Paul Grecian - Photography

Brien Szabo sent me a picture of myself (on right) and good friend Jim, working in the Pine Barrens. Being careful not to harm the delicate plant life and trying not to get too wet and muddy, I was making close-up images of several flowers indicative to the area. I wanted to imply the flower’s surroundings without allowing the background to distract from the form and color of the primary subject. A tripod here is necessary as my magnification was high and the equipment fairly heavy. In this picture I am working with a Canon 300mm f4.0 L IS lens with Canon 1.4X teleconverter and both 12mm and 25mm extension tubes. All are attached to a Canon EOS 30D (with its own 1.6x crop factor) which gives quite a bit of equivalent focal length. The depth of field was nice and shallow which I generally like.

I’m wearing a long sleeve white “Bug Off” shirt over a T-shirt which kept the bugs at bay and didn’t absorb much heat from the sun. My cap is an L.L. Bean “Bug Off” model as well. Gore-Tex boots and wool socks keep the feet comfortable and zip-off, light weight pants round out my field attire. This was one of the few times I didn’t wear a photo-vest, but found I was more comfortable without it.

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Not too dirty really, but the potential was there at the workshop I attended this past Friday-Sunday. The leader was Brien Szabo of NJ (see his link under Photographers). Brien was well organized, and structered a workshop/photo tour of sections of the NJ Pine Barrens that I would have never otherwise experienced. Brien is fun to be with and has great energy and enthusiasm for photography and the subject matter being explored. He is knowledgable without being wrapped up in the technical minutia.

I enjoyed the image making even though at times I was feeling that I wasn’t quite fully connecting with the locations. Ultimately, this made me work a little harder at analysing what I was seeing and what excited me. I am pleased with the pictures I made and enjoyed the weekend (even if we did get up at 4:00am both mornings). I recommend Brien’s workshops and would certainly do another. I think it especially true in a busy schedule world that booking a workshop is a great way to force yourself to make the time for your art.

We were very lucky to have cool temps and little in bug problems. This made just being outdoors worth the effort. My own image making included a range of spacial scales from macro to intimate landscape and wider vista. Stylistically, I worked to create abstract (e.g., grasses in  dusk reflecting bog waters) as well as representational images (e.g., portraits of individual flowers). I’m especially pleased with the intimate landscape work I created.

This image below is a wider perspective with waning light and gives a good sense of one of the locations where we worked.