Learned filters and the Zen of picture making.

I am teaching a course in ‘composition’ for my camera club these days and while I have no idea how effective this is for the other members yet, - any positive results will take a while to show up -, I do know that this focus is doing good things for my own creativity. Typically, the teacher who first must synthesis and then lead others to do the same is the primary learner.

There are some difficult considerations of course, the main one being that people are used to being spoon fed from childhood on, - we break down learning into bite sized portions, provide simple rules and guidelines and assume a stepped learning ladder. I have always taught from a different perspective. - that complex thinking like that which goes into creative work does not lend itself to simplification. It is not the sum of its parts and to pretend that it is makes for a whole bunch of minds who think they know but really have missed the boat. So, the learning process for photography as usually presented actually leads down a wrong path, away from creativity and blocks individual thought. Creativity is a complex and intuitive form of thinking that does not work well with ‘how-to’ lessons.

I have always taught from the perspective that individuals are their own best teachers. A thoughtful learner who finds things out for himself, takes nothing as given, questions everything and experiments endlessly, is more likely to produce original work and advance thought and ideas for his culture as a whole. Photography has such potential for fresh seeing, but is loaded down with standards. We are lead to believe that there are desirable models,‘good images’, that we should emulate. That beauty is synonymous with ‘pretty’ rather than with ‘truth’. That good images are those that sell and are hung on living room walls. A consumer society and its art.

We all see the world through ‘filters’ of various sorts. We drive down the road, while thinking of personal concerns. We barely see the traffic, never mind the way a cloud looks on the horizon. When we go out especially to photograph a landscape, we may see the cloud but use a standard compositional device, one of a few that we apply to all our picture making, to incorporate it into our photograph. The more professional we become, the more the cords of convention and habit bind us up. The challenge must be to peer so closely at our subject that what comes into our camera is the expression of what is and comes from the subject itself. No rules or conventions, no filters between us and the subject. That requires a zen-like mind and a willingness to be misunderstood. An individual path.

In fact, the camera and its images that are harvested in this way become a tool for personal growth. We look closely to make our photographs and the whole world opens for us in a completely fresh way. Making pictures becomes effortless and filterless. Our subjects reach up, organize themselves, and rush into the camera. They are us in a very deep sense.

So, given all that, how does one teach from this perspective? I introduce the elements that are present in some combination or other in the world around us. If we take a photograph, they are there. Things like texture, line, form, colour, point, rhythm, and value. The basic building blocks. My interest, however, is in their relationships, how they work together to communicate whatever it is that they are ‘saying’. I expect my fellow photographers to take it from there and teach themselves by constantly looking clearly at the world around them and also referring to their own recent images as a guide toward the creation of their future ones, - ‘where is my next step?’

If we spend time looking from this perspective, then the cloud is not just a cloud, a white puffy thing, neither is it a simply a form in itself. It exists in relationship with everything else, glides over fields and mountains, sifts through trees and when we enter into its foggy breath and know it, then our chances are greater that we will have something in our mind and in our camera that communicates ‘cloudliness’. A fuzzy subject, its true.

The person with the camera then, needs to step past all those learned filters, those rules of composition, and simply open himself wide enough so that the ‘subject’ can express itself. We must be in relationship and practice that state of mind. It doesn`t matter if our images seem to lack structure at first, that they stray from the ‘rules’. We are breaking out of convention, making our own trail in the forest. Or, as we will begin to suspect, the trail is creating itself in front of our feet.

Composition and reality

When we were sailing through the Pacific it was an exciting moment when a new island appeared on the horizon after many days at sea. First the highest peak, then the bare or forested slopes and finally the flash of surf on the encircling coral reef. As we followed the reef`s edge to find the pass that would allow us safely into the lagoon we feasted our eyes on this new landfall. We never thought to say that this really was not perfect; that the mountain should be higher, the lagoon greener and that the palms on the little islands at the pass entrance could be taller or more neatly arranged. No such judgements as we stared with hungry eyes on LAND! One simply viewed natural reality and accepted it as it was.

When we look at a photograph of ‘reality’, do we use the same criteria or do we apply a series of filters, - expectations and judgements -, that stop us from really seeing it as it is? For example in the first photo of trees one could simply accept nature`s placement and concentrate on seeing it as we viewed the islands, or we could place some screens of judgement before it and by doing that miss seeing its reality at all. The trees are too evenly spaced, we might say, or it is much too dark, or apply whatever theory of composition we espouse. The second image of a lone tree and power lines is definitely stripped down to some bare essentials and a lot hinges on very little. Perhaps one might find problems with the exact placement of the elements, (“That tree should be definitely at the ‘thirds’ position”) One might miss the tension between lines and tree and cry out that powerlines are so ugly and miss the contrast that I saw when I looked up at that moment. Of course, they are a reminder of our power, our rigid grasp on the natural world, and isn`t the tree more noticeable, more fragile and more beautiful as a result?

The reality is that both nature and photos exist within their own particular set of relationships and we must see them as unique with their own individual standards. They are as they are and our efforts should go towards trying to see and understand them as clearly as possible. Our limited understanding is restricted even more by standards and judgements. That island we see with eager eyes, no judgements please, just get us through that pass and safely into the heart of this place.

