One morning a while back, in my most active period of photography to date, I got up before dawn in the late winter and headed off to another of the Natural Lands preserves, this time, Sadsbury Woods near Coatesville.
I kept the camera on what I then (and now) considered my prime lens, the 50mm f/1.8 “fast” NIKKOR lens, because I wanted to focus on shooting stands of trees in different light conditions and not be switching lenses off constantly to shoot varied subjects. It was a mostly sunny day with occasional big clouds that were creating a kind of “spotlight” effect on open ground and shifting light in the deeper woods. There was patchy snow on the ground in the forest, creating bright patches.
I decided to experiment with a slightly longer exposure time while I moved the camera slightly to create blurring effects. You can’t really tell how that’s going while you’re out taking shots—only when you sit down in Lightroom and look to see what happened will you know what’s happened. I tried a lot of different motions with the camera—very slight movement in a single direction, faster and more extended movement, small loops.
The results made me about as happy as I’ve been before or since with my photographic work—I’ve tried to do it again once or twice and the outcome hasn’t been as pleasing. I think it was a combination of thoughtfulness about the technique, careful selection of the compositional possibilities, great directional light and a looseness about the outcomes. (Whereas the next few times, I was trying to ‘do it again’ and couldn’t get back to that openness.) One of the shots from that day (not the one featured above) is my favorite image that I’ve ever made, and I may at some point make a truly large print of it—it looks exceptionally good even on a 13 X 19” print.
This one is another that I really loved from that day—the little ghost loops up from the snow patches plus the solidity of the trees and the yellow luminiscent look of the trunks just pleases me a ton, along with the sunlight breaking through near the upper center and creating a greenish sheen where there was a small evergreen plant. It was a movement from the camera that I haven’t been able to do as well on subsequent attempts—up and then slightly to the side.
I think this is the moment where photography really started to help me to understand the importance and pleasure of abstraction, to really emotionally and intellectually process what the painter Edwin Dickinson once said about representation in art—a powerful tool but a poor objective.