Waiting for Magic

Thank you for taking a few minutes out your busy day to stop by and share with me my vision of the natural world.  This space on the internet has changed over time since I started blogging back in 2006, but the overarching theme has been my passion for nature.  I use digital cameras to help illustrate what I see, but I don't often go into details about the photographic process.  This is something I want to start diving into occasionally, and I hope those of you that are interested in photography will find these types of posts engaging.  If not, I hope you enjoy the images!

Early this week I had the rare opportunity to have an evening free to explore a few acres in Williams County, Ohio.  I meandered through area of grasslands and swamps looking for interesting photographic opportunities.  A low cloud deck obscured the sun, resulting in rather washed out, uninteresting evening light.  I tiptoed around the edge of a swamp searching for something of interest to photograph.  This dead stump, covered with living poison ivy vines, became my subject.  An interesting story, but not really a compelling photograph.  On my walk I did note a few white-barked quaking aspen, that if the clouds lifted, would make fantastic subjects bathed in the light of the "magic hour".

 

As I waited for that light, I sat on a large glacial erratic boulder, watching a gray colorless sky.  I looked at the rock and felt its ridges and furrows- it had engaging colors and patterns.  I was lamenting that Ohio doesn't have any granite bedrock like that at Yosemite, whose shear cliffs the great Ansel Adams made famous.  Then something clicked! With the right perspective, I could use this giant boulder as my Ansel Adams Cliff.  Since there wasn't much color in the scene, an Adams-esque high contrast black and white would be perfect.  What do you think?  Did I trick your eye into thinking you were looking at a tree-less mountain?

 

Finally, the light that I had visualized earlier did come- the sun dropped below the cloud deck, pouring golden light over everything.  What I hadn't anticipated was how cool the dead stems of last year's prairie grasses would look against the new spring greenery. I was pretty happy with this image- it was the one I was waiting for, and I almost went inside at this point.  The mosquitoes had enough of my blood already.

But I am glad I stayed put.  As the first cloud deck moved across the landscape, another quickly replaced it- but these clouds did not obscure the sun.  Just as the sun was at the horizon, these clouds started to catch "fire", and by this time, I was really excited- I don't often get sunset images like this, but I absolutely love this phenomenon.   Galen Rowell, an incredible photographer and mountaineer, loved photographing these types of moments. 

So there you have it- an hour long peek into my photographic brain.  Although I missed my family dearly, an overnight work trip allowed me to photograph the sunset.  If I have to be away, hopefully I can bring home images like these every time I am gone.

Tom