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| Small, volunteer silver maple, backlit, with background river shadows. |
Photography is all about "capturing" light. Color is that fourth element of a scene or object besides shape, form, and texture. Light impacts and changes color.
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| New leaves, riverbank ailanthus, backlit. |
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| Shade-growing species tulips, dramatically spotlit by a bit of sun. |
Light is everything in photography—the elemental magic capable of transforming the mundane into the sublime. Even turning that proverbial sow's ear into a silk purse—at least visually.
The trick is learning to see.
Often, when I can't seem to find a scene or subject to photograph—like when those warblers I'm anticipating fail to materialize—I shift my thinking and start searching for situations featuring light which, through its wonderful alchemy, has altered the commonplace into something beautiful or interesting—a moment worth recording and sharing. And just as soon as I flip this mental switch, I invariably start to spot one potential image after another.
The trick is learning to see.
Often, when I can't seem to find a scene or subject to photograph—like when those warblers I'm anticipating fail to materialize—I shift my thinking and start searching for situations featuring light which, through its wonderful alchemy, has altered the commonplace into something beautiful or interesting—a moment worth recording and sharing. And just as soon as I flip this mental switch, I invariably start to spot one potential image after another.
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20 comments:
Just when it seems you have outdone yourself ... you outdo yourself again. I'm in awe of your talent. All are lovely, but the first one really was breathtaking!!
Thanks again for sharing these images with everyone.
Hope you had a great b-day.
Moonmuser...
Have to say, that first pix is also my favorite of the three. Not a fancy shot as to technique, just a few new leaves backlit by strong setting sun, and an out of focus background of the shadowy river beyond. But it works well to my whole point of how light can work magic on the ordinary.
Point taken re: the light. Background is artistry in nature that you captured that day.
"Magic" is correct...soothes the heart and soul when you suddenly see it.
You would hate what I did today on the way home. A spider was hanging on for dear life to a ripped thread of silk from the antenna. The poor little thing was flopping around in the breeze and I was going about 70 at the time. I slowed to a crawl of about 58 the rest of the way home..and he grabbed onto the antenna the rest of the way. When we came to stop near some trees, I told him/her he was lucky
he didn't get hung up on your antenna, because you
don't care much for his kind and you would have speeded up till he went a flyin' LOL he didn't give me so much as a "thank-you."
Moonmuser...
Actually, spiders can hitch a ride on the outside of my vehicles with impunity.
Glad to hear it! I know you are kind hearted...
Moonmuser…
Outside, okay; inside, death.
Once again you have captured that quality of light that is often so fleeting, so ephemeral, and yet brings out that expression of life in such a beguiling way. While most people immediately proclaim to name the subject, then believe they know the element of the photo ...the photo is about the liveliness shown through the leaves, not the leaves themselves.
Exquisite! Thank you.
John
Giggle, giggle ..that's what I deduced!
Hi GRIZZ - beutiful images - amazing lighting to bring out color and detail - my goodness. 'Light' is truth - and you capture it so very well in your photographs and in your life.
Love Gail
peace.....
John…
Some years ago I started photographing backlit autumn leaves—which on a bright October day, are nature's version of those magnificent stained-glass windows in a fine old cathedrals and their breathtaking interplay of glowing colors. Then I began trying the same technique with flowers and green leaves. Now I look for anything translucent enough to allow sunlight to pass through and set whatever is is a'glow, including such things as jars of comb honey and sorghum molasses, amber tree sap, some insects such as wasps, and of course bug wings and wings of butterflies. A list limited only by my thinking and observation.
The top leaf image is the best of these three—the most dramatic, certainly. And it works, too, because you're looking at it on a backlit screen; a print wouldn't appear nearly as nice. Of course no image along these lines ever does justice to the scene which you actually saw and framed through the camera's viewfinder…plus you've also pulled it out of context.
Sometimes I see and attempt to photograph something which just stops me in my tracks, breathless that anything could be so very beautiful…and of course you can never record such an image without losing a big part of the magic. But I try, because I can't not try—I have to try.
I hope that every so often I do manage to capture that wonderful light—as you said, so fleeting and so ephemeral—and that living energy within, because that's really what I want to share.