Arbutus Woman.

The thick branch stretches out over the rocky cliff and shore towards the ocean surface. This is a common gesture for arbutus trees along these shores as they lean flexibly out beyond the more rigid firs to reach the light. I step to the edge of the cliff, lean into the branch and take a photo right down its length. Even as I do this I know that I am drawn to make this picture by the swelling breast and its nipple that is close to my face.

The Salish First Nations people have always seen the relationship between arbutus trees and women, either in stories of how a girl was changed into this tree or in a more general way of seeing the possibility of transformation between animate and inanimate and between human and the rest of creation. It is an easy transition to make. Who has not run their hands over the smooth skin of new bark, seen the breasts where the tree has grown out to cover a broken branch, or noticed a crotch`s curly last year`s rough bark where branch meets trunk. It is so obvious and startling that to turn ones eyes and mind firmly away takes serious self control. To not visit that place in one`s imagination risks creating a habit of mind that will shut out creative thought as well. Because our imagination and creativity are intimately tied to the feminine.

We still refer to ‘the muses’ when we try to name the wellspring of our creative thought. They were the female gods of ancient Greece who mediated between humans and Apollo, - the source of light and knowledge. We get our inspiration ( receive the spirit) via the female principle,- the creator of life. If I repress the female qualities I see in the arbutus, I also limit my free access to the muse, imagination, creativity, and to art.

The Cemetery.

I have an hour available before the ferry will arrive in Fulford Harbour bringing my wife Heather home from a day looking after a grandchild across the water. From the stone church, at the head of the bay, I can watch for the ferry and spend some time taking photographs.

The gravestones are my objective today. This is an old church, by BC standards, and the graveyard gives a snapshot of the people of the south-end who built it. Fascinating stuff for me and my camera. While the tide is far out in the bay below and the sun flashes out between grey clouds providing lots of other subject matter, which I will get to later, right now I will simply try to do justice to these gravestones and their history of Saltspring Island.

This does not call on any great technical knowledge or special lens but it does require that I look carefully and with respect. This is a form of anthropology, of documentation, but also a way to improve my own mental attitude. Good photographs come from careful observation and good observation is more than simply technical. It requires a form of empathy as I take these photographs that will permit me today to feel kinship with these folk long beneath the sod.

Japanese lessons. "It is Nature"

I drive down a half hour early to pick Heather off the late afternoon ferry so I can take some photographs in the cemetery of the little stone church that lies at the head of Fulford Harbour. Built well over a century ago by the then new inhabitants of the south end of the island, it is now their eternal resting place, and it is this sense of continuity that I find attractive. That and the interest of the stones and their inscriptions that show the diversity of the population in those early days. Hawaiians, Irish, German, British and Indians still lie in close relationship in the churchyard.

The ferry is still far out in the bay as I finish my project so I decide to cross the road and photograph the shoreline. The tide is out and here in the estuary where the creeks spill their loads of sand and gravel a broad temporary landscape of twisting channels carries the rushing Spring runoff waters to the sea. The sun dodges in and out of racing clouds and the wet beach alternately glows and greys in rushing shadows. In all this almost monochrome world it is the red jacket of a lone figure on a rocky point that catches my interest. I scramble down the brambly bank and say hello. When she turns I see she is a young Japanese woman. When I have offered to and taken her photo on her own camera and asked for and taken a couple on mine we start to talk.

She is Aki, and has been on Saltspring for two months as a ‘woofer’, - a volunteer farm labourer. I express my sympathy for the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident that has happened in her country while she is so far from home and am struck by her reply. She lives on the other side of Honshu and her town and relatives were not affected, she tells me. I grasp an important attitude here that sets me straight. No wringing of hands, no riding the coat tails of emotion here, just an understanding that “It is nature.”she says, “We live always on the edge.” A clarity and acceptance that lies outside of shallow emotion, that accepts thousands dead as part of living on a lively planet. We shake hands and I clamber back up the bank while she walks on the beach beside the rushing stream. The ferry is just docking, it is time for me to go, but I glance one last time down toward her small figure squatting now in the reflected rays of the late afternoon sun. I take some last photos of her beside the river on the bare sandy shore and head for the van.

That sense of eternity, of continuity, that I had in the churchyard, how do I reconcile that with my conversation by the sea? We do live on a violent planet, nothing is certain at all. Is there something in a very Japanese way of looking at things that I can relate to here? I had recognized that young woman`s quiet knowledge within myself as well. Something that was so strong within me while sailing back and forth across the Pacific. So hard to adjust to at first, and yet such a powerful way of understanding the world. The earth, its shrugs, its storms the shifting of light and shadow, the turn of the tide and the rushing streams are part of eternity and we are a fragile part of it too. A shallow emotion of tears and agonizing sympathy is not useful here, not appropriate. She has it right, after all.

Rock 2. The Granite Basement.

