First Lights

WALKER EVANS: "Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: It is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is defining of observation full and felt."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I did succeed with a few of the images I shot into the sun with my old Nikon 4300, but it was always a compromise. Without a tripod the only way to reduce lens flare was to angle the camera further away from the lens than I really wanted. The result was to reduce the wattage of the grass.

This is the most successful of the grass images taken before returning to 35mm SLR format. It was taken at the north end of the Macriscostas Preserve in September of 2005. When I took this, I knew I had a future in grasses no matter how sinful shooting into the sun was. Three months later I purchased a Nikon D70 DSLR (suddenly regretting all the Nikon lenses I had sold a few years back), and the great file swelling began.