Spring: The Hardest Season to Photograph

 Here in Kentucky we experience four distinct seasons. I'd venture to guess that Spring is likely the season most look forward to. As a photographer I tend to photograph all year round, however, over the years I've come to the conclusion that the Spring season is the most difficult to capture. 

For some reason I've never been able to capture the impact of the Spring season very well. I've tried, but seems like I am always disappointed with the results. Spring is the kind of season your eyes see all kinds and splashes of color scattered across the landscape, but somehow, all of that color simply does not translate well into photographs.

 I've come to the conclusion that in order to photograph Spring you have to get in close to the subject and use depth of field and a blue sky to frame your subject. Sometimes getting in close means to get down low. There are a myriad of small spring flowers that cover the lawn and they bloom pretty much all through the season and well into the summer. But you gotta get right down on the ground to capture them in a way they do not become a cliched image.

This is where depth of field comes into play. By using a long lense and a large aperture, then focusing on the main subject, the foreground and background blur, and the small blooms suddenly become isolated to stand out against all of the clutter surrounding them.

If I were to collect all of my photographs by season, Spring would contain the fewest images. Most of my Spring images pretty much look the same with very few appearing as a unique image moment. Even so, as mentioned above, the most effective Spring images I've made tend to be close in shots. One good thing about the Spring season is how volatile the sky can become. Thunder storms roll across the landscape, cloud formations vary from high wispy clouds, to strong fluffy rolls, to dark and foreboding, to brilliantly lit filled with color. I believe the trick to photographing the Spring season is to focus on the weather using the blooming landscape as the accent.

Many times dark clouds infiltrate across the sky after the sun has warmed the earth and created a caldron mix of humidity and heat that feeds the stormy conditions. This will often lead to an end of the day breaking up of those clouds where the sun suddenly breaks through and lights up the sky. 

Some of the best combinations of conditions and light will occur during this time and provide for some interesting if not downright unusual lighting. 

There is one location not far from home where the Spring bloom offers a wonderful backdrop. It's a campground, near the lake, that is covered in dozens of mature dogwood trees accented with redbuds. The dogwoods create a canopy of white blooms that are simply spectacular and I will often visit the location in mid-April for that reason alone.

Dogwoods I believe make the best subjects. They come in white and various shades of pink and when planted together make a lovely sight. Closeup, dogwood blooms offer a powerful yet delicate blend of aesthetic nature at her best. You can as a photographer do so much with them and they convert well into black and white. 

If I were to choose a single Spring photograph I've made, one I actually like, it is the one I made some years ago of dogwood blooms growing next to a split rail fence. I added a bit of blur to the image yet focused on the central blooms and converted it into a black and white image. Compositionally it is strong and aesthetically is offers a blend of softness and an enduring Spring-like moodiness.

Spring can be an amazing time of year for the photographer and at the same time a challenging time. Capturing it as a single context of photographs is not easy, but when taking the time to actually see what is there and focusing on the details, well, the hardest season to photograph can become one of the most productive.

 

The Canoe: A Sense of Unspoiled Freedom

 The sunrise lingered that morning yet presented itself as a token of light spreading across the sky. A few clouds hovering above the ridgetops caught some of the first light of the morning and began to softly glow casting their reflection across the almost still water. Just a gentle ripple rolled across the surface of the lake, and that motion was barely enough to distort and provide movement to those reflections. All I could hear were a few birds greeting the morning and the rhythmic soft splash of my paddle as I glided along in my Old Town Camper canoe. The once silent morning started to stir to life and I experienced a satisfying sense of unspoiled freedom as I became one with the first moments of the day.

Internet Photo

The canoe is perhaps the most versatile watercraft ever devised. Having its roots going way back to the Native American birchbark canoes, known from the history of the northern latitudes of United States and Canada, it is today mostly a recreational craft made from modern materials. Even so, the birchbark canoe, in areas where horses and wagons were virtually useless, was most responsible for opening up the interior of North America. Some of those early canoes ranged as large as over 30 to 35 feet in length and 4 to 5 feet in diameter to the smaller single man canoes of similar construction. 

Shooting the Rapids (Internet Photo)

Known as freighter canoes, the larger ones could carry several tons of cargo yet were fast, durable, easy to portage, and provided an effective means of carrying goods deep into and out of the wilderness of Canada and the northern United States. Hearty voyagers manned those freighter canoes and lived a rugged and dangerous life often covering over 50 miles per day for days on end. 

As a nature photographer, my canoe has provided me with a lightweight and capable craft I have used to place myself in locations that offer a higher potential for quality photographs. 