Gail…
I love your wonderful observation…Light is Truth. How very true, in so many ways!
Moonmuser…
I'm strict but fair. Rules are rules.
You state: And it works, too, because you're looking at it on a backlit screen; a print wouldn't appear nearly as nice. Exactly why I always worked in slides rather than negative formats. That quality of light does just stop one in their tracks, and if we are lucky to catch it, we are left with an indelible impression.
John
I find that late Spring is my favorite time to shoot backlit leaves, perhaps because so many of the birds have quite advertising and begun the hard work of providing for all their offspring.
For me leaves are a great reminder that photographer is just a sophisticated way of capturing the light that is so precious here in the Pacific Northwest.
John…
Transparencies were mandatory for publication work, well into the mid-1990s. So for my magazine work, I shot Kodachrome and later on, Fujichrome Velvia. I also needed slides for my talks and photo lectures.
I also shot black & white, because many markets either didn't run interior color, or wanted to see both along with your article.
The day I bought my first camera—a Pentax Sportmatic with screw-mount lenses—I also bought a complete darkroom setup. As I was then renting, my father built me a dandy, commercial-grade darkroom in a basement corner of their home. An old friend was a legendary Leica shooter, photo tool inventor, and a fellow who had been all over and photographed all kinds of stuff. (He was, at one time, the official photographer of the Indy 500.) He lived a couple of miles away. His darkroom took up a side—about 1000 sq. feet—of a huge finished basement. (His "projects and inventions" bench and work area filled another 700 sq. ft. portion, and his office and extensive classical music collection—5000-plus LPs and reel-to-reel tapes—were stuffed into the leftover corner. Roger taught me how to develop and print b&w—and he'd learned from the best, several whose work hung in galleries and museums around the world, not to mention on Roger's walls. I developed the first roll of film I ever shot. And every roll after. And later, I began developing and printing for other writers/photographers, and later still, for several fine-arts photographers.
Slides were processed by Kodak, sent to them via their mailers. Wherever I happened to be working, if I could get to a post office, I'd send off batches of slide rolls in those mailers to Kodak. They would process and put in plastic mounts, send the little yellow boxes back via return mail, and I'd find them waiting for me by the time I got back home.
I might have 100-200 rolls of b&w film to develop, though, which took a couple of days to do do and proof print…at which point to knew what I had to work with for what markets. A whole different work from today's.
But I always worked with multiple cameras—one loaded with slide film, the other black & white. Nikons after the first year or so. My on-the-road camera kit consisted of 7-8 Nikon bodies (F2As, F3s, an FA) a Nikonos for underwater work—a trout coming to net, for example, or just as safe camera for wading chest-deep in the surf, and several macro lenses (55, 105, 200mm) a 20, 24, 28, 35, 80, 200, 300mm prime lens, plus a 500mm mirror and one zoom, an 80-200mm, along with focusing rails, bellows (in case I needed to shoot the eye of a gnat!) extenders, focusing tubes, motor drives, radio-operated remotes, tripods, monopods, all sorts of lighting gear from flash to bulb to reflectors—battery packs, and gadgets galore! You name it, I had in one of my two steamer-trunk size cases and in the pack of the pickup. Plus all the rods and tackle, cooking and camping gear to be self sufficient for a week or two in the bush. A sort of one-man gypsy circus…and every other outdoor writer I know did more or less the same thing.
I miss seeing projected slides. Digital projections are not nearly as bright and dynamically saturated, nor are they yet able to resolve an image as crisply. And the closer you can come to recreating that original aspect of sun-through-subject, the closer to seeing the real thing you manage. But always, no matter what, it's only a mediocre approximation. Nature's light can never be equaled.
Loren…
More and more I find myself looking for ways to shoot backlit objects—animate or not. And more more I do, the more I learn that every seasons offers a multitude of backlit opportunities. Spring's leaves and flowers being especially nice.
Photography is, indeed, merely an attempt to capture light. Light is always at the core, the center of our existence. Because life upon this precious blue-green planet is light dependent. We are all creatures of light.
