Documenting our Landscape

Sunrise, Mather Point ~ Spring 2010

Roger — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:21:11 +0000

I arrived at Mather Point around thirty minutes prior to the precise moment the sun crept above the horizon. In the twilight of the early dawn the sky changed from a cold blue-gray to a warm yellow-orange. Lighting the canyon was the reflected light from the full moon. Looking into the canyon as the light changed and shadows moved, I waited. Hovering around 5 degrees Fahrenheit on the rim this particular morning and in spite of the many layers of clothing I put on, I couldn't help but think about the cold that surrounded me, enveloped me as I waited for a precise moment to begin to photograph.

Sentinel Tree, Grand Canyon ~ Spring 2010

Roger — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:30:32 +0000

The dualism, the split personality of the photographer, the one working alone, in fractions of seconds, exposing that which one believes to be compelling at the very instant of capture, something intimate, personal even private yet doing so in order to share that which one's own vision noted so clearly with the world is the very essence of what inspires one to photograph in the first place. Making the private public is part of the the experience that motivates one to spend countless hours looking at landscapes in order to capture a mere fraction of a second, an exposure that freezes what would always already vanish never to be seen again.

Sunrise at Mather Point ~ Spring 2010

Roger — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:24:08 +0000

Sunrise at Mather Point ~ Spring 2010

The camera is the instrument that brings the inner passion and the outward event into harmony with one another, this linking, or, rather, this coincidence, is successfully brought about, then we find one of the things that no image-making medium can accomplish to the same degree.

Edward [...]

Anticipation ~ Spring 2010

Roger — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:48:04 +0000

Not to make light of Descartes' dualistic insight I might be tempted to say, "I see therefore I exist!" But that would be disingenuous, so I won't go there. Learning to see is developing the craft of transforming plain sight into a gaze while exploring the possibilities of creating the image as an artifact of the gaze. This is to say that what one photographs is not what one encounters as a holistic fragment of an experience, rather, it is a well structured re-presentation of that which presented itself to the gaze of the photographer.

Battlefield Trees at The Hermitage ~ Winter 2010

Roger — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:19:33 +0000

Making photographs, especially those made as self-assignment works, always is a statement of deep commitment to one's subject. These photographs are made to be interrogated, to be examined, cross-examined, questioned. As a photographer, I ask viewers to look below the surface of the image, that two-dimensional simulacrum of a four-dimensional world, to inquire about what I am really photographing. In the case of my work, I attempt to create artifacts of a time always already past, yet, lingering as a trace of that which was. I seek to preserve a fraction of a second of existence, a blink of one's eye, for others to view constantly asking what becomes of those places without preservation.

Leaning Cyprus at The Hermitage ~ Winter 2010

Roger — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:20:22 +0000

What is it about a photograph that causes people to think of an image as somehow acting in place of the reality of that which has been photographed. The notion that a picture is worth a thousand words somehow generates the feeling that the truth is somehow contained within the four corners of the image and that there is nothing left to see, nothing omitted either purposely or not. In all candor, nothing could be further from the truth. Just ask a photographer.

Directions, Franklin, Tennessee ~ Winter 2010

Roger — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:08:26 +0000

Learning to see the ordinary, to not overstate or understate, to select a frame from a wide array of possible frames that re-presents that which was but is no longer retrievable, is the essential foundation of photography. In the end, learning to see the ordinary, the ability to pick something that tells a story from the infinite potential of any and every scene, comes with practice, experimentation, failure, and success all rolled up into what one might call experience.

Near Desert View Grand Canyon ~ Winter 2010

Roger — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:15:53 +0000

Hanging just above the trees that protect a gift shop near Desert View by the Grand Canyon the nearly full moon sparkled in the sky. I stopped for a second, set up my tripod, framed the image and snapped off three bracketed exposures that would later be combined into an HDR image. Choosing the HDR technique guaranteed that I would capture a full tonal range, providing detail in the shadows of the trees and the craters of the moon. The image, now captured, sat for a while before I decided to look at it in black and white. A bit of blue tone brings out the blacks without impacting on the whites and here is the finished image.

The Other Side at The Hermitage ~ Winter 2010

Roger — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:23:14 +0000

There are two great mistakes made by those first entering the field of photography. The first is to overrate the value of one's equipment while the second is the tendency to be satisfied by a one and done approach to shooting. The former suggests that the more expensive one's equipment the better the images produced as the end product while the latter ignores the possibility of exploration of something being photographed from multiple angles and perspectives. Both are fatal to producing quality images.

Water Barrels at The Hermitage ~ Winter 2010

Roger — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:43:16 +0000

Images are always there hiding in plain sight. Most are missed, even by those with a strong sense of vision. Sometimes, however, images sometimes seem to jump out demanding to be photographed. The two barrels in this image simply jumped out at me, inviting me to photograph them. It was near the end of our visit to The Hermitage outside of Nashville. I was quite tired and, still recovering from back surgery, my back hurt. All I wanted to do was to get out of there, to get in the car and drive back to our hotel and take a nap. We took a direct line across the grass toward the parking lot to speed our advance to the car. True to form, my head swung back and forth looking for images when the two barrels caught my eye.