Lotus Wind

ZHOU DUNYI: "I love the lotus because while growing from mud, it is unstained."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: This is the Sacred Lotus or Bean of India, worshipped among Hindus as a thing of purity. It does indeed strike the eye as something divine. Most people would know it immediately by the iconic, flat-topped seed cup, like a watering can, that is left after the petals fall away. Lotus roots in the pond bottom and spreads broad, round pads on the surface of the water while sending a stem 3 to 5 feet into the air where it produces a large bud that blossoms hugely and gets tossed by the wind in shades of pink and white.

The Sacred Bean of India Lotus is not to be confused with the Egyptian Sacred Blue Lily which is sometimes called the Blue Lotus.

From Wiki I learn that the Sacred Lotus of India can regulate the temperature of the flower as warm-blooded animals do. That distinction places it in the rare plant company of Philodendron and Skunk Cabbage. Certainly no water lily can do that. It is not yet known if it can read minds, but all parts of the plant are entirely edible.

Pirouette

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: There are 8 genera in the family of plants we commonly refer to as water lilies. The yellow lily, which has lost all but one of its petals, is of the genus Nuphar. The petals of these lilies are stubby and stay so tightly curled that they look like perpetual buds. In fact, the petals hinge back only slightly. Once they are open the flowers are as popular as a good Irish pub; it isn't long before many bugs are clamoring at once for a seat inside at the bar.

The pink lily is of a different but closely related genus, Nymphaea, goddesses of the woodland spring. The species of Nymphaea are much more numerous. They blossom in the air and sleep below water. The bugs visit here too, but are much more polite and refined.

Nuphar water lilies are sometimes referred to popularly by the term lotus, but the sacred Indian lotus for which the term is more commonly used is of an entirely different genus and family from Nuphar and the other genera of the family we call water lilies.

Pink and Blue

RALPH WALDO EMERSON: "Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience."

Lily Passage

Composition in Menisci

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: On Tuesday, in responding to "Paints and Painters," my friend Gary praised my meniscus. A meniscus forms at the margins where the pond water turns up to meet a lily leaf, a blade of swamp grass or any object on its surface. Often the meniscus will be revealed by the interesting way it catches the light. The Greek root is the diminutive form of moon and refers to the moon's crescent.

In the photo in question there is also water lying on the surface of the lily leaf. The surface of the lily leaf is designed to repel water (As I also learned from Gary, it is, "superhydrophobic," a condition known as, "the lotus effect."), and so the surface tension of the water curves downward at its edge. As a result, unlike the water in the pond that turns up to meet the lily leaf forming a concave surface or lens, the puddle on top of the leaf turning down forms a convex surface. Although the term meniscus is also used to describe this effect, I wonder if there isn't a better term; the moon's crescent seems less appropriate to describe this convex phenomenon.

I thought this might be an antimeniscus. Artie suggested descibing the phenomenon as imbricosity; the thing itself would be an imbriscus. Jane thought it might be an oobleckus, clearly caused by Suessian oobleckosity.

Clearly, there is still room for improvement. Is there a word maven out there who can invent a word to describe the downturn phenomenon described on the surface of the lily leaf?

Lily's Embrace

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Is striving the most fundamental characteristic of life? Rocks don't strive. All living things strive. From whence that yearning? The lily's striving is the bee's hunger and my adventure. When striving stops we are dead.

Lily No.106, July 28, 2009

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Life is fluid.
They tell us it comes from amino acids
in a process that began in a colossal,
super-nuclear,
big bang
furnace
that expanded outward from a center creating space as it went, where galaxies popped like firecrackers on strings hurling stars and planets corkscrewing through time and space.
Well, something like that.

Contemplate the protean thread
of life stretching backward
to that point.

Contemplate?
Where did we learn that trick of observation and reflection?
Where did we get the drive, the striving?
What force made it inevitable?
Did tenderness and compassion and a yearning for justice and beauty originate there as well?

Were they all there at the beginning in some concentrated "spirit"?

Or is that spirit self-made and tentative and ultimately uncertain, perhaps brewed from an predictable reaction of chemicals and passed
to slug
and toad
and a jackrabbit
and a student reading Pascal,
to a strap-hanger pausing on his morning commute,
and one day posed on a blog by a dude in an internet café and answered around the world.

Such question lie in a galaxy beyond reason and impervious to its probes, and regardless of the answer, what's precious is in that spirit.

Paints & Painters

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Anything having to do with water and light is a natural for photography, and I've enjoyed shooting water lilies since I began hiking with a camera. Few plants seem to me quite so mysterious from the first stirring of shoots beneath the prenatal soup to their full blossoming. Many water lilies open daily at the beckoning of the sun and close every evening. No sooner do the flowers hatch than they are beset by a host of small things from both water and air that find their nectars sweet and their landing places convenient. The tragic decline of the lily under this assault is every bit as dramatic as its rise.