If I take the right-hand trail at Burgoyne Bay it leads me along the mountainside at the foot of Mt. Maxwell. Its sandstone and conglomerate cliffs are hard to see when I look up the steep slope through the trees. Below, the ocean surface at the base of the mountain glitters through the solemn ranks of tree trunks. To emphasize my littleness in this giant landscape, large boulders ( some as big as houses) rest above me. They brace their feet deeply among the roots, with their heads raised bare amid the tree tops. All is grave and silent as I walk briskly by, trying not to heed a sense of being inspected, weighed, and found wanting.

At the end of the trail I reach a more open space; grass, moss covered rocks, Garry oaks, and the ocean which flashes in the sun or darkens again as a cloud brings a quick shower. Open sky at last! I begin to photograph a world that seems more made for me and my kind. From here I can see the cliffs above the tree tops catching scarves of cloud. They are a little less threatening from this angle and I feel the oppressive atmosphere of the trail behind me dissipate. I walk down a steep bank and out onto a smooth granite point.

Granite: white and grey with little black dots, hard as hard, here, below a thousand feet of sedimentary layers. It must form the floor of the deep inlet, with only this thin layer of steep shoreline showing that it underlies all those towering cliffs. The open light has fooled me: this steep shore is older still by countless millions of years and I am a little fly that crawls upon its face for an instant and is gone. I begin to make images of this eternal place. The glacier smoothed form I stand on, the black boulder at the tide line that, like me, has come from somewhere else and will be ground down and turned to sand while the granite will gain only another wrinkle.

This feeling of insignificance, of being a mere sparkle of light, a grain in the sands of time, is hard to shake. Yet, it is my photographing and my sense of relatedness to all this that brings me through to another place of understanding. There is no judgement anywhere here, no being found wanting. The key lies in my feeling for this landscape. I feel empathy for these trees, these beetling cliffs and giant boulders. Who is to say they do not grasp that with fierce intensity. A little flash that lights them up and says “ I see you. I make your image with reverence and care. We are in relationship, you and I.”

Rock 1. How beautiful upon the mountain.

In the fields at Burgoyne Bay is a rock. Large, smooth and grey, surrounded by green grass, it is a glacial erratic, tumbled smooth by the ice of 10,000 years ago as it was carried from who knows where and finally deeply deposited here in the valley. Through time and erosion it has barely reached the surface again.

.

On a day of sun and cloud, of rushing streams and soaring eagles, I walk past, see the sun upon the rock and walk squelchingly across the sodden field to take its portrait. With its gently rounded forms I need definite directional lighting to bring it to life. To life? It is true that I tend to find personality within ‘inanimate’ nature. So much more real to relate to a world that has face, shoulders, hips and feet. This ‘transformational’ rock pulls me forward into its spell and I start to take photos. I hold the camera at ground level and line up the rock against that other great rock, the hump of Mt. Maxwell that dominates the valley, and photograph their related forms, their similarities.

Quickly, while the burst of sunlight lasts, I circle my subject finding the flanks, the buttock curves, the cloven, shadowy places. How beautiful it is. I carefully climb all four feet to its summit, balance precariously and feel the bulk of this rock that, like an iceberg, keeps its own balance by the mass that lies below the surface. Once here however, there is nothing I can include in the picture frame that, directed downwards, does not include my own wet rubber boots. Alright, I think and bend over at the waist, widen the lens and snap the universe of rock, boots and our joint projected shadow upon the field. A funny, awkward photo. “ How beautiful upon the mountain...” comes to me as I smile to see my own shadow combined with that of the rock.

But really, is this not what I have been photographing? The rock, the sunlight, and my relationship within all of this landscape. Just as winter gives way to Spring.

Walking at Beaver Point 2. Wind storm.

For the past 24 hours we have been warned of a gale approaching our coast. “ Up to and even over 100 k.” the radio warns, and we prepare for ferry cancellations and worry about some of our big trees smashing down on our roofs. I deliver Heather to the morning ferry for her day tending little Clara just as the south-eater begins to build. Back home, I complete a computer task quickly and shut it down just before the power fails. Full daylight now, and I can see the trees bending and swaying in the gusts. Bits of branches fly downwind. I listen for the nasty crash of falling trees.

I feel trapped inside the house with nothing to do but wait. This is not my best scenario and I begin to imagine what it must be like down at Beaver Point, - the wind, the waves, the rushing clouds and slashing squalls of rain. Oh boy! The wind drops. Blue sky. Quick, time to get down to the sea before the expected shift of wind to the west! It begins again with greater fury even as I walk down the road toward the point. I am acutely aware that I have no hard hat on as I walk warily through the trees with my eyes cast upward to catch the first sight of a flying branch. I`ve been hit before by even small branches and taken surprisingly hard knocks! The roar of the wind in the trees in all pervading.

I duck under the recently fallen trunk of a good sized fir tree and step out onto the great stony finger of the Point itself. Free from trees, out in the open, just the solid strength of the gale pressing against me. Leaning into it, I carry the camera protectively to keep the raindrops off that zip by sideways from the line of low wet clouds. The new set of waves are busy cancelling out the first wave pattern and slop and crash onto the rocks. Rain, sunshine, clouds, all in rapid succession. A splendid rainbow. Dark wet shores, brilliant greens. White surf and mottled white backwash. I could take photos faster if I didn`t have to wipe raindrops off the protective glass filter on the lens so often.

