Arizona Treks

A bit of explanation first.  On Thursday I took the first injection of the 48 week treatment.  It made me rather ill bor about 24 hours then left me feeling better but with no strength or stamina.  Yesterday I felt better but still could not do much.  We did set up the new enlarger and get it working but that took all day and left me very exhausted.  I will try to keep up with the posts but it will be determined by how much strength I have.  Fridays will probably not be practical and Saturdays may be a problem too.

I love the ocean, it is such a magical place to me, especially the place where the water meets the land.  As I learned that on the previous trip, it is not necessarily easy to photograph well.  you wish to capture the feelings you that from the place but putting that in 2 dimensions without the smells,  the feel of the wind, the vastness of the ocean as it meets the land, wow, it cam be a very powerful feeling.  But communicating that to your viewer is a challenge.  Finding just the right thing to photograph takes some work but can be very worthwhile.

On our first trip we were in a hurry and mostly just drove through.  We stopped several times but we were behind schedule and a storm was approaching and I had a broken rib and was in constant pain.  So the opportunity to play with a specific scene multiple times was not an option.  Actually, this trip did not really allow for a lot of return trips to the same location.  But it did allow for much more leisurely time to walk around and see before even getting a camera out of the truck.  On many occasions I would grab a small format and take a walk then if it looked good would go back and get the 4X5.

Waves rolling up on a beach is exciting, but is not a simple thing to capture in an interesting way.  A couple of approaches I have used that seem to work are, from above, position yourself on a cliff above the beach and shoot down catching the sand, water, and foam all together.  Another one was a line of pelicans flying in front of a breaker, but that took quite a bit of work to get right.

Rocky coastline can make for interesting photography or for very boring pictures.  I have taken so many rocky shorelines and found very few of them to be worth keeping.  This trip I was able to include fog in some and so far like the results.  I experimented with several filters for fog and as it turned out I prefer thee yellow filter in most cases, including the foggy shorelines.

One of the most magical places along a coast are tide pools.  This trip was my first encounter with them and I spent a lot of time investigating them, watching the plants and animals that live in those small places.  The photo below was taken of a tide pool at Glass Beach at Fort Ross.

Like any other photography you must learn to see the places and things you are photographing before you can take good photographs.  The good new is, you do not need a camera to practice seeing, make it something you do always.  Look for the photographs in simple, everyday things.  Some of the simple everyday object photographed by Edward weston are some of his most powerful.  Learn to see thise and you will be on your way to seeing the others.