Using a polarizer to photograph water lilies is essential. The polarizer allows control over reflectivity. Set one way, and the image penetrates the water's surface. Rotated 90 degrees, and the surface reflects the sky. Between these extremes one can dial in the desired composition. The polarizer also permits control of glare reflected by the lily pads.

Most of the lilies in this series were growing naturally in ponds and swamps I frequent. Among the pond's various bits of living and dying matter I like to capture mini-scapes, and I welcome the detritivores that delve the crevices and graze the tablelands. Look closely.

Steeped

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Until the previous Today's all the photos since early June have come from my Nova Scotia-Maine trip. However, for the past three months I've been shooting locally and expanding territory. This photograph continues the series of water lily images begun in the spring:

Pond Musk

Unfolding Spring

Surface Tension

In April the lilies were sending out stalks and strange tubes that unfolded into yellow and pink leaves which turned green as the sun hit them. On June 7th, a week after my return from Maine, the broth is still simmering after abundant rain and under June sunlight.

ISO 400, f18, 1/100th sec
400mm (non-digital = 600mm)

Great Blue Heron

MINOR WHITE: "Some degree of mirroring happens with any photograph, but it is especially strong with photographs rendered in a stylized or non-literal way. Mirroring is also strong in photographs in which the presence of design is equal to or supersedes the sense of the presence of the subject in front of the camera." (http://www.jnevins.com/whitereading.htm)

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I'd never seen a heron taking off before. The first time was at a teacher conference in Lakeville, and a colleague and I had gotten up early to take one of the resort canoes out onto the lake before breakfast and the first session of the day. As we paddled closer to the bird it spread its wings, and I could feel my own rib cage expand and hover with the bird in flight. The moment was too short, and I desperately wanted a replay.

When I returned seriously to photography one of my goals was to catch that shot of the heron inflating. I haven't done it yet, and other goals have always pushed that one back. For one thing, where I walk the herons are very shy, and they usually sense my presence and are in flight before I can reach a clearing suitable for shooting, and I have not sought out a suitable blind.

In some previous segment of TODAY'S that featured a gold finch and then a mourning dove I protested, "I don't do birds." Perhaps that's the more important reason. It's not that I dislike birds, Jane feeds the songbirds, and I love to see them each morning as I wake, and I feed the humming birds and will jump from my chair when they begin their antics. It is that birds (and insects and camels and much else) are so rarely seen with clarity that the eye is drawn to examine the image of the stilled, close-up representation of the actual object; as a result it becomes much harder to achieve what Alfred Steiglitz called, "equivalence," or what Minor White refers to above as, "Mirroring."

When my friend Rick Cassar invited me on an early morning photo shoot on Candlewood Lake I saw my chance to return to the heron hunt. The herons on Candlewood are a good deal more used to people, and Rick was an expert guide for finding them. I hope he invites me back. He did a great job maneuvering us for this shot, and I'm pleased with whatever degree of formality organizes this shot. However, how much more directly does the inadvertent, under-exposed graininess of Glide (previous TODAY'S) invite us to walk into its expressive spirit! That release is the serendipitous consequence of my inability to set the correct exposure fast enough.

NOTE: I've titled this, "Great Blue Heron." If there is an expert around who can tell me differently, I'm ready to learn.

TECH NOTES: ISO 800, f16, 1/80th sec, 400mm (full frame equiv: 600mm), VR. I probably could have given a stop of aperture for a quicker shutter, but the boat was drifting so focus was as delicate as steadiness, and I hoped to keep the background as sharp as possible.

Glide

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I thought the show was over, and I was ready to pack up my gear when this visitor arrived. I had the wrong lens on the camera and made a quick guess at exposure catching five, quick shots as he landed. But the picture isn't about that, and the evening was just beginning.

Mahone Reverb

GUY TAL: "The answers are ambiguous – the image needs to be complex but not to a point of clutter, or it needs to be simple but not to a point of being too literal. It needs to have a message yet without the message being too obvious… or too obscure. Confused? If so, you have just learned an important lesson – art does not follow hard and fast rules, and thus transcends any attempt at a ubiquitous definition."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I've often thought that by definition the the true nature of art is to defy all previous definitions of art but that even that definition was perfectly useless.

Composition in Blue Rocks

CASPAR DAVD FRIEDRICH: "I must be entirely by myself, and know that I am alone in order to see and perceive Nature completely. Nothing should stand between her and myself. I must give myself to my surroundings, must merge with my clouds and cliffs in order to become what I am."

SHERMAN HINES: "Someone asked me once how I got to the spot where I actually took a photograph. I found that I followed noises, clouds, the winds, smells – but most of all it was the light that guided me. I don’t force myself on the environment, I let it manipulate me. There’s no confrontation with nature because I give in to it. I let myself be seduced completely."

