Inspiration

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to what inspires me photographically.  Why do I see things the way I see them?  Some painters go through "periods" and I guess photographically I do too.  For many years I shot large format film and by necessity I tended to concentrate on the Grand Landscape.  Large format forces you to be very deliberate and methodical and it's very difficult to shoot objects that are close to the camera. 

After a while I kept the large format but shifted most of my photography to 35mm and though I was able to shoot more close up and macro things I showed a preference to long lenses.  I was photographing a lot of wildlife at that time and also used the teles to do "extractions."  I really loved the way telephoto lenses compress the perspective.  I still shot landscapes with the large format but was obsessed with teles. 

In the mid 90's I was managing a photo equipment rental company and we started stocking cameras designed to shoot panoramic images.  It was about that time I started seeing things panoramically.  I went back to the large format and went so far as to cut out a panoramic opening in a dark slide to expose things in a narrow format.  At that time digital was still very primitive and stitching software was not all that great so skinny 4X5's were my solution. 

Not long after that I found pleasure in getting back to my roots and for a few months I shot everything in Black and White.  From my point of view, B&W requires you to see in a special way to create really effective images.  You have to look for patterns and contrast.  B&W forces you to see light and how it delineates your subject from a whole different perspective.  Just because an image looks nice in color doesn't mean it will make a nice Black and White image.  With the advent of new conversion software like Nik SilverEfex Pro2 and Topaz Black and White, I've been bitten by the B&W bug and am working more and more in this media recently.

Right now it's details.  When I was in Photography School one of my assignments was to find a photograph of a large scene that was successful and then find 5 more images within that shot.  It forced us to look not at just the big picture but to also observe details within.  And that's where I'm at now.  I've taken 2 photo trips this year so far.  In May I spent a long weekend hanging out with some photographer friends in Moab, Ut where just about everywhere you look there is a Grand Landscape just begging to be photographed.  This month I've just come back from 10 days in Sedona, AZ, again, lots of Grand Landscapes waiting to be put on a memory card.  Both times I've struggled to make exposures that I like.  These days the Grand Landscape doesn't move me...it's all in the details. 

How long will this phase last?  I have no idea...might be a month, might be a year, might be longer.  What I do know is that I'm in detail mode right now and those are the images that please me.  The image accompanying this blog is one I ran across in Sedona.  A juniper tree outside our condo was dropping berries every day and I liked how some of them were lined up in a gap between 2 sections of sidewalk.  Imagine that...here I am in one of the most photogenic areas in the US and I'm looking at the sidewalk for images.  Go figure.