I retrace my steps of a week ago in reverse this time. Along the shore, around the corner and deeper into the bay . I am back into trees that top the cliffs and face into the teeth of the wind. By the time I am back under the big trees at the head of the bay there is another massive rain-squall; dark grey sky, black bending trees and the groans and crashes of pressured trunks and falling branches scarce heard above the roar of the wind. I scurry along, snapping as I go until I reach the farm buildings and sunshine again . The back of the squall cloud rushes across the fields, over the hills and out of sight. Oh boy oh boy, have I got some great photos this time. Well worth the risk!

Walking at Beaver Point. 1. Light and shadow

Beaver Point

Saltspring Island is an amalgam of three separate islands that were squished together as they were carried on the Pacific plate from farther south and smeared onto the continent of North America. All a long time ago, even in geological terms, but the island still shows this in its many deep bays and prominent headlands. Beaver Point, in Ruckle Provincial Park, is one of these headlands with Ganges and Fulford Harbours on either side. It is just down the road from where we live. A familiar place, where I worked as a Park Ranger for many years. During a recent cold snap I went walking and photographing along the rocky shores.

Cold weather for us on the coast means frigid continental air has flooded out across the strait and holds the Pacific systems at bay for a while. Brilliant sun, blue skies and a bitter north wind. Photographing in these conditions involves harsh light, reflections off the sea and black shadows. No point in trying to avoid this light, better to use it to best advantage. The camera does not have anything like the capacity that the human eye has to handle this extreme range between dark and light. I must expose for the light areas and accept dark impenetrable shadows. I must look too for elements within the landscape that will show this to advantage.

I walk past the field of sheep with their new lambs and head directly for the sea shore. Ahead, through the black silhouettes of the trees, the sun reflects off the choppy sea. All is brilliant blue and silver dancing light. While I take my photographs, it is the shadows that are calling to me. Even as one light-drenched image after another pops into the camera, - rocky shores, arbutus trunks, frozen fresh water seeps and flashing waves - , I keep stopping to make images with those powerful intrusive shadows. These are not necessarily the prettiest images, - there is something vaguely threatening about them -, but it is these that are influencing me today. My last photo as I walk the road up the hill and out of the park again is of the curve of road, with its yellow line and a small slice of grassy verge. Across the road are cast the soft shadows of tree tops. Soft, because the trees are high up and they cast out-of-focus darker grey patterns on the grey road surface. I walked through this pattern on my way down the hill an hour and a half before, but it is only now after my shadow training that I can see this subtle thing. A great photo? Well, it is almost nothing at all really, perhaps only me and another shadow specialist will grasp what is happening here, at this moment, on a cold, bright, winter`s day.

Raft people #3. Ice sailing.

 After restocking while their raft was docked in a narrow channel in the ice, the weather turned bitterly cold. The crew spent most of their time in the insulated, (a padded canvas wraparound), and heated cabin. They soon realized however that they would be frozen into the ice for a long time because the water was freezing all around them. After an immense effort using block and tackle they slid the raft up onto the rapidly thickening ice. The metal keels beneath the raft made this easier and after an uneasy night in the cabin feeling the raft stir beneath them in the blustery gale they realized that after a few more days to let the ice thicken up they could hoist sail and set off downwind, sliding on the metal blades of the keels.

The wind held, it stayed very cold, and one morning they levered the raft around to the direction they wished to travel, hoisted the bateau onto the foredeck, unfurled the sail, and...sat there. The blades had stuck to the ice. More levering and rocking and suddenly the raft began to sail. It was a mad scramble to get aboard, and the raft began to move so much faster than they had ever experienced on water. Try as they might the steering oar made scant difference to direction. They were on a fast, one way, undirected flight across the snow covered ice. Bumpy! I should say!

Far from shore, rocketing along on the slick pebbled surface, swept up in a snowstorm it was a time for the crew to be terrified at what they had initiated, or terrifically exhilarated. What lay ahead? This was once again all new waters they were sailing on. “No, Ice!” they said. As the unusual rattling voyage went on and on it eventually became normal and, as no imminent disaster loomed ahead, they became swept up in their adventure.

Far from land, hour after hour, the raft hurtled along, within the small circle of visibility in the blizzard. The lookout screamed a warning as the raft brushed against a stalk of bullrush, crashed over some leaves frozen into the ice, slowed down and finally came to rest partially tilted in a harbour of leaves. The crew were dismayed for a moment and then realized that they had made a soft landing after all and were safe from further harm. Where there were rushes there must be land nearby and running at top speed into a frozen cliff would have been a disaster. Thanks to the Gods!

A Rat Tale: Taking this land.