PAUL STRAND: "Either you do it or you don’t. Certainly with things as changeable as sky and landscape with moving clouds and so on, if they look wonderful to you on a certain day and if you don’t do it then, you may never see them again for the rest of your life. So as a photographer you become very conscious – at least I do – that everything is in movement."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: No matter how I submit, nature can be impenetrable. On the evening when this was taken, however, I was embraced. A clear sun that sparkled and defined form had given way to clouds that seemed to suck up the air. I was somewhere in the center of the peninsula, but the moaning song of the fog horn accompanied crows perched in still pines. Verse after verse sounded as the sun set. Not too far off the sea was changing, and I would change with it.

As a photographer, I live for those times when I'm so enfolded by the world around me. Day after day I may go out and submit myself to nature and she is closed, and then on one evening like this she leaves me breathless and vitalized. I point my camera and see compositions everywhere.

Composition in Red

GARRY WINOGRAND: "Photos have no narrative content. They only describe light on surface."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Of course Gary Winogrand's photographs look nothing like this, but his statement above strongly suggests a photography of abstraction. How to resolve the quotes accompanying the last three TODAY'S? Should the photographer aim for Evans' "what else they are," or only, "light on surface," or, as Eric Lindbloom suggests, will metaphor always slip through the smallest apertures? Should photographers cultivate an aesthetic philosophy, stake out a position with this camp or that, or is it better just to follow the heady brew as it delights my lens?

I know some who follow this blog will throw up their hands in exasperation at this image. I hope others will enter the space of the image, move with the curves, reserve judgement, and be surprised to learn it is a simple thing, nothing more than a reflection in a red car along a street in Lunenburg. André chose to publish it in our workshop highlights book along side yesterday's image, and I thought they belonged together.

Whatever your ultimate opinion, I'm especially eager to hear reactions to this one.

Wild Things, No. 2

MINOR WHITE: "One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are."

Cottongrass at Sunset

ERIC LINDBLOOM: "Try as we will to make a fair representation of things in the world that move us, metaphors know the trick of entering the work through a small aperture in a fraction of a second."

WIld Things, No. 1

BOB LEJEUNE (http://boblejeune.blogspot.com/) reacting to recent photos: "Before I did photography I sort of went along with the notion that pictures give a more accurate rendition of reality than words, as in the expression "a picture is worth a thousand words." Now I know that's nonsense. You move one foot, and you see a different reality in the viewfinder. You change the angle or zoom, and the world becomes more abstract. You photoshop out the garbage, and everything looks pretty. Etc. Forced to see reality in frames, I realize more than ever that there is no reality. So spending all that money is good "therapy" even if I never become a great photographer."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: A good friend used to argue with me that architecture was not an art form because art was forced to serve an independent program focused on issues of functionality and economics. He argued that art must be free to follow the artist's imagination, that the artist's passions must be given room to operate without extraneous concerns. This photo was shot "on assignment," as part of the final project for the Lunenburg workshop. My shooting for 24 hours was restrained and regulated by time and program. Without that assignment, I'm sure I never would have stopped to shoot these leaves, nor would I have discovered later that a tiny insect had momentarily scurried across one of the images. Contrary to my friend's beliefs, I find a strict program or assignment can lead to new discoveries and new seeing, and that success can rest as much on serendipity as depth of feeling.

Bayside Op

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Once seen, the pressing question was where to crop. That's always the case, but rarely must edges be so precisely calibrated at all sides and corners. The temptation is to shoot large and preserve all options by cropping in the computer. I prefer NOT to do that, and I try to compose to the proportions of the image my camera makes. (Of course, at a certain point the image has laws of its own that dictate proportions.)

A major question here was whether to include the details in the top right corner. Intuitively, I thought they should be avoided, and made most exposures that way. Back in Lunenburg, however, it was this one I chose to present to the workshop. Without the detail at the top left, this is a curious op pattern. Included, the detail is an annoying (perhaps slightly surreal?) presence that must be unravelled.

Have you figured out what it is, or did you grasp it right away? Once you do, you can enter the image space. Some would say that it is only then that this becomes photographic.

Can you stay in the image space? No need to anymore.

Of course there were many more images to be made here, but the sun was moving quickly and the moment was passing. I had come on this by chance, and I have no idea how it looked moments earlier. Surely, it didn't last long. Could I ever find my way to the time and space of this alignment of elements in order to watch the full arch transpire? Do I really want to go looking for images I've already seen?

Starboard Watch

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL

The snake-skin sea slinks across the harbor,
Sounds the music of the old hulls,
Lingers in the underdocks,
Ready to uncoil.

