The Bottom of the Sea at Dawn

I don't always produce color imagery, but when I do it's usually a scene at dawn. This was a super low tide at "Seawall" in Acadia where I was able to walk out to a spot I've never been before, a place that was so low that if the tide did decide to come in suddenly, in more of a rush than usual, I would have been washed back by a 12 foot tidal wave- so that would be the equivalent of: think on this for a sec= looking up to 2x your height to the top of the ocean (and that's if you're six feet tall). So that is what it is to stand on the bottom of the sea and still be perfectly dry. You're probably thinking I'm making too big of a deal about this- just sometimes it's fun to think of those things. 

Now for something completely different: yesterday something came across my radar whereby a photographer whose blog I was reading mentioned something along the lines of that all photographers are naturally a competitive bunch, and it bugged me a bit. Maybe not because it's true, but because he mentioned it- of course we all want to make the best imagery that we can all the time. We want to make pictures that are National Geographic quality awesomeness that people will remember forever. A photo that is "the" photo of a green pepper. A photo that is the end all and be all of "Horsetail falls" in Yosemite. Now that's another story- getting off the track and gotta get back: I don't know, maybe the reason that we make the photo's that we do is that we saw that image and we want to make it ourselves, just to have it. If that's enough for you then that's enough. But I would offer that the reason that we who make photo's day after day and year after year is to pursue our own personal journey of seeing, and in the meantime we'll make photos of our Mom's and our significant others and our friends and of times in our lives that were important to us and of those postcard scenes, and maybe even make work that eventually has unique vision that is individual and significant and maybe even in some way important. But if we don't become the next William Eggleston or Joel Meyerowitz in our lifetimes then all is not lost, there are still all of those images that we made and it's the others problem for not appreciating them enough if they didn't! Not ours for doing the best that we can do. And that's part of the reason that I'm not looking at as many new pictures these days. I'm trying to be a little bit more independent in my vision. I used to look at tons of photos every day trying to decide what I liked and didn't like- but I've been trying to work on my own images and make more new work instead of looking at others work these days- not to say that you shouldn't keep coming around here avid reader and learner and or curiosity satisfier. Just don't worry too much about the "winning" aspect of doing what you do, eh? Just do because you want to, and we'll all benefit in the end. :-) Seriously. 

Technical notes on the photo: (1.) It's a long exposure. Longer then would be normal for this time of day which would be sunrise with the sun up but behind a low long blanket of clouds where the exposure times normally would be about 1/5 sec at f/16 iso 100 or so but I had a 10 stop ND filter on (ND= neutral density, 10 stops= black glass) that made the exposure more like 250 seconds at f 4.5 iso 400 and (2.) I used a 2 stop graduated ND filter to pull back the brighter sky along with  (3.) Lightroom and Photoshop gradients to attenuate the brightnesses and some dodging and shadows brightening in the raw developer to bring up the darks. 17 mm on 17-40 f/4.0L on Canon 5d2. Long exposures appeal to me because they make normal scenes looks ethereal in that anything moving becomes beautifully blurred. And that's the way I see it. Have a nice day and make some good pictures my friends, and keep on coming back! -Nate.

1/100 sec handheld f/9.0 iso 100 Canon 24mm Ts-e version 1 from 1993. Favorite lens. Those specks on the ice are guys jigging, which means fishing. 

And just so everyone knows, who might not know- there is a wicked good free Photoshop learning event going on over at Creative Live all week long here: http://www.creativelive.com/photoshopweek. Do do that. And have a good one- Nate!

Ice Shack on Jordan Pond

Went over to Jordan Pond in Acadia the other day (Wednesday? ya I think so) to make one of the last few ice shack pictures of the season. Took the doggy with me: Grover the golden retriever, he's ten now. I don't usually bring the doggy with me because he's got a bad leg from a frisbee accident that happened back in 2005. It's his right rear leg, he can stand on it but he can't feel it, so sometimes he ends up dragging his leg when he gets tired, and that bums me out because then he gets this abrasion on his knuckles there and all. But this time I figured we wouldn't be going too far from the car and it would be fun. This is him : 

Grover feelin it now!

Then when I would set up the kit and tripod he would roll in the snow like a crazy dog! 

Grover rolling in the snow like a crazy dog!

So that was fun. Thing is- there weren't any ice shacks out there anymore, coming to the end of the winter pretty quickly now and the ones that were there were dragged up on the shore. But then I remembered- I had already made this photo! I made it last year- and when I went to look it up today I found that it was made exactly a year ago today on the 22'nd of February. So there you go. And here we are. Soon I'll be able to put the whole ice shack series to bed for the year, that will be nice. Until then, and or anything else- have a good one!