Ordinary Pictures

Prairie Rain, South Dakota

I love a spring rain on the prairie. I drove across South Dakota today and it rained just about all the way. The colors of spring mixed with the old, dry grasses from last season. The mix of warm and cool colors I thought was lovely. I took this shot through the windshield.

Well, it’s finally here, my SoFoBoMo month. I picked May 1-31, the latest possible time slot. I assumed back in March that Spring would have arrived by now, but it has started pretty slowly. No matter, I’ll find something to take pictures of over the next month. Hopefully I’ll have 35 pictures worthy of sharing in my final book.

I had considered taking all the pix using Polaroid 600 film, but I think I’ll use digital since I found my cheap Polaroid camera only focuses at about 10 feet.

I’ll probably post a few of the shots here occasionally and once I’m done, by May 31, I’ll post a link to the full virtual book.

Funnels, LaFarge Terminal, St Paul, Minn.

Sorry for the delay in blog updates. Been a bit busy…

This Polaroid picture was taken a few weeks ago while we still had some snow on the ground. These funnels hold various grades of sand/aggregate which is dispensed into dump trucks that park underneath. I managed to get there early (must have been pre-daylight saving time).

One of the techniques in use a lot these days is HDR. Here are some examples (link thanks to the Conscientious blog).

I’m sorry but I can’t stand HDR images. They transform a photograph into something decidedly non-photographic. The judiciuos use of this technique is useful for bringing out shadow detail and overall contrast correction in some images, but the use of it to create non-photographic images leaves me reaching for the ‘NEXT’ button in Flickr. I have spent a bit, though not much, time trying to imagine an appropriate use for this technique and just can’t. It’s icky.

I also I felt the same about the technique of applying color to isolated elements in black & white images back when that was all the rage. With any luck the overuse of HDR will go away soon, too.

Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis (mine, not Robert Adams’ :))

Of the living photographers I admire, Robert Adams is near the top (it isn’t a race, so “near the top” is as close as anyone gets to the top).

I found this great interview on the Art21 site. An excerpt:

The nature of photography is to engage life. It’s made of life. Life is complex, and I often think photography is similarly complicated. At least it seems so to me. The early twentieth-century photographer Lewis Hine, who photographed child labor problems, said at one point that what he wanted to do was to show what was good so that we would value it, and what was bad so that we would want to change it. And in somewhat the same way that’s what I’ve always hoped to do. I’d like to document what’s glorious in the West and remains glorious, despite what we’ve done to it. I’d like to be very truthful about that. But I also want to show what is disturbing and what needs correction. The best way to do that—and it’s the way every artist dreams of—is to show it at the same time in the very same rectangle.

Its a good interview and worth your time to read. Also, if you haven’t read his two little books, Beauty in Photography and Why People Photograph, read them. You won’t regret it.