Wharfside

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - I must give some credit for this image to one of my colleagues (Sparrowhawk: http://www.btlens.com/) at the Lunenburg workshop. During a group shoot I had spotted these nails forgotten on one of the pilings and admired the colors and textures, but Sparrowhawk stopped to take the picture, and I merely made a mental note to get back there later while I hurried to something else I was after. When I saw Sparrowhawk's picture I remembered the spot and regretted not shooting it; when I found myself back at the boatyard another day the light was excellent, and I decided to try my own image. I'm pleased with the way this came out, but my colleague has a very sharp eye for composition, and I'd love to compare my choices with Sparrowhawk's.

Boatyard Composition No.2, June 2009

RENE MAGRITTE: "Everything that is visible hides something that is invisible."

Boatyard Composition No.1, June 2009

ANONYMOUS: "The film that survived a bomb blast, got wet when your boat sank , survivived x-ray machines at 5 different airports was ruined when someone opened the darkroom door and let all the dark out."

Hunk of a Dory

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL, "The Dory Ethic": A dory is essentially a, "plank boat," that's easy to build. It is a workhorse that carries a big load and that two can row with ease. The deep hull, flat bottom, and and natural curve make it maneuverable and steady. Coastal settlers in the northeast launched them from beaches and filled them with fish. When all else fails, one wants a reliable dory.

This photo was taken at The Dory Shop in Lunenburg, NS

Herring's Lament

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Mucilaginous porridge of brine,
The viscous vat, a universe.
Then scooped and bucketed,
Drawn and quartered,
Packed into purses,
And drowned in the parlor.
My essences drift,
Draw hungry crustacea.

The Lobstermen

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I met Howard on the pier at Thurston's Lobster Pound in Bernard Harbor, Maine. He and Roger were loading buckets of herring onto the "Dillon, Chris, and Linda." The herring would be chopped up for bait once they were at sea. I had already asked Howard if I could photograph him at work. When Roger went to get more herring Howard began a conversation about women, drink, marriage, and life. By the time he was ready to push off, we were friends.

The previous year I had vowed to get beyond photographs of the landscape, architecture and props of lobstering and photograph the lobstermen at work. Bernard, Maine, was the most likely place. In most of the lobster ports the fishermen leave from private docks which can be scattered. On some piers a photographer could wait all morning, and no lostermen would appear.

In Bernard there are two common piers used by most of the lobstermen. On the community pier lobstermen begin arriving in their pickups at sunup. The pier is a place of socializing as they fetch their boats, load them with bait and sometimes traps, stowe away lunch buckets and drinks for the day's work, and climb into their vinyl lobstering overalls. In the afternoon the boats return with the day's catch. They sell the lobsters to independent marketers who drive onto the wharf in white delivery trucks and wheel large scales out on the tailgate.

Other lobstermen leave from Thurston's pier. The lobstermen who sell at Thurston's take a lower price but they don't have to work to sell, and they use Thurston's large, dockside warehouses to store their bait. The pier is often a labyrinth of passageways through the lobstermen's idle traps.

That's where I met Howard and Roger and shared philosophy. As they pushed off, I asked if they would be back the next day. When Howard told me, "yes," he also asked if I'd like to come along.

I met them at 5:30 AM. This slide show contains some of the more than 300 images I shot aboard the "Dillon, Chris, and Linda," and it is a first attempt at telling a lobstering tale. I fear it fails to convey the fast pace and exhausting, assembly line routine of the work. In about 4 hours they pulled, emptied, baited, and set 200 traps and caught 55 usable lobsters.

On Leaving Peggy's Cove, June 2, 2009

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - "Peggy's Cove, Future Thoughts":

I left Peggy's Cove without all of the shots I wanted. I'd reserved Tuesday passage on, "The Cat," the ferry from Yarmouth to Bar Harbor. No cat sailed Wednesday, and I doubted whether I would find enough in Peggy's Cove to linger until Thursday. I no longer think that's correct.

1. I had arrived with a primary mission of photographing the harbor. One can almost make out it's mouth, left of center in this image. The cove is a narrow groove with steep slopes, a classic and there are many shots of it. I wanted to find my own.

Where to stand? I wanted to look down the length of the cove, to take in as much of its complexity as I could; I wanted a picture that would embody the concept, "harbor"; that would be a classic rather than a cliche. Perhaps it is always a mistake to preconceive a picture that way. The moment often brings a thousand little pleasures that are quite different from what one is after. In any case, this was the place to do such a classic. I wanted to be at the mouth of the harbor in the afternoon and at the back of the harbor in the morning, but all my attempts to get to the mouth that afternoon and on my previous visit were blocked by, "Private property - no trespassing." I made some afternoon images from the back of the harbor, but the June, afternoon sun is a dragon breathing into the cove. It was not a subject for backlighting, certainly not what I was after. The next morning I was up at 4:30, but the sun barely appeared, and the light wasn't especially useful. From the few images I made then at a moment when the water in the cove was almost still, I realized that wind and tides were more important than early sunshine. I have a hunch I want to shoot near low tide. It's always a mistake to preconceive the picture.