Your image of newly unfurling ailanthus leaves is the absolutely only way to appreciate that tree. When I see ailanthus, I can only think kill, kill, kill...sorry, it's the native plant Nazi in me.
On the other hand, Kali and I once stopped at a walled mission church in the New Mexico desert, and the path from the gate in the adobe wall to the entrance of the church was lined with an allee of (beautiful) mature ailanthus trees. Who knew they could tolerate conditions like that? But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since they'll grow up between the cracks in the sidewalk.
Scott, aka Native Plant Nazi…
I cut this tree down three times the first few years after we moved here, because when sitting on our side deck, it rather blocks the upper third of our west view—or would if it grew big enough to spread and leaf out. The tree comes up through a three-foot deep pile of limestone rubble. Not gravel, mind you, but cut slabs up to a foot thick and the size of a dinning table. Piled there who knows when by a previous owner fearing erosion. I presume there's soil somewhere under there, but it's a long ways down from the top layer and there's not direct path upwards…so how the tress manages is an act that almost approaches being deemed a miracle.
I suppose I could cut it again and give it a fatal dose of Roundup or some such nasty cocktail. But I decided to admire the tree's survivorship instead. It's now about 15 feet tall, which represents three or so years growth.
In Tennessee and the Carolinas, and parts elsewhere to the south, ailanthus has nearly taken over some hillsides. They do especially well in those disturbed ares—naked banks, highway cuts, construction sites. I've been down there when they're in bloom and…well, they're undeniably lovely. As are the far fewer ailanthus trees around here.
So if I were capable of giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to, say, a half-dozen invasives, they'd be too far down the list to make the, er, figurative and literal cut. Which doesn't make me an ailanthus missionary, nor am I extending refuge or asylum to trees on the run. But I'd keep them over honeysuckle any day! And if the one beyond my deck can manage to survive the river and its flood-stage logs and debris, I'll let it grow in peace.
BTW, I was charmed by your wonderful description of the ailanthus allée at that New Mexico mission. That would indeed be something to see. Thank you.
Grizz: The only way to get rid of ailanthus is to cut the tree and apply herbicide (like you are reluctant to do). Otherwise, it will root- or stump-sprout seemingly endlessly. In fact the preferred technique is to apply an oil-based herbicide mixed with a horticultural oil called basal oil to the base of the trunk and the root frill. The herbicide penetrates through the bark and kills the tree. Ailanthus (and a few other invasive Asian trees) tend to root- and stump-sprout if they are physically damaged, so the basal application of the undisturbed tree tends to kill the tree and limit the subsequent sprouting.
Kali and I allowed a sapling white mulberry tree to grow up behind our house, and now it has gotten so large (and is so inaccessible) that it will be a very expensive and complicated job to take the tree down if it ever comes to that. Kali and I likely will move before the tree becomes a real problem, but I did notice a large dead limb hanging over our newly-installed emergency backup generator yesterday. And, the tree doesn't even produce fruit (this one must be dioecious)! I think that your technique of controlling the size of your ailanthus is the way to go.
Scott…
I'm sure you're right about control via chemistry being the only real way to go. I've already leaned how tenacious they can be. After losing our previous skirmishes, I've also decided to allow this one to grow…though one of these years, the tree will either get torn out by a floating log during a time of high-water, or sheared off during the incredible 30-minute period of ice-out, when foot-thick slabs the size of a living room come grinding downstream en masse, roaring like a freight train and mowing down anything too close to the water's edge. True, the ailanthus will doubtless grow back, but I'm willing to let it have its shot.
I'm becoming rather forgiving of such things in my dotage.
BTW, I know non-native mulberries are said to be a problem tree in some areas. I have an absolutely huge specimen on the hill in my side yard—squatty, spreading, with a trunk maybe 4 feet in diameter. Who knows how old. And annually devoid of berries—though quite adept at producing dead limbs which I have to try and keep trimmed.
On the other hand, I'm one of those who really likes eating raw mulberries, plus generally bake a pie or two, and make jams, syrups, and such. So I always go out to forage various trees I know, gathering several buckets. White mulberries are my favorites for eating raw.
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