The only real limitation I have with it is the wind. You must avoid open water trips when it is windy. But over the years I have spent many hours paddling and canoe camping on rivers and lakes. In more recent times I have concentrated on paddling across lakes and have managed a good number of overnight and multi day trips.

My canoe is an Old Town brand Camper model. Sixteen feet in length it offers an almost perfect blend of versatility; large enough for two and small enough for a single paddler. 

It's hull design is better suited for flat water but is more than capable of handling moving water including light to moderate whitewater. More than anything else, it provides me a means to experience the outdoors, maybe not so much like the voyagers of old did, but in a way where I can imagine myself heading off into the wilds of Canada. In deed, someday I hope to travel to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota. But, until that time, I will explore the local bodies of water near my home here in Kentucky.

When I am out paddling, I become an unfettered spirit, one with nature and my craft. The hours seem to drift along with the clouds and my time on the water becomes a purposeful activity where I am physically and mentally exercising my desire to simply get away. Nothing can compare to, at day's end, pulling off onto a gravel beach and setting up a stealthy campsite, then gathering firewood and cooking a hot meal using a cast iron skillet. Once filled with good camp food, I can lean against an old piece of driftwood and watch the setting sun write across the sky, its epath for the day. 

Paddling into the sunset offers a surreal blend of moment, time, and place. When the air grows soft and the breeze slumbers, the warmth of an end of day paddle lifts one spirits far more than most moments and eventually, when stiff muscles are allowed to relax, the mind is allowed to refresh itself, and the heart is filled with memories I can recall any time. Then, when morning breaks the stillness of the night, a chill in the air can often generate a fog that drifts across the waters. Paddling during such moments is certainly one of the great pleasures of being there.

Being retired has its rewards and each time I witness a blue sky filled with summer clouds reflecting off the water, I am grateful for the moment and the physical ability to be there, and as long as I am still able to do so, I will continue loading my canoe and spending time on the water with the breeze at my back, the warm sun in my face, and a sense of unspoiled freedom lingering within my heart. 

Although long since separated by time, I feel as one with those voyagers of old, a kindred spirit of sorts, where in my imagination I sing the old songs they used to sing as they journeyed into the wilderness...

Ho! for the tumbling rapids' roar!

Ho! for the rest on lone lake shore!

We live beneath the old canoe,

and sleep beside as the rivers roar...

Other Values: Memories for a Lifetime

 The sleepy fog that hovered around my eyes all but evaporated once I started my hike across the Oklahoma Tallgrass Prairie. The going was rough with the tallgrasses brushing against my now damp pant legs --- dampness from the early morning rain and heavy dew that filled the prairie with a fresh aroma. Early I had arrived, seeking to observed the sunrise --- No legendary sunrise this morning, just a prevailing heavy overcast but one filled with textures and various shades of blue gray. As it almost always does on the prairie a stiff breeze cut across the morning touching the tops of the tallest of the blooms and grasses exciting them into a prairie dance. A carpet of countless blooms extended deep into the shallow ravine. Their soft and gentle undulations from the wind brought the prairie alive with subtle movement as song birds kept time with their morning musical serenades.  

About every twenty steps or so a Meadow Lark would take to wing, sometimes two or three at a time --- fly about thirty or forty yards, spread their wings, and set down again. They appeared just a small, brown and yellow speck when observed within such an open expanse.  After about a quarter mile or so of hiking I arrived at the rocky outcropping that overlooked the arroyo spread out and below. It was a familiar place, one I discovered a good number of years before. I stopped for a brief rest and stepped up on the largest rock formation. When I did, a single bobwhite quail burst from a clump of grass a few yards away and flew just above the grasses like a miniature, brown missile to finally disappear beyond a shallow rise. I was here, again, to take from this place a few photographs. What happened turned out to be something entirely different, for this throwback prairie from another era offered me something far more valuable than a simple photograph or two --- it offered, and I received from it other values: A new memory added to the already extensive collection of memories --- another one that would last for a lifetime.

I write and share many stories and photographs about the Tallgrass Prairie. There are reasons for doing so I suppose, but there are never enough words nor fine enough photographs to convey the full impact of such a place. The experience of being there is such a personal moment and not one that can easily be conveyed to others --- others who unfortunately may never develop the same level of appreciation for such things. I guess the most valuable lesson I have been gifted by exploring the prairie, is understanding the importance of the other values imparted by doing so. 