2. Where can I hire a boat?

3. There's no lobstering after May 31. What is Peggy's Cove like when the fisherman are active?

4. After a short, early morning shoot I went back and made a panorama from the deck of my room at the B&B. The B&B is somewhere behind that big white building to the left of the cove mouth. My deck overlooked the harbor, a splendid view and a successful panorama but not my shot. I packed my bags - good breakfast and conversation before heading off for Yarmouth. It was with some amazement that I pulled off at the flight 111 memorial site, just outside of Peggy's Cove, and looked back. I took this just before the rain came, wilting my eagerness and obliterating the view. The photo makes clear that there's at least a half mile of road between me and the church steeple worth walking and exploring for photographs. How many moods can the sky and the landscape conjure over several days? I never know what it will look like until I get there.

5. Since returning I've read that the bushes on the barrens turn vivid color in October.

Click the image to view large.

Peggy's Point Lighthouse, No.5

H. E. Clark: "He carefully picked his cast of clouds, watched them intently as they swirled in before the lens and hoped the sun would break in concert."

Town & Barrens No.4

DAVID BOHM (as suggested by Jane Roth and quoted from The Tao of Photography): "All is process. That is to say, there is ‘no thing’ in the universe. Things, objects, entities, are abstractions of what is relatively constant from a process of movement and transformation. They are like the shapes that children like to see in clouds."

Cove Composition No.2

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: ...or are there photographs that must be connected to a real event at a real moment and yet transcend their time and place? Whether successful or not, this photo might seem less interesting if the viewer believed the birds had been photoshopped in from another image or repositioned for compositional effect. Why is that so? All of the other arts use lies to approach truth. Is there a "code of honor," for photography that makes it different? And if I wanted to float a cloud from another photo across this sky... ?

Barrens Blossoms No.3

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Yesterday's photograph, more than most, raised questions regarding the complex relationship between a photograph's subject and its meaning, and it evoked an interesting group of reactions from readers of TODAY'S. One referred to the, "musical sky." Many commented on what one reader described as, "objects standing at drunken angles." Several people commented about the humor of the image and one even said it made her laugh. Although, like other images of this series, it was taken at Peggy's Cove, and its subject is the barrens around Peggy's Cove, the meaning is something quite different, something that can't be put into words, something that language can only talk around.

The difficulty is that photography, in a way not true of any other art medium, is always about a subject that has an independent life; we always photograph SOMETHING. While a painter can work with nothing but imagination and paint, our medium is light that comes to us from the real world and usually reflected off of things. Even after a photographer has distorted that real world, the audience still looks to find the traces of its real-world origins. Given a photographic abstract they quickly ask, "What is it?" in a way they never would if it was by Kandinsky or Miró.

On the other side, viewers often approach a photograph not looking to see more there than the apparent subject. Is it the photographer's task to find ways to make them look further, or is it enough simply to lay out the composition and leave it to the viewer to enter deeply or to stand at the margins?

Town & Barrens No.3, Fiddleheads

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Camped out in a land older than time,
balancing the megaliths,
numbering their shadows
by the sun's glow and the moon's,
waiting on the diastolic blushes of spring,
riding a wave in the echoing of eternity,
stopping the surf's fall.
Returning home to laughter and love.

Town & Barrens No.2, Standoff

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: "What reinforces the content of a photograph is the sense of rhythm – the relationship between shapes and values."

Barrens Blossoms, No.2

EDWARD STEICHEN: "I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself..."

Cove Composition

ARTHUR TRESS: "Photography has an amazing ability to capture the fine detail of surface textures. But far too often these intricate patterns are loved by the photographer for their own sake. The richness of texture fascinates the eye and the photographer falls easy prey to such quickly-caught complexities. The designs mean nothing in themselves and are merely pictorially attractive abstractions. A central problem in contemporary photography is to bring about a wider significance in purely textural imagery."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I am in awe of Arthur Tress's haunting images. On the other hand, I appreciate attractive abstractions whose colors, textures, form, and lighting make the eyes dance.

Town & Barrens No.1

JOHN ROSENTHAL: "When I look at photographs by Ansel Adams, I sometimes find myself wondering if Adams is celebrating the natural beauty of creation or simply the beauty preserved in our great national wilderness parks. Are his photographs about life or about zoning laws? Of course one might accuse me of asking dreary questions - but I don't think so. The act of cropping a photograph, which is a fundamental act of photography, is at heart a moral decision. In our landscapes, have we cropped out the tourists and the garbage in order to suggest 19th century America (which is to say, nostalgia), or have we cropped out what is truly irrelevant to our intentions as an artist? What photographers leave out is just as important as what they leave in."

