A change is coming

Like an electrical storm announcing the arrival of summer

I can feel a change coming in the way I use Substack.

Thursday’s storm was full of light and bluster

An electrical storm, more lightning than thunder, rolled through this past Thursday. It comes at a time when my head is a swirl of ideas and is somewhat reflective of the turmoil in my head over my use of Substack.

I am not a writer, but am learning to be more writerly, if that’s even a word?

Substack is great for writers, but I find it quite challenging as a visual artist to try to explain how I feel about everything. Not that doing so is a bad thing, but it’s slowing me down beyond what I want. A certain amount of reflection is a good thing of course and Substack is good for drawing out the ‘why’ in me.

But all this writing is getting me a bit down. It is becoming a burden, a barrier of sorts. Yes, I can change my style and focus on projects, then write about how all these pictures are connected, but that’s just not me. I like stand alone photos. I like my photos to speak for themselves for the most part. I jump all over the place.

My common ground, if there is any, is that my images are for the most part, contemplative. The biggest compliment I get is when someone tells me that they sat and looked at my picture, getting lost in thought or just blipping out on it. A visual grooviness of sorts.

Recently I have been studying the pictorialists. I never went to art school and so missed this early chapter of the larger photographic journey. I was familiar with Julia Cameron and I have a book of Victorian era photographs that I treasure and features a number of the pioneers and practitioners of Pictorialism. I always thought these were some of the best photographs ever and yet they always seemed somehow out of reach or misguided or something.

It was lost on me until recently how this school of thought fit into the broader scheme of things. How it relates to the impressionists, who I am so strongly influenced by. And I have basically turn away, whenever the topic “But is it art?” rears its ugly head. But perhaps I should have paid more attention.

Because in my heart, I am a pictorialist. But I am also a child of the 60’s and 70’s when straight-up photography was the only legitimate photography that was remotely acceptable. I was as much a slave to Ansel Adam’s brand of realism, the F64 club and the zone system as any other art form that preceded it. I was brainwashed to think that landscapes for instance had to be sharp from front to back and that every small nuance of light needed to be exalted for its ability to reveal the truth.

Poppycock! —Now that I am older and wiser, I see that nothing could be further from the truth. I have been fighting within myself in this battle between pictorialism and realism ever since.

In retrospect, I can see that I was conflicted. This explains my deep admiration for Ernst Haas and Pete Turner, neither of whom were shining examples of straight up photography. How did they get away with it I often wondered. Such rebels. But then rebellion seemed to be coming into vogue. Even Canon named one of their cameras the Rebel.

And yet, the critic in me continued to hold me back.

Now I am not saying that I am a pictorialist, or that I yearn to be one. Neither am I saying that I want to turn my back on scientific photography in all its glorious detail. No, I am too greedy for either choice. I want it all and nothing less will do. But understanding this conflict within me is like a cool wind of fresh air blowing though me. I feel changed by it.

So on with the show, but this stack of mine may be a little different going forward. I am knocking down the walls of my inhibitions one by one. And the critic in me can go take a long walk off a short pier for all I care. I’m done with that argument. Over, I tell you.

Bicyclist, Ranney Gorge, Trent Hills - 2024

This week, I decided to push the tonal values in the image above into a higher range in post, letting my whites blow out a bit.

“Oh, you can’t do that,” I hear the critic inside me complain.

“What? Are you still here? Ya, I can do that,” I tell the voice. “I can do anything I want.”

Then I added a bit of Adobe’s ‘early access’ Lens Blur in Camera Raw to throw the foreground and background a bit out of focus. I like the result. A different look for a standard lens which I think helps focus more attention on the subject.

The image has a nice amount of contrast, especially around the cyclist and shadow. The composition has a nice flow to it and the two trees provide a good counterbalance to the cyclist who is angled towards me. You can’t plan these things, but you can react to them. Our minds work so fast and yet there is no time for debate. Click.

What’s the worst that can happen. It’s digital. Just do it.

Tom Thomson’s Shack, McMichael Gallery - 2004

I was also inspired this past week to revisit this image of Tom Thomson’s Shack at the McMichael Gallery in Kleinburg, Ontario after seeing Tom Bland’s Art Drop #13. His image of trees and leaves around a reflecting pond is a visual feast and acts as something of a portal into another realm. Thinking of portal’s brought this image to mind. For me this image brings the past and the present together, blending photography and art. Oh, and no paint brushes were harmed in the making of this image.

It looks like a double exposure, but really it’s just the fir trees behind me reflected in a large glass window which allows visitors to the gallery to peak inside Thomson’ cabin where he created some of his most influential work. Visit The McMichael Gallery's Outdoors: Grounds & Art page to find out more about this installation and the significance of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven on the Canadian Art scene.

Yellow Goldenrod Crab Spider

Begin in Wonder asked in a chat what wonders we had seen this week. Here are a couple I came across in the meadow next to yur house. At the top, a tiny eyllow goldenrod crab spider and below a small pollinator, both of them working around the pink asters that are currently blooming in great profusion. How wonderful is that?

The Visitor

Again, I am working with my standard lens, in this case, wide open at close distances to create a very shallow depth of field and to turns the views into dreamscapes.

The Old Tree

This month’s Photowalk Assignment is to show that a picture doesn’t have to be perfect to be successful. While the assignment’s author was talking about people pictures, I wanted to create something in the realm of landscapes. The image above is what I came up with.

I pass by this old tree at least once a week and have done so for the last 36 years. In that time it has gone from a healthy specimen to a dead skeleton. It gets more interesting every year that passes. I’ve done all sorts of things to this image that I normally wouldn’t do. I’ve squished the highlights down and bumped the contrast up. I’ve introduced all sorts of grain. I threw a gritty texture on top of it. I’ve been trying to push the image towards pictorialism and away from technical perfection. My aim is to come up with something more interesting that reflects my feelings about this lovely old tree, surrounded by spring daisies. The original was pretty flat and uninteresting. The sky was mostly washed out. I think now it looks perfectly imperfect.

Okay, that’s long enough for one newsletter. But I will be back and I don’t care what the critic in me thinks. I’m going to do my own thing.

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Shadows and Light by Joni Mitchell

Every picture has its shadows

and it has some source of light

blindness and sight

—

Compelled by prescribed standards

or our own ideals we fight

wrong and right

You can’t be idealistic all your life, except for yourself