The first ones advanced cautiously, sniffing the wind that rolled over the seedy grasses high above their heads, but they were followed by a confident multitude that advanced like the tide. Across the grassy meadows, over the forested mountains and like a floating furry carpet they swam the streams, lakes and rivers. The wildlife fled or was swarmed and eaten to the bone. Then the bones too were gnawed to emerge later as sparkling white droppings. The rats did stop often to reproduce but as a mass they just kept on rolling along. It was a wide and wild land but it went down before their flood like grass before a scythe. The trees too were consumed: their roots were undermined by the tunnels that riddled the soil or were chewed from the bottom up until they fell. That pace of destruction could not go on for long.

When the only food left was other rat protein, the army fell to warring on itself: starvation, madness and then finally their flea close-companions passed on the plague. The land lay totally stripped of vegetation and covered with a rotting mass of corpses. There were no survivors.

The winds blew a hot fetid breath over the land. Deluges eroded the pocked soil, eroded the unprotected hilltops down to their rocky bones and filled the valleys with sand. A long time passed. Winds, rivers, migrating birds that dared to rest, brought the first seeds. It must have been like this when the glaciers receded at last and a green carpet crept once again northward. The landscape could not be as it had been pre-rat, but once again trees rustled along the river banks, fish filled the waters and waving grasses clothed the naked uplands.

The next ones advanced cautiously across the grasslands on horseback, weapons at the ready for danger in this new world they had discovered. Back behind them, the great wagons rolled confidently forward bringing the rest of the tribe, the herds of cattle, flocks of sheep and goats. This time it was the wain-rider`s turn to be taking this land. The only danger here was themselves.

The raft adventures 2 Winter food gathering.

It has been a little frosty of late and the pond has a skim of ice. The raft (!), I think, and prepare it for a winter adventure. The crew need some hooded garments, the cabin must be insulated and have a stove. Once again I wish to capture them in action, this time in a wintertime activity near their raft. They can walk on ice, the raft can be pulled into an ice choked lead in the ice and they will be hunting and gathering to resupply their ship. The winter cold will preserve their meat. Some of it is fish, drying on a line between the masts and some more butchered cuts are being pushed and pulled across the slick ice surface in the multipurpose bateau. One figure chops up meat into smaller pieces on the bloody ice while another carries some aboard the raft. Perhaps this will be sliced thin and freeze-dried in the winter wind. A plume of wood smoke rises in the almost calm air. All is purposeful activity, except, look, in the stern of the bateau is a young seal who has been rescued from the larder. The crew will enjoy this creature as a companion. It will be trained to carry a line ashore, to catch fish and who knows what else it may volunteer for. As a pet it has much to recommend it; takes itself for a swim, feeds itself and, hopefully, will learn not to mess on the decks.

The Fifth Child. How place in the family influences one`s personality and role in life

I am the last of five children in my family, - by a long shot. I am an ‘accident’ and that tail-end-Charlie place has influenced my life and personality. I recognize myself in my siblings and in my parents, to some degree, but it is very much as if we have the same genetic notes but each of us has played them differently. By the time I was born in wartime England, the family dynamic was already well established. There were leaders, followers, youngest. And then, later, me, the survivor of identical twins. I was a passenger and the rest were crew.

If one has no real function in the family dynamic it is natural to turn away, to become independent of social hierarchies and view the world as an observer. Natural too to always be a little unsure of the whole complex of social roles that are learned within family life. One can understand everyone else`s passionate viewpoint but still be far removed from the hurly burly.

Being a passenger left me able to choose my own direction and interests, although without the family pattern to follow, finding my own way was pretty directionless at first. I always had an interest in art for example, but there was no understanding of that quality in the family. It was as if no one else wanted that role so I was free to take it if I must. All the regular and serious jobs were already assigned. I was free, but alone.

If one is like Pluto, circling way out there, far from the center, one has a splendid view of the whole planetary system in one direction but one is also free to look out into the galaxy and view the heavens as well. A larger view of things is built into my position. I have specialized in thinking outside the system.

I`m obviously not a joiner of organizations that expect acceptance of a set of beliefs. I may be interested in systems of thought but am always pointing out alternate ways of understanding, - pulling disparate ideas together and showing their similarities, their function. I am a reader and researcher and a creative thinker in general as well as in the arts. Not many people do this so there is a role for me to express the creative idea. Even way out here on the margins of the solar system I have chosen my role to play.

The best thing to happen for me was to marry and raise a family. What I missed in my birth family I could gain within a new one. A central part of a team, a breadwinner, a supporter of others. A rounding out and fulfilling of otherwise missed opportunities. Not a leader within relationship, that would be expecting a bit much of Pluto, but instead, a team player. In fact, I was the representative of my family of origin and could be my whole crew of siblings.

All those adventures we have gone on, working in foreign lands and sailing the seas. That fits so nicely with a viewer of the heavens. Already turned outward, it is a simple step to travel there. New peoples with new patterns of thought, new lands like distant galaxies to travel to. Those long sailing voyages so like wanderings through space between the stars.

So in the end I am happy to have been the last in line, to be who I have become. To be still becoming, because creative people never stop creating themselves.

The raft adventures 1: Model making and photography.