Barrens Blossoms

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The barrens is a desolate place. One can see for miles across the stony hills. Nobody is allowed to die in Peggy's Cove because there's so little land in which to be buried, but look about your feet and nothing is standing still. These rugged plants know how to root in very little soil and hold on through fierce wind. Where there is no soil, orange, green, and black lichens are at work on the rocks' surfaces. This is not only a place of cataclysm but of birth. Rugged as it is, it's also very fragile, and a few badly placed footsteps can undo the work of decades. It's a Canadian, "National Preservation Area," which, unfortunately has no effect on mortality rates, but it does prohibit development. I arrived back in Peggy's Cove on June 1st, and spring was beginning all over again.

The Barrens

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Where I live the curtain has been graciously drawn across the cataclysm. Sometimes I come upon it unexpectedly in the forest, a huge rock turned at an odd angle and in an unlikely spot, but for the most part the forests have grown back where the farmers used to have fields. I search for expanses of open land where one can feel the rolling of the earth and see the ancient convulsions that stood in the way of the farmers' crops. Chances are good that there's a stone wall there.

Growing up in New York City, I used to admire The Palisades. Even though as early as the 19th century men had been chipped away massive quantities of them for cheap railroad ballast, such efforts seemed puny compared to The Palisades' immensity. Now condo towers hop across the them as if they weren't there as the city itself spreads over them. Of course the furnace that built the Palisades would quickly incinerate anything that has stood there in the last thousand years. In the case of The Barrens, the critical cataclysm came, not with fire but with ice, and nothing now hides the violence of its chilly lacerations.

Peggy's Point

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: After the week-long, Lunenburg workshop ended I decided to head back to Peggy's Cove and spend at least a night there. I was immediately drawn to photographing the barrens, shown in the distance above. However, I'm amazed at how soon I found myself scouting angles on the lighthouse. A colleague at the workshop said, "Go down behind the lighthouse." I guess that's about where I am. Behind me the waves explode against the granite. I'm at the tip of Peggy's Point.

If I return again, this is a perfect place for panoramas. The body of water on the left is St. Margaret's Bay, and just around the bend of the bay is the memorial to the passengers of Swissair Flight 111. Like the surroundings, the memorial is bare; simple text inscribed into the granite boulders and neat paths tucked among the scrubby pines and outcroppings of the barrens on a cliff above the sea. I stopped at the memorial briefly as I departed Peggy's Cove. It was almost all fogged in. I was alone, and it seemed as if all the people lost out in the water were especially alone. If I could have seen through the fog, I have a hunch it is also a good spot for panoramas back at Peggy's Point and the town.

Peggy's Cove, I mean the cove after which the town is named, is an abrupt inlet at the center of the cluster of buildings. The church is at the back, behind, and all around are the barrens. The coast continues somewhere to my right. It is made up of huge chunks of similar granite, broken apart and tumbled just as this point will be some day.

Visit Peggy's Cove on Wikipedia.

Lighthouse Polarities, Peggy's Point Lighthouse No.3

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I'm very curious how viewers of TODAY'S feel about this image.

This shot was an afterthought. It was the last image I made before hiking back up the rocks to the car. I hadn't thought about the reflecting pool since earlier in the evening; from a standing position the lighthouse reflection was invisible. After finishing the previous image I thought quickly about checking to see if the beacon was still visible in the darkened pool. The light was fading fast, the path to my car uncertain, and getting my eye low enough to see the reflection had long ago ceased to be fun, but my tripod was already truncated. I fought with my gear to get the shot positioned. I recall thinking, shoot broad to permit serious cropping later. I made only one image and then rushed off furiously without checking the exposure. I didn't really believe it was worth caring about. Surprisingly, although underexposed, it was recoverable.

I'm still not sure about the shot. It lacks the vigilant calm of yesterday's image. At the Lunenburg workshop I dismissed it from consideration quickly, but each time I see it I find it both arresting, mysterious and paradoxical, an unpleasant clashing of dark forms against the stillness of the lighthouse polarities.

Vigilance, Peggy's Point Lighthouse No.2

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: After everyone had shot their lighthouse reflection shots and sunset shots, and begun climbing from the rock ledge back up to the cars. I lingered alone below for a few more low-light, long exposures. With the sun below the horizon the lighthouse beam would be clear in my pictures, and there would still be enough ambient light to record the lighthouse, rocks, and sea clearly. This is the shot I submitted in answer to the assignment. The exposure was for 30 seconds at f22 and ISO 100.

Click on the image above to enlarge it and make the light clear.

