TECHNICAL DETAILS
Looking North, St. Louis County, Minnesota, 2016
Leica D-Lux (Typ 109) Focal length: 32.6mm (actual) ISO 200 1/13 at f/16 Handheld, lying on my belly on the ice! Elbows and forehead make the tripod. Shooting aperture priority at f/16 to maximize depth of field.
THE JANUARY 2016 PHOTO PROJECT
January 1, 2016. The New Year Begins. Motivation time! I’m kicking off the new year with a commitment to producing a shareable image every day for the month of January. They may not be great, but I’m committed to creating an image a day that at least won’t make me cringe. When I decided to do a 30-day project, I should have noticed that January is actually 31 days long. So, lucky me! I get to do a little extra work. I’ve chosen to do the entire 31-day project in black and white. This choice is designed to help me focus on the mechanics of creating photos, and to reconnect with a love for B&W that I had many years ago in the pre-digital era. Composition and exposure are the fundamentals that any photographer stands upon. I spun my own canisters of film from bulk rolls then. I processed the film, and in my fairly well-equipped basement darkroom, would disappear for hours trying to hone my printing skills. While the tools have changed rather dramatically, my love for the process has stayed consistent. I don’t have to handle film, chemicals or paper in the darkroom – though I admit that I do miss that part considerably – but my ability to find great escape in the “Lightroom” processing and honing my creations with just as much enjoyment. The discipline of needing to create something on a self-imposed deadline is what pulled me into doing the 30-day challenge. I looked at a number of 30-day challenge protocols, that prescribed shooting a certain thing each day. Day 5 so it needs to be converging lines. Day 19 shoot reflections, etc. But that’s not what I’m after. I’m craving the requirement to see something each day that I can communicate and express no matter how I’m feeling. I’m seeking the push to hit the deadline, to force it to happen. The new year finds Leigh and I up at the cabin and childless for the first time in a long, long while. We drove up this morning after spending New Year’s Eve at home, and arrived mid-day. We went for a stroll on the ice this afternoon, hugging the shoreline with this season’s late arrival of winter. We found some clear ice in a few locations and it looks to be three to four inches, so not much worry along the lake edge. We’re not seeing any snow machine tracks out in the open areas at all, and nothing but foxes all along the shore where we walked. Driving up today I had been thinking about what I wanted to shoot for the first of the challenge series, and conceived of a lake panorama with wind pants and mukluks facing away from me. She did her posing duty and it came off about as I had pre-visualized it. The low angle accentuating the expanse of the frozen surface. A low sky scratching the far shore. I’m not intending to comment on each of the photos I make this month. I guess the subject matter will dictate when commentary is needed, or else I’ll just post them to the album and let the images do the talking. I’m grateful to kick off 2016 with a creative goal in mind.
Balance, In Life and Photos