Last week I got busy in my workshop and built a model raft that turned out to look quite like the Kon tiki, Thor Heyerdahl`s famous raft that he sailed from Peru to Polynesia and showed the seaworthiness of a wash-through design where the logs supported the load platform and allowed any waves that came on board to simply disappear down the cracks. I even built a flat bottomed bateau for it and peopled the raft with a crew who stood less than a finger high and were made from some moldable wax based clay. That was just the first stage of preparations for a photographic project I have been thinking about for some time.

Last year I made a paper canoe and two paper cut-out paddlers and photographed them as they ran the rapids in my little stream. Obviously cut outs, they never-the-less caught the imagination of many people. Minds were not tied to reality it seemed and in fact related to pretend figures more easily than to simple reality. That should not really have come as a surprise; all the arts work on this principle, after all.

I varnished the finished raft to keep it waterproof and got Heather to sew some simple sails and then, impatient to begin, placed it and its first two figures on a blue, crumpled-up sleeping bag to simulate the ocean and began to photograph it from all angles and in different lighting. Even in their raw, unmodified state the images I made on my new little Samsung T 70 were impressive. I now had a much more three dimensional craft to work with and more fully rounded characters to put into action. The moldable clay allowed the figures to be twisted and altered into a variety of poses. The raft was too large ( about 20 inches long) to cruise down the creek but the brimming pond afforded a large body of water and some interesting shorelines to explore. The next afternoon, with two more characters joining the crew, the raft set sail ( and it could really sail) on the calm and sometimes rippled surface of the pond. I began to photograph it.

Sure enough, as it sailed into the bull-rushes and I photographed it from above it did look like the model it was, but what interested me was that when it approached shore and I held the camera at water level, just as with the canoe series, the sense of smallness and model-ness receded. When I put a crew member in the bateau dinghy and she set out to tow a mooring line to shore the effect was increased. The little characters were no longer idle passengers but took on roles and reality. Close-up, they were still roughly hewn, but that did not matter, or more accurately it seemed just right. Model people on a model raft going about their real lives.

The next step was to ‘photo-shop’ some action into the still fairly static images. The raft needed to create a wake, the waves must leap and splash, cabin lights must cast their golden glow in the star filled night. The woman towing the mooring line ashore must be seen to be paddling hard and foaming along in the raft`s bateau. This is where the photographs became paintings as well, as the computer photo-shopping tools did their work. As I was now free-styling I now needed to recall background knowledge on how a raft would create a wake and how water would look when stirred by paddles, and I needed the skill to paint them in.

I also needed to continue to keep working creatively as I went along. The night sailing image started simply enough. By darkening and making the image monochrome I achieved the first stage of ‘night’ and by tooling in a phosphorescent wake I had the raft moving across the dark surface which reflected a starry heaven. But the image, while semi-accurate to ‘reality’, lacked any real punch. It needed something more and when I placed the imaginary oil lamp at the masthead and lit the cabin from within, I finally had something. The golden light spilled out of the window, through the cracks, and touched the deck and a mast just enough to give the effect I wanted. How often on night watch have I myself glanced down the companionway hatch to drink in that same warm glow from the reading lamps of the crew below and then raised my eyes again to the windswept, star-filled sky and the faint curve of the horizon we were sailing endlessly towards.

One thing was obvious however, just because these were photographs of a model did not mean that just any old pictures would do. I still needed to make good, interesting images. Where will this project go from here? Well this camera will make HD videos and I have always been interested in action and story telling. Perhaps this model raft project will not end here but be a good beginning for something new and the raft folks will have more adventures.

The Self. Who is that masked man?

The self is the sun shining in the sky,

The wind blowing in space; he is the fire

At the altar and in the home of the guest;

He dwells in human beings, in gods, in truth,

And in the vast firmament; he is the fish

Born in the water, the plant growing in the earth,

The river flowing down from the mountain.

Katha Upanishads, II.2.2.

For the past month I have been using the many rainy days to work in my studio and one of my projects has been to continue practicing with lighting and the human body. Not having a lovely female model to work with I substituted the next best thing, myself. Oops now wait, I was not bragging here about my elderly male figure but stating a kind of truth all the same. Female nudes are actually fiendishly difficult to do if one is to avoid a kind of voyeurism and yet say something even faintly original with this all-to-familiar subject matter. Oneself, however, presents a different set of problems: who am I, where am I going? The subject is oneself and it is equally difficult to make a photograph that gets below the surface smile, the social face. In a self portrait, the mind that thinks is split between the photographer and the model and, with that disconnect, what emerges can be unsettling. “Who is that masked man?”

Partly, the fact that I am using a 10 second timer on the camera shutter is a help because in the time it takes to press the button and jump into position there is no time to smile at the camera. There is no person at the camera anyway to relate to and one`s mind is busy getting the right angle for this new set of lighting directions. The photos have a preoccupied air, the eyes are focused and the mind attached behind them is busy and not thinking about a nice smile. That kind of piercing look in public makes people shudder and turn away. It does, though, achieve the first important step toward a self image that is deeper than ‘a nice portrait’.