Catching Sunset, Peggy's Point Lighthouse, No.1

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: As the forecast for Wednesday was rain, we went to Peggy's Cove on Tuesday afternoon, the second full day of the workshop. We were free to photograph anything while we were there, but we were also assigned to make an image of the famous lighthouse that, "is not your usual lighthouse shot."

Having an assignment was to some extent a distraction, though I enjoyed the challenge, and I knew it would be fun to see the various solutions. However, as we reached Peggy's Cove, I think we were all affected by the barrens that surround the village. Huge boulders dropped by the receding glaciers balance singly or in groups amid scrubby, rolling landscape. They are like the game balls of old Titans that have temporarily come to rest. I don't recall any other place I've visited feeling so old, while everywhere the stunted, seaside vegetation was flashing May vitality.

In the center of this wasteland the tiny fishing village hangs onto rocks surrounding the harbor cove. It is the quintessential Atlantic fishing village preserved in its decay and still with a few active lobsterman. It was definitely the kind of place I'd hoped to find in Nova Scotia.

Taking the assignment seriously would mean considerable scouting over a maze of treacherous, seaside boulders - slow going. This lighthouse can be seen and photographed from all sides and in some directions from far away. I'd want to explore it all. There was hardly time to photograph either the cove or the barrens well, and either one seemed more exciting to me than the lighthouse.

In the end I chose to concentrate most of the afternoon in the fishing village and take my chances on the lighthouse as the sun began to fall. I even skipped dinner to keep shooting in the cove, though I realize now I was working against the light.

When I finally turned my attention to the lighthouse I found one of my colleagues on some near rocks squatting by a small pool with his tripod close to the ground. I had to stoop down to where he was to see what he was shooting. Soon a bunch of us were taking turns composing reflection shots of the lighthouse in the pool.

Lobster Boats, Blue Rocks No.6

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Standing at the end of Blue Rocks Point it's easy to understand why this sheltered cove was popular with fishermen. However, it's not clear until one looks at Google's photos of the shore line (Go to Goggle maps, search for "Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia," and select "Satellite.") how gradually land blends to sea. Everywhere the coasts of Maine and Nova Scotia are dotted with islands, but here they take the form of long striations cut by ancient glaciers. These grooves form a labyrinth of long, rocky channels. The long channels and rocky islands run many miles out and form an additional buffer here in Blue Rocks Cove against the constant pounding of waves. Standing on high rocks and trying to look out to the open sea as I took this photograph I had no idea how far inland I really was.

The Flight of Narcissus

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I shot nearly fifty images while the gull enjoyed his snail and then looked around to see what else fortune might have put in his path. After a few minutes he hopped to the edge of the rock and stared down, as if admiring his image in the water. Suddenly he unfurled and leaped and floated down to the tidal pool for the rest of his breakfast.

Breakfast

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - The sunrise light on the rippling pool, exposed seaweed and rock ledge was perfect except the stage was empty until this gull came down to breakfast.

Nautical, Blue Rocks No.5

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I think I only began really looking at lobster shacks & boat houses on this trip, and I find I've arrived home with far more questions than answers. Even if I limit observations to those that are really lobster shacks with traps stacked on the wharf and bobs by their side in the lobsterman's colors, the range is enormous. Some are clearly just storage while others have stoves, and some have several rooms and curtains. What was clear in Blue Rocks was that even the most utilitarian had marks of personality: a display of antique nautica, complimentary paint colors chosen to distinguish the door from its frame; a well-trimmed toy sailboat set on a window sill or in another, a decoy Canada goose hung as if strangled. Some beg the question, "Did someone do it this way for me to notice?" And some leave no doubt.

Are there any traditions I should know about that operate here?

Tourist Traps, Blue Rocks No.4

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Although I sometimes wondered if the collection of shacks clinging to the edge of Blue Rocks was the work of an over-zealous preservationist, I met and spoke with several lobster fishermen there and saw others packing up their traps and closing down the season which had just ended. Does anyone use wooden traps anymore? Or was this little scene a monument set up long ago by some lobster fisherman protesting the Canadian government's enforcement tight limits on the length of the lobster season. Next door in Maine they fish for lobsters all year long and wooden traps are only found in antique stores. Here they were plentiful, though the locals call them, "tourist traps."

Wired for Photography, Blue Rocks No.3

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I reached Blue Rocks even before my Lunenburg workshop was set to begin. Arriving in town early, I found the B&B not ready for guests and began my explorations. It was drizzling when I threaded my way along Herring Rocks Road to the dead end. I was a bit surprised to find someone out there already shooting photographs from a tripod. I waved hello, and we kept to our solitary ways. As I shot, occasionally more cars reached the dead end, took in the scenery, and turned around; it was Sunday; everyone was on holiday. Then, I noticed another photographer setting up a tripod. As we momentarily engaged in a bit of photographer fellowship, comparing favorite lenses and cameras, a couple drove up and a woman began looking intently and opening up a tripod. Was this some sort of photographer's mecca? I patted myself on the back for sniffing it out so quickly.

