Stay Away From The Lite

Folks,

At the Nikon School of Photography one of the points that the instructors made is that photographer is really about the capture of light - and therefore using the light, or manipulating the light, to give the subject interest.  In fact they suggested that once you have decided what the photographic subject is, you simply focus on the light and find a way to make the light and and the lack of light in the subject area, make a great photo.

In other words you have to train yourself to see in black and white - looking for luminance information only.  There are filters that allow you do this - they exclude the colour information from the scene and allow to view light and shadows - I have one - it`s essentially a monocle but I have not yet been able to use it effectively.

The light here is Utah is interesting and it is not surprising to see a gathering of Nikon and Canon cameras at sunset here in the parks.  There is no doubt that the light in the golden hours of one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset is tremendous - flat, creating great shadows and creating those yellows and reds that really make a photograph sing.

However, at this time of year, there is still about 8 hours of light left and Ansel Adams took all his great photos at mid day because he needed the most light he could get to put him in a `sweet aperture`zone with regard to his full format camera.

The other thing that is going on is that the photo magazines have all hammered away at the fact that landscape photos should have a foreground interest - a boulder, plant, water, etc.  Also, most of these locations have been photographed to death, so the photo itself has become iconic - i.e., everybody wants to reproduce that particular photo.

So what we have is a bunch of folks trying to take the same picture and indeed producing the same picture - I call it Photo Lite.

If you know me at all, while that crowd is doing that, I am trying to come up with a different way of looking at the same thing or  indeed, the same thing shot differently - different time, different emphasis, different angle, different presentation, etc.  I am searching for the heavy light - I know it`s out there.

We were in Canyonlands yesterday - basically standing on a high plateau looking out over the Green River and Colorado River sandstone maze - maze meaning, the canyon cut-outs made by time, erosion and geology.  The challenge there, is that you are basically shooting into the sun - but sometimes in so doing you find some heavy light and the muse takes notice.

I am not saying that happened yesterday but I sense I was close - the Raven-Crow beasts were out in force like Tolkien`s Dark Riders or Nazgul - I knew I was on to something - obviously, so did they.  We were forced into the Moab Brewery afterwards to exorcise the demons.

To quote from the Krome Koan, verse 41, `I may be out of my mind but at least I get out once in a while.`

Phil