Weekly River Pictures

river pictures 118

I often find these rays of light shining through the clouds, but they don't always line up in such a way as to point directly at something in particular.  Photography has an interesting way of flattening life into one "story".  Even though there are several angles to view something, a camera only views one at a time.  When I line up one "thing" with another "thing" the two can play off each other.  This image only works well when the light ray shines on the house.  This one view of two things makes a "story" in a way we humans think, a narrative.

Be a Photographer

river-photography_new barn

This photograph just goes to show that anyone can be a photographer.  These bird houses are in the far corner of my backyard.  I glanced out the window that morning, saw we had a good cover of fog, and grabbed my camera.  All you need is a good tripod, a manual camera, and a light meter.  So go for it, be a photographer!  You won't know if you are any good till you have tried it.  What's nice about digital photography is that you don't have to spend money on printing everything.  Take several thousand pictures then adjust whatever needs adjusting on the computer and then print a select few, big and awesome.  This print looks its best at 20" by 30".  That way the new barn is more visible on the foggy hillside and every little detail in the grass is enhanced.

Feel the Breeze

pictures of home-clothesline

Did you ever feel like the wind would pick you up and you could fly?  Gazing up at the sheets flapping wildly, the branches blowing, and the clouds quickly passing by, taking me with them.  The shadows are even in motion.  Click this image to make it bigger and study it in the way my son might be looking at the sky.  Can you feel the breeze?

Bird Pictures

cranes 

canadian geese

Fresh water and rolling hills bring the birds our way.  These photographs of geese and cranes are a few examples of migrating birds we host on their way to and from their home.  Marshy puddles and ponds are likely place to see these birds.  Have you noticed geese form oddly shaped Vs for migration.  "What is the significance of the lopsided V?"  a public speaker once asked an audience, myself included.  "What is the reason behind it?"  After some deliberation and discussion from the group, the speaker concluded  "There is no rhyme or reason to it.  That's just the way some things are."  I think of the speaker's reasoning from time to time while photographing outdoors.  Thoughtful questions should be asked, but if they were all answered there would be no more thought.  Someone probably has a really good answer for why geese fly in lopsided Vs, but I'm content to think about it and maybe it's symbolism in showing me not all must be answered.  What questions come to mind when you look at these images?


Cranes are interesting birds to watch.  They were very camera shy, well probably human shy.  When they were frightened off they flew really low across the tops of the corn stalks in a huge circle until they were back in the puddle enjoying tadpoles.  I would move just a smidge closer and they were off in their circle route again, I think 1200 meters at least.

Pictures of Fog and the Depleted Land

flat-field fog

used-field fog

field-corn fog

These fog-field images were taken with no motive except that I liked the fog and the light combination and the fact that the lines or rows in these cases were leading into the light.  While editing these foggy images I can see a lot more meaning in them.  