Well, of course, the truth was that all of us were enrolled in the same photo workshop. When you reach Lunenburg, and the B&B isn't ready, if you're a photographer you head east toward the water. Doing so, one will eventually reach the dead end of Herring Rocks Road and the wharves.

Catching Sunrise, Blue Rocks No.2

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Beyond The Lane there are no structures between the road and the ocean, only the blue rocks that give the area its name. The road dead ends at some piers with an open bay and the sea beyond. Although I spent little time photographing from the rocks, under the right light they are a rich slaty blue and run in ridges parallel to the shore, clearly a photographic target for some future visit. To successfully photograph them one must get both sun and tide to cooperate. What might they look like under a full moon?

Air Mariner, Blue Rocks No.1

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The fishing shacks & cottages that perch on rocks along the ocean's edge in Blue Rocks range from the quaint to the idiosyncratic to the totally outlandish. I went over the hump onto tiny Herring Rocks Road. It hung out over the edge of the bay and then threaded its way between a cluster of ramshackle sheds. The majority of the shacks lie between there and The Lane. A small island, hardly more than a band of rock outcroppings with soil on top, encloses a tiny harbor and wharfs, and shacks straddle the harbor from both sides. At low tide it is an especially rocky affair with wharves perched high on stilts.

Rainy Night, Lunenburg

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - My intention was to wake before dawn and shoot in the early light. I'd set my alarm and closed my eyes early. That had been my habit whenever possible in my travels. It had never been my habit to wake at 2 AM to go out shooting in thunderstorms. I'd barely napped, but if the rain persisted, sunrise wouldn't be worth shooting anyhow, and I was out the door.

The truth is that after I took the photo on yesterday's blog, later that night, Lunenburg was watered down by a drenching rain. We were all in the common room working on our final assignments, and reluctantly I decided not to go out. I was deep in preparation, but the missed opportunity nagged at me. I was hoping there would be one more big storm. Be careful what you wish for. I didn't expect it then.

I've had several inquiries following the last two images wondering if they were HDR or what special techniques were used. In fact, I did nothing special unless using a tripod constitutes, "special." In fact if all you have is a point and shoot, you could have rested it on the hood of a car and taken this shot or yesterdays. If there is a trick, it is in learning to see places where surfaces reflecting a bit of light will glow under a long exposure. The shutter speed for this shot was 102 seconds but that let me keep a deep focus. The aperture was f22. I thank Neal Parent for pushing me to explore low light photography.

As my camera will only time exposures to 30 seconds, I carry a timer, but I've found that I can come pretty close counting in my head. Since there's only a stop of light difference between 45 seconds and 90 seconds, being off by 5 seconds in my timing means I'm off by less than a tenth of a stop - insignificant. Besides, there is a certain amount of guesswork in a shot like this. I know I will have to blow out the highlights in the street lights. The question is, by how much? One can only experiment. Digital makes that easy as feedback is immediate.

I should add there is a special time in the evening or at dawn when the sky is bright enough to illuminate exterior surfaces, but not so bright as to drown out the lights behind the windows. Yesterday's image was made at that special time as was New England Farmhouse.

I often worry about the redundancy of images. If two images are redundant, it seems to me neither has quite made its point. I was puzzled by this pair until one of my workshop colleagues suggested this might work best as a monochrome. I think she was right.

Entering Lunenburg

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The only road out of Blue Rocks eventually leads along Pelham Street through the middle of Lunenburg. The intersection of Pelham and King Street seems to be the commercial center of the city and a vital counterpoise to the shipyards and harbor. Once a center of ship building and home to a large fishing fleet, the activity is much diminished though not gone. At one point while I was there, three large tall ships were anchored in the harbor.

Time has settled on these two communities so as to open a particularly wide window on the past. While encouraging tourism and promoting its history on many public signboards, Lunenburg has kept honky-tonk to a minimum and the architecture is largely preserved. It's an architecture enriched by the community's ship building history. Has anyone studied this phenomenon along the coast of Maine and Nova Scotia, the degree to which the cross-fertilaztion of shipbuilding and home building enriched the inventiveness and fantasy of domestic architecture? Blue rocks is arguably even more fanciful though cobbled together with little craft.

One could spend weeks photographing details in either place, but my bent is a more direct kind of time travel, trying to find a path along the streetscape between the here and now and the there and then. I had a special sense I was on that path as I came over the first hill into Lunenburg, that some hint of ancient commerce floated above Pelham Street that evening. I stopped at the next street for this photo. Perhaps I caught some hint of the ancient salt air.