This image is an example of the importance of seizing the opportunity, not being bashful, and connecting with your subject.  On a day with our daughter in Denver, we stopped for coffee in a quaint neighborhood south of the Denver Art Museum.  My wife’s caffeine levels were dangerously low, and a small coffeeshop caught our eyes.  A cozy place, it was filled with retired couples reading papers, yuppies in jeans absorbed in laptops, and students doing homework.

The most interesting feature, however, was the barista – a young Latina woman with silky black hair and a fascinating array of tattoos whose patterns linked her with her Aztec ancestors.  After she served us with rich, flavorful coffee – obviously from a local specialty roastery – I complimented her on her tattoos and asked if I could photograph her.  She kindly assented, and I slid in beside her as she prepared the next brew, catching her against the backdrop of the espresso machine and the wine rack.

This image was taken at f/2.8 and 35mm equivalent focal length on my Canon digital camera, which was all that I had with me at the moment.  With the low light and close quarters, this shot would have been difficult with a vintage Bessa or Ensign, with a 50mm equivalent lens, a maximum aperture of f/3.8 (remember the limiting effect of the shutter mechanism around the lens), and the inability to change film speeds.  The image still suffers slightly in sharpness due to the slow shutter speed I was forced to use under these challenging conditions, but it is a good example of what one can capture if one is always ready.

The Street Preacher, Westlake Center, Seattle

When it comes to street photography, I think that the key word is – Wander!  Fill your pockets with film, put your tripod over your shoulder, choose what you think will be an interesting part of town, and just wander the streets. Keep your eyes open, and look for interesting shop windows and street people. Peer down alleys. Look for squares, public markets, and quaint streets where buskers may hang out. Is a mechanic under a car? Could that barista or hot dog vendor make an interesting image? Look for people doing their jobs. Walk streets you’ve walked before – you may see a new image you missed last time.

Being prepared to change exposure on a manual camera is important. Usually, I find two predominant exposure environments under any lighting conditions: full light on the street and sidewalk, and shade under buildings and awnings. The exposure difference is usually about two stops. With ISO 200-400 film, I try to set the shutter speed to the inverse of the focal length of the lens (1/100 second for the 100 mm lenses typically used with 120 6x9cm images). Often, on our typically overcast Pacific Northwest days, I have to push the shutter speed to 1/50 or 1/25 second and brace the camera carefully . Since black and white images seem to look best with maximum depth of field, I try to avoid using the lens wide open if at all possible. I will typically choose the most functional shutter speed, then open or close the lens by two stops as I encounter subjects on the sidewalk or beneath buildings and shift from light to shade.

This preacher was giving his illustrated lecture in Westlake Center in downtown Seattle, attended by a semicircle of onlookers. I snapped his image as unobtrusively as possible from the periphery of the crowd on Kodak VC-160 with my Ensign 16-20.

This image appeared in the Fall 2010 edition of Canadian Camera magazine.

Denver Art Museum and Clouds

Buildings and Sky

To use a subject, I must be able to truly see it.  Sometimes, I experience the presence of a striking subject, yet try as I may, I simply cannot make it into an image where color and line, form and balance come together into something that works.  At times like this, I always think,  “A real photographer could make this work”  and go away frustrated.

Yet I’ve learned that sometimes you just have to come back.  At times, I have to wait for my mind to climb out of its rut and see in a new way.  Other times, the light changes, a cloud moves, or a cat wanders across the square, and suddenly everything falls together.  Most often, it’s a bit of each, as in these images of the Denver Art Museum complex.

I have visited the Denver Art Museum several times, and been drawn by the dramatic upthrust of the museum and its attendant metal sculptures, as well as the striking architecture of the other buildings in the complex.  I have struggled to capture the drama of this site, yet my images always failed.

Yesterday, while on a family visit to the King Tut exhibit, I walked out the front door to face a downpour with thunder and lightning, accompanied by soft light and gray, wispy clouds contrasting with the sharp lines of the museum and the upthrust of the metal sculptures.  I began snapping digital images with my point-and shoot, the only camera I had, and suddenly, everything began to fall into place.  I began seeing the buildings only as abstract shapes, and juxtaposed the spear of the museum’s North wing with the gray streamers of cloud.  I then moved to the neigbouring buildings with their stylized, toylike structure contrasting with the hooks of the lampposts.  I abandoned the horizon, and positioned squares and triangles in the corners of the frame.

Uploading the images, I increased contrast in the image of the museum’s north wing to accentuated the ribbons of cloud.  With the buildings, I cropped,  jacked up the contrast, then tweaked Curves in Photoshop  to boost the darkest zones, giving an unreal, posterized appearance to the buildings.

Afternoon, New Bonaventure

New Bonaventure is a tiny and wonderfully picturesque village on the south side of the Bonavista Peninsula on Newfoundland’s eastern coast.  Located just one mile from the site where the PBS series Random Passage was shot, it is often bypassed by tourists navigating the tortuous track from the highway to the set, Frommer’s in hand.

Yet the beauty of the village hides the struggle that rural Newfoundlanders face in the wake of the collapse of the fishing industry.  Although fishermen warned the government for years that stocks were diminishing, they were ignored.  Enormous deep trawlers scoured the bottom around the Grand Banks, destroying habitat, and no action was taken. Finally, the Canadian government imposed a moratorium on commercial cod fishing, and an industry and a way of life died.

Although fish stocks are slowly coming back, it will be years before cod fishing is a viable way of life, and inhabitants of rural communities like New Bonaventure have had to turn to other

Rugged Beauty Boat Tours, New Bonaventure

sources of income to survive.  Newfies are a resourceful lot, however; lobster fishing has blossomed, and the one working boat in the New Bonaventure harbor belonged to Rugged Beauty Boat Tours.  Clearly, Newfoundland enterprise did not die with the cod industry!

References:

Kurlansky, Mark.  “Cod:  A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World.”  Penguin Books, New York. 1997.

The Trapper's Cabin, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

Everyone who knows the North Country has heard of Alaska’s Iditarod, the famous dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome.  Few know that Canada’s annual winter race, the Yukon Quest, is longer and probably more difficult than the Iditarod.  In 2007, I visited Frank Turner, holder of the record for the Yukon Quest,  at Muktuk Adventures near Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory.

A wonderful afternoon was spent walking a team of dogs, learning

Training for the Yukon Quest

about the life of a professional musher, and marveling over the hardships of running a dog team through the Yukon winter.  In a corner of the ranch, this old, perfectly-preserved  trapper’s cabin caught my eye.  I was testing an Ensign 16-20 with the Ensar  75 mm lens destined for a Christmas present, and could not resist this shot on XP-2.

References:

“The Yukon Quest.”  My WestWorld.com.  http://www.mywestworld.com/living/monster-mush-the-yukon-quest/.

Muktuk Adventures.  http://www.muktuk.com/winter.html.