flap. I noticed the tops of the grasses were beginning to arch more and more, leaning over, then springing back in time with variances of the wind, and the morning progressed toward what would be sunrise, a hidden sunrise clouded behind that vail of overcast hugging close to the ground.

I locked the camera onto the tripod, installed my long 50 to 500 mm lens, a good one to start with just in case some bison appeared deeper across the valley. I had given up hope of catching the sunrise, but instead hoped to see something of the wildlife I knew roamed, or flew, or scurried across the prairie in this area.

Directly in front of me about 10 yards away the silhouette of a lone Wild White Indigo plant rocked back and forth with the wind and the day grew brighter, still gray, but light enough now to be able to see across the valley. The overcast too changed as more texture appeared across its subsurface area and the winds began to stir the clouds lifting them higher above the valley. I checked the time, the sun would be full up as sunrise was behind me now by a few moments. I again looked toward where I believed the sun was hidden behind the cloud cover, the sky grew a bit brighter and a pale cast of color appeared between a thinned layer of overcast.

Pointing my camera toward this pale color, I zoomed and focused, but it just did not look right, yet as I was looking through the view finder, the lone wild white indigo plant suddenly darted across my field of view. It was bouncing and rocking back and forth with the wind, and I tried to focus on it as best as I could. At the same time, that thin band of color, suddenly grew brighter as the clouds parted just enough to allow the sun to almost burn through. Across the field of view, a bulls eye apparition of gold, yellow, and orange mixed with the thinner blue-gray clouds and then without much warning, the hidden sun almost burned a hole in the clouds and created a brilliant spot across the dark overcast. The Indigo plant continued to sway in the wind and I knew this moment would not last long. I focused on the indigo plant to take a shot but the wind pushed it over...I waited...waited...waited...the brilliant color began to fade, then the wind calmed for a brief moment and the indigo plant lifted upright into my field of view. I snapped the shot. Not more than a few seconds later, the cloud cover once again engulfed the sun and it was gone.

Moments such as this one are rare encounters along the journey of a photographer. A degree of luck played out during this photo shoot, but had I not already scouted the area, rose well before sunrise, driven for an hour, then hiked in the darkness to be there, this encounter would never have happened. I love photographing Oklahoma's Tallgrass Prairie as it provides an array of opportunities found in no other location. It is truly a land of color, a world of adventure, an enchanted place where what once was...still is.

Five Most Important Photography Things I learned in 2017

Photography is a passion with an almost never ending array of new possibilities. Seems I am forever seeking to improve, to move forward, to continue to seek out that one perfect photograph. Along the way, every year I learn something new, and after every photo shoot I recognize areas needing improvement. There are times I fall into a state of complacency where instead of bringing visions to life, those visions seem to stagnate into the ordinary. Even though that one great photo I long for still seems far away, progressively, step by step, I do improve.

At the end of each year, to reinforce the learning process, I often take time to evaluate how that year progressed. Here then, is a short list of five things I learned about photography in 2017 and why they are important to me.

First of all it is important to not be so rigid but remain flexible. I've learned to tighten my photographic potential by focusing efforts toward a single type of photo shoot. This does not contradict my views on Cross Training where you pursue different kinds of photography. I still believe over the long haul, trying different kinds of photography is the best way to gain a balanced understanding of photographic techniques. What I mean by tightening your photographic potential is to expand how you approach any single type of photography. In my case, I began to focus portrait photography into a more tightly controlled event where the purpose was to create a single image with a specific look. Portrait photography is simply one type of photography I do as part of the cross training. By taking a tighter approach to it, I was forced to take a more creative look at lighting. Most location shoots can be done effectively using a single or maybe two speed lights and a simple light modifier, or even just natural light. But, focusing on a single look, requires you to evaluate not only the lighting on your subject, but how light can be used to add interest and depth to the background. It also rejuvenates your creative juices forcing you to think beyond the ordinary to create an interesting combination of subject vs location.

Secondly, it is important to photograph your life. Ask yourself, "What is really important to me right now?" and set about finding ways to document those things. It does not matter what it is. What matters is how you view those events and how you can capture them in such a way as to provide an interesting visual representation of what they are. As one example, this past year I realized my old Jeep was aging faster than I was and it was in need of a great deal of maintenance upgrades. After spending many hours working on it to bring it back to a point where its life could be extended, I realized how important that old vehicle has been to me over the past 20 years. Oddly enough, I almost never took any pictures of it, so I set out to do so...and will continue to do so in the future.

Thirdly, do it for yourself and don't worry about what others think or care about. If I have a fault photographically it is where I hope others would see the world the same as I do and they would also discover just how interesting and exciting some of the photographic challenges I've set for myself could become. For the most part, I was wrong to think that way and as a result I found myself being disappointed far more than I should have been. What I learned was that not everyone will have the same enthusiasm levels for what you are wanting to do and it is important to not allow yourself to become disappointed to the point you want to give up trying. The creative actions found in photography are directly associated to your own personal desires and dreams. All of us are different in that regard and we should encourage not only ourselves to follow our own dreams, but to encourage others to follow theirs, then cheer for them when they succeed.

Number four on the list revolves around the creative process and how it not only relates to the capture of photographs, but to building the tools we can use to do so. I work on a very limited budget and cannot simply go out and purchase new expensive tools when I need them. Sometimes, for a whole lot less expense, you can make them yourself. A DIY project can provide a great deal of joy and satisfaction, not to mention the practical benefits of using those tools. This past year I built two sets of Strip Lights based on original plans I found on the Internet. My versions were slightly modified from the original design, but it did not take long to discover just how useful they are, plus they provide a creative lighting edge you can not find using any other lighting source. Getting involved in projects like these simply adds to the fun of photography. I also took a long exciting look at post processing and began to experiment more with layering multiple zones of light to create a single image from several images. It did not take long to realize just powerful a technique this can become. With careful planning, creating dynamic portraits becomes a reality. It adds another dimension to the creative process and once you understand the principles, it is quite easy to do.

For number five I've learned to let go of preconceived notions about how to work with people in general. In a way this is related to number three. Working with people, even friends, can sometimes disappoint you if those people appear to let you down. As a general rule, eventually people will let you down. The trick is to not get too worked up about it. Three times this past year I had hopes of participating in some creative photo shoots I dreamt up. All three times, those hopes fell apart because people who seemed enthusiastic about participating seemed to always find excuses for not following through. My general rule of thumb is to give someone the benefit of the doubt two times, and then offer a third, after that I stop and move on. In spite of these setbacks, I also had several wonderful shoots where the moment was amazing and the results were wonderful because of the enthusiasm of the people involved. The joy and excitement from those shoots far outweighed the disappointments.

Photography requires a constant growth from those of us who pursue it. When we stop trying to learn, stop trying to discover new adventures, or settle for complacency, that is when we should consider placing the camera in the closet and doing something else. So far, even after decades of pursuing that one great photograph, I still find myself hungry for the adventure. I relearned how the process of discovery will help you retain a youthful vigor, and when you do discover something new, well...the long journey to get there turns out to be the most important part.