One dark overcast day I move my tripod and camera out under the still darker shadow of some big cedar trees. I will pose against the trunk of one while setting the flash unit to bounce off another trunk nearby. The light will come from the side, 10 second timer is on, I leap into position and turn my head just so and perhaps just because I am bored with the standard pose I cross my hands on my chest. Is that Tolstoyesque person really me? Next I cross the path to a bank of salal undergrowth. This time I use a big white reflector board to bounce the flash and dive into the salal. I have been visualizing a photo like this for a while. Flash! Oops, I was nearly out of the frame and somewhat out of focus. Next time I burrow into the salal right in front of the camera. Perfect! Well focused, well lighted. Only later when I can see these two images on the computer screen do I decide to choose the first. There is my dead self partially covered by the undergrowth, faded and shoved off into a corner. Lost and forgotten! A much more powerful image and one I had not seen coming. Unsettling is good.

Yesterday I lugged my big tripod down the path to Indian Point. I now have a battery for my remote shutter release so I can set the camera up, choose a focus point, and then stroll down to my chosen position on the cliff edge and trigger the shutter by remote control. This is really civilized, but unfortunately the face in the image is my social face again. No pressure, I revert to nice. Next I turn away and stare out to sea and, who knows why, I rest my hand on the long oak branch beside me as the shutter fires. The result is powerful though, and I could be anyone, so now that I am back on track I move to the beach which is wet from recent rain. The green sea swishes gently up the granite pebbles, a brown log lies at an angle and behind it all is my favorite cliff of rock, rain-varnished in exquisite detail. I set the camera and tripod, walk up to the rock-face, carefully step into the water, turn, and lie on the beach facing the log. Click! Here, in these two beach photos the tree has reached out to me to take my hand in unity and Bill on the beach this time is more impersonal, a sea lion perhaps, big and brown, who has come ashore for a snooze, an element among several in the composition.

It takes something dramatic to break through the social mask; fierce focus, a unpremeditated dramatic step beyond the ordinary, a kind of death of my public self. What I have found is the Self behind the self. The one who lives in all things as the Upanishads say, is the tree and the rock , the sea and all its creatures and somewhere above the clouds the sun himself.

Communication in partnership: beauty, the maker and the receiver.

It’s a tricky thing, this making of images, because while it may seem to the maker that it is an individual process, what has been made must now communicate with viewers if the circle is to be completed. While the artist must work with ‘knowledge, sensitiveness and imagination’ if he wishes his work to be taken seriously, it is important to understand that the viewer must expect to put the same serious thought into it. The meeting is not so much between minds but somewhere out there where new thought is developed, hovering in the air between the work of art and the viewer. It is as if the artist pushes the idea forward into view and the viewer must be alert to receive it and be ready to make a similar leap into new awareness. The following quote from a book I read recently expresses this thought well.

“Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is the melody that he sings for you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination”.


‘The Moon and Sixpence’. By Somerset Maugham

Frosty morning at Burgoyne Bay

 After several clear bright frosty days, the heavy clouds of an approaching warm front coat the sparkling landscape with an even wash of grey. After so many splendid days for photography it is a temptation to leave my camera at home when the family sets off for a morning walk on the other side of the island. But no, I`ve tried that before and nearly always regretted it later.

I do try something different today though, as we set out on the cliff-edge trail that leads through the woods, beside the fields, and down to the beach. I adjust the camera setting that controls the degree of colour that the camera will render as it takes the picture. If the landscape is grey, I reason, then lets juice it up by recording in extra vivid. I`ve done something like this before, adjusting a normal image in the computer post-capture, but never tried this exact thing . Here we go with another camera adventure.

Sure enough, the red rails of the Government wharf glow brightly through the dark silhouettes of trees, and later on, as we step down to the beach at last, the white hull of a beached sailboat shows an otherwise unnoticed blue of winter light behind the bare branches of a maple. That sailboat, on closer inspection is a treasure trove of images, - the frost-covered rigging and mast lean sharply against the dark, cloud-shrouded mountainside. This vivid camera setting is doing some fascinating things in this dull landscape that is different somehow from the results I would get if I applied it later in a photo program.

This far end of the beach is always in the shadow of the steep slope of the mountain. The winter sun just cannot reach into this corner and the frost has had time to grow large crystals in the cold, but damp air of the past week. All around me is a delicate white hoarfrost that would be sparkling if the sun were not shrouded and could reach in here. I follow a creek back towards the woods and find at the upper end of the driftwood swath at the high tide line that the stream`s spray has formed some most interesting crystal patterns. Holding the camera down close to the rushing water I can capture this fairy world without having to crawl on my belly in the cold and wet. There is such value for me always when the camera can get up close and personal with the surface of the earth.

Soon we are walking through the old farm fields, past the barn and back to our vehicle. I`m very glad I brought my camera today, grey overcast, chilly morning, and all.

Duck arrows

Swans



Hoarfrost

The gods. Are they primitive or are we?

The other day while writing about my carving process I wrote about having dreamed repeatedly, while still a little boy, of The Thunderbird, a North American Indian spirit being, and how that experience lead me to be a carver and ultimately an artist. I imagined readers thinking, “How weird is that?” I was, after all, born in England and have no aboriginal blood. How could I have experienced this intimation without even the cultural background to suggest that this could happen?

