Simplicity of Winter

This is that time of year that for many is an opportunity to work in a simplified, minimalist visual style. Leafless trees, grey skies, and blankets of snow all act to reduce a landscape to fundamental shapes and tones. It results in moody, quiet scenes that can feel intimidating, or lonely. I don’t fight that feeling, in fact I try to embrace it. It’s not an easy thing to do when at heart I am a spring type of person. Snow and ice motivate me to work in the field, more than does an uncovered landscape. So when the land and water is covered in white, I am easily moved to be outdoors.

During a recent snow, I approached a regular haunt with an open mind, but a feeling for what I wanted to create. The image below is of a lake shore, the lake totally covered in snow with remnants of grasses and a lone tree still providing some warmth (at least in tonality) to the landscape. I wanted to emphasize the starkness with an abundance of negative-space. But it’s not totally so, because at least mentally I fill in the white with the texture of snow I know is there.

The image was made with a Canon EOS 40D and a Canon 28-300mm L IS lens on a Bogen tripod. This is my most used lens for landscape work, especially when conditions don’t lend themselves to changing lenses.

Snow Covered Lake Shore

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2009 Show Schedule

I have updated my website www.paulgrecianphoto.com with my tentative 2009 show schedule. It is still very much in the developing stages, but March is solidified. I have a lot to do before that first show which will be a Sugarloaf Mountain Works show in New Jersey, but I am making progress.

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When in Cold, Do Cold Things

I’m glad I don’t live in a really cold area of the country, I’m cold enough here in southeastern Pennsylvania. Not enough snow has fallen in these parts to really alter the landscape, so I continue to visualize vignettes of winter. That means working in a smaller scale with elements including snow, ice, frozen things and stuff that just looks cold.

Working in close-up or macro scale has always been a primary interest to me, so I don’t get tired of thinking graphically about shape, color, and texture. Here is an image I made last year of a section of frozen pond. The freeze-thaw cycle seemingly introduced some air-bubbles that were captured in various layers of the ice. Fun stuff, I just needed to be careful of not slipping into my tripod or breaking the ice.

Ice Bubbles - (c) Paul Grecian - http://www.paulgrecianphoto.com

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Artful Lunch

I had a fine lunch today with two artist friends, Bea and Meg. We meet as our schedules allow. Bea is an amazing painter (see her link on side panel), Meg is a master wood carver (biologist, farmer, and who knows what else). We met doing a wildlife art show in New Hope, Pennsylvania about a dozen years ago. We don’t do shows together any more, but we stay in touch as friends and as artists. It’s great to get together and talk about our projects, travels (not so much in my case), and things in general.

It is helpful to bounce ideas off each other and share impressions and experiences. We each approach things from a different perspective and with somewhat different goals. We talked for well over two hours today, but that could’ve gone much longer.

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A Real Dog and a Stick

I’m throwing this out to Mark Graf who writes about Picture Purgatory. The idea being that sometimes we negate images made long ago that deserve reconsideration. The image I’ve selected is one made on film with a previous Nikon system. I don’t recall what body I would have used (it may have been almost 10 years ago), but I remember that it was a Nikkor 400mm f3.5 with a TC 2x for a total of 800mm. This is a scene of a man with his dog (not a Great Blue Heron) at Lake Galena in Bucks County, PA. It is evening and I am isolating a silhouette against the reflections of sunset. This is one of my favorite techniques for simplifying an image and yet still have loads of color. I don’t typically work themes of people or their pets, but this was a situation where my visualization was too powerful to resist. I think I like this image more today than I did then. Thanks Mark for pushing me to explore the black box.

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Downward Facing Dog

I’ve started doing yoga again. This time I’m going to stick with it! Yoga is a good match with lite weight training to keep me in some form of conditioning. Yoga especially will help prevent pulling muscles when lifting boxes full of frames or matted pieces. It will also help me when in the field I find myself needing to be in some contorted position for a period of time. Even with a tripod mounted camera and lens, I have found myself in uncomfortable positions causing muscle shake and therefore camera shake. So I’m feeling the benefits already and suspect that I will be standing a bit taller at shows just because my posture will be much better.

Apparently, this Great-blue Heron enjoys yoga as well. This particular morning the heron was going through it’s stretch routine including downward facing dog (which is what I titled the print). For those who come to shows and ask “what kind of dog is that?” It is a position ….. oh look it up!

As requested – larger version of this wonderful Great Blue Heron. The image was made in Bucks County, PA. I’m using a Canon EOS 1D Mark II with a Canon 500mm f4.0 L IS and TC 1.4x.

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The Eyes Have It

As a photographer I have often struggled with trying to make the sharpest, most technically correct images possible. I read a lot of equipment reviews to determine which camera/lens combos will give me the level of detail and realism so desired. Lenses with the best optics will provide me sharp images from center to corner of the image. But is this really the way our eyes see?

In reading the Jan. ’09 issue of  American Art Collector magazine, this very issue was brought home to me in a feature on artist Vincent Giarrano, a realist painter. The article states “He prefers his images to be close to how our eyes see, not in precise focus like a camera, but with focal points and softer peripheral vision.”  I don’t have perfect vision and when I focus on something I often don’t even notice what the corners of my vision see. Often in making images, I go out of my way to represent soft backgrounds and foregrounds in order to isolate the subject. Work being done with special lenses (e.g., Lensbaby) have become popular because of their ability to de-focus parts of an image. Some photographers still purposely darken the corners of their prints to help draw the eye to the center (something called vignetting which is not usually desirable of lenses).

It helps me to read how artists in other mediums think about their work and vision. I like a sharply rendered image of some subjects, but certainly I need not freak out about the ultimate quality of any particular lens or camera. It’s not natural.

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New Beginnings

I think of new years as new beginnings. They are of course not truly new, time is a continuum not a cycle. But mentally, it helps me to box up 2008 and think about 2009 as another fresh start. I had a fine 2008 in many ways, it was a good year.

I will start 2009 with a clean office and straightened studio. Organizing and cleaning make me feel like I’m in control of something. There is a lot I want to do this year. New shows, new projects, no products, new approaches …………..a lot! I am trying to approach 2009 with reasoned expectations and preparing for some challenges. Under such conditions, I feel the need to take some risks, try some new things. I also start this year with new responsibilities as President of the Lehigh Valley Chapter of the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen. I had some pleasant surprises in 2008, so I’m optimistically looking to 2009.

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