The prairie is a natural theater best observed not from the edges, but when fully surrounded within it. You cannot truly experience the magnitude of the prairie by simply driving through, and no quantity of photographs can capture the depth and impact of being there. They serve only to touch the surface and provide humble, visual shadows of the proper nature of the prairie. To gain the most inclusive measure of what it has to offer requires exploring it up close --- the deeper the better --- for when you do, the prairie not only invites you to listen to its story, you actually begin to hear what it has to say.

I have photographed the Tallgrass Prairie off and on for a good number of years and have yet to capture that one single photograph that speaks of the essence of what it really means. Nor have I been able to put into words the full extent of the feelings and emotions I experience while standing within its embrace. What I have stored instead are countless lifetime memories --- the other values --- that only reside deep within my personal convictions and even though down deep I understand what they mean, extracting from those thoughts the best combination of words to express them verbally has proven difficult. Even so, the only ones that truly matter are the ones stored most deeply inside for they are the ones that define most clearly why I love this place so much.

The tallgrass prairie has a rich and almost tragic history. Once covering over 400,000 square miles ranging from southern Canada through the heartland of America all the way to the gulf coast, very little of it remains --- almost destroyed by the most dramatic transformation of a natural landscape in human history. Of the three major prairie regions across the central United States (Shortgrass, Mixed Grass, Tallgrass) The tallgrass prairie was by far impacted the most. It's own diversity and rich soil became its downfall as it was transformed into farmland that feeds America and a good part of the world. At one time somewhere around 60 million American Bison roamed across its landscapes and most of them were slaughtered in a misguided desire to corral the Plains Indians and for profit. Only a few dozen survived and from that small remnant, today there are about 600,000 that are kept in preserves, national parks, and private ranches. The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma is home to around 3000 or so and they roam free and wild across its almost 40,000 acres of original tallgrass prairie landscape.

That preserve is the largest protected area of original tallgrass prairie that still survives and is one of two locations where you can experience seeing unbroken horizon to horizon tallgrass prairie. The other is in the Konza prairie preserve in southeastern Kansas. Although somewhat smaller, it provides a unique and impressive preserve. Other locations fall within the ownership of private ranches and knowing for sure how much remains is difficult to determine, but what is known is that around 95% of the original Tallgrass region was lost between 1840 and 1890 --- in some places over 99% has been lost.

In more recent times, efforts to restore lost areas have been initiated, but these represent but a fraction of what once was. What once was --- Think of the State of Iowa as a 1000 piece puzzle. Iowa at one time was almost all Tallgrass Prairie, about 60,000 square miles, and that 1000 piece puzzle represents what the prairie once was. Today, only one piece of that puzzle remains --- and it is not connected but broken into smaller pieces. That is the extent of the loss of this once amazing ecosystem.

I have been asked several times why I keep returning to this landscape as I have taken thousands of photographs there already. It is a difficult question to provide an answer to someone who does not fully grasp the totality of what happened to the Tallgrass region. There is more to it than photographs, more to it than scanning the landscape from scenic overlooks, and more to it  than simple words can explain.

 It has to do with a connection to history, but a deeper connection than just word knowledge, but a connection that permeates well inside your personal vision of what that history represents. Never would I denigrate farming of the prairie or the people who make their living from the land. They have provided resources that have helped to make this country what it is today. However, understanding what once was and what is now leaves an empty space within my desire to experience what the prairie used to be. 

I have spent the better part of an afternoon sitting atop a high rocky knoll and watched hundreds of bison meander across the preserve from a distance. From there in every direction all I could see was tallgrass prairie, a landscape filled with prairie blooms and grasses swaying in the wind. No man made objects were in sight, nor sounds save for the occasional high flying airplane. There prevailed a calmness of spirit across the land and at times I could imagine seeing a hunting party of Plains Indians sitting on their painted ponies atop an adjoining hill as they watched the herd of bison (tatanka in Lakota, iinniiwa in Blackfoot...among others) meander across the landscape. It is an image rendered only within the imagination now, but one that sums up the loss of this amazing place.

Over the years as a photographer I have captured a good many images of various locations that inspire strong memories from within myself. I can recall within a moment the memories made when I captured them --- some stronger than others, most locked and stored down deep inside. Almost like when an aroma or a sound can rekindle a specific emotion, a single photograph will often reveal again the events surrounding its capture. Some humorous, some dramatic, many chance happenings, only a few truly remarkable, but most are forever embraced by fond memories --- memories locked inside for a lifetime.

Other values are the driving force behind why I keep returning to this place. It has been a few years now since I was last there. I suppose it is time to once again make time to return --- maybe soon if I can, yet even if I am unable to do so the connection to the memories generated by those other values serve me well and as a result I can return there as often as I prefer...from within the heart.