I can only think that some children are more suggestible than others and that solitary time spent in the forest and along the seashore opened me to that experience. Perhaps too, although I missed the usual means by which Indian boys traditionally escaped briefly from their cultural ways to experience their guardian spirit; hunger, lack of sleep, solitude, I did something similar, - I had been moved from one country to another, all around me was strange, and in a busy family time I was left to wander. For that important opening into a new reality, I was ready.

What that tells me is that there is a relationship between landscape and people that expresses itself quite naturally in the form of intermediary spirits: that thousands of elements of the natural world combine with our own sensibility and communicate what we need to know in order to exist together in harmony.

This is not a novel or revolutionary concept, just the accumulated experience of humankind since the world began for us. The real novelty is that there should exist people for whom this would sound unusual. Many of us today would find belief in the gods and spirits of hill and stream to be ‘primitive’ and backward. We are beyond superstition. Some of us may still believe in a universal spirit, but many have cheerfully chucked that out as well. God survives as a swear word only, or accidently slips out in times of stress or passion. Fair enough, but from a practical viewpoint what also goes out the window with this ‘enlightened’ world view?

Is it possible that the ‘Gods’ and all the stories associated with them ( remember Zeus, Apollo, Athene, etc.?) represent a complex and sophisticated system of thought, and without access to that tool of relationship it is we that are underdeveloped and our thought systems primitive? We have thrown away a form of thinking that grew along within our physical and cultural development. How to synchronize our human ways with the greater systems we call ‘our’ environment is a current concern with dire consequences if we don`t. Libations to the Gods may not be popular in the modern context but a deep understanding of our place in the partnership is still needed at the most instinctive as well as intellectual level.

Carving 4. Photographing the art work for best effect.

 One might think that taking pictures of my own sculptures would be a snap. But in reality each one presents a different lighting problem.

The long bearded face of #1 relies on the contrasts in texture and colour between the smooth face, carved in the darker heartwood, and the lighter beard with its rippled wood and hairy-textured surface. After several attempts I put my Speedlight flash aside and use the bright light of a gooseneck lamp to sidelight the sculpture which brings out the textures of the beard and the form of the face.

The face of Chaos herself ( # 2 ), swelling upwards from the shallow cedar bowl, calls for a different approach. I try side lighting again and the shadows do pick out the contours of the face nicely but was that really what was being said here? I take the camera, pop up the on-camera flash, reset the exposure down to darken the final image and then turn off the lights in the studio. I wish to take advantage of the contrast between the shiny eyes, the ‘spit’ in the mouth, and the softer rubbed wax finish on the wood grain of the remaining surface. I use the focussing beam of light from the camera to light up the carving and keep repeating the light beam as I move slightly up and down and side to side until I can see that there is a good reflection from the yellow cedar plug and the eyes. Click/Flash, and I have a photograph that enhances the idea of the carving.

The torso ( #3 ) has problems all of its own. I try simple side lighting and frontal flash but neither brings out the gentle form or interesting spalded textures. I decide to treat this as if I were lighting a real torso and begin a series of speedlight flash photos. By bouncing the flash from the sloping ceiling off to one side and using a mirror on the other to redirect that main light so it will highlight the edge of the shadow side I am able to give gently modulated light to the varnished form, bring out the patterned areas nicely and yet not loose the lovely curve of the hip on the shadow side. Reflection of the main light on the smooth varnished surface is a problem but I persevere until I can get just enough to show that it is a shiny surface but not so it glares off the most important areas.

This was an interesting problem I set myself. Lighting, it turned out could make or break the photographic impact of the wood carvings. Being the maker, I had a gut understanding of what they were really all about and was able to light them in such a way that each communicated well in its own way.

Carving 3. The torso. Working with spalded wood.

This grey, semi-rotten chunk of wood looks to be a doubtful prospect for a carving, but I start to trim away the softened grey surface layers to see what lies within. This was once a crotch of a maple branch, and I discover that in the years of lying in the open it has begun to spald: a complex and beautiful rot pattern sweeps diagonally across the form. Whatever I do with this wood will have to showcase this beautiful pattern, and the two stumps of ‘legs’ of what were once branches gives me the clue. There is no forcing my ideas on the wood, the direction this carving will take is obvious.

How accurate to a real female body do I need to be? The wood has already been chainsawed off at the back so a full three-dimensional form is not possible and anyway my purpose is to make a reference to reality rather than a copy. The wood and its patterning takes priority here. I begin to carve with the circlet cutter but soon switch to the belt sander which will shape the gently rounded form more safely. The wood is still hard in most places but I would hate to gouge it accidently by hitting a soft area with the rapidly whirling blade.

Final sanding takes a long time as usual, but eventually I paint on the first coat of Swedish oil. At last I can see what the finished piece will look like! The sanded wood soaks up the oil and the contrast between the light blond of the solid maple and the dark spalded pattern is spectacular. I follow this up later with two coats of spar varnish to harden the surface, sand again, and then spray on several coats of satin urethane varnish. The oil, and all those layers of varnish bring out the depth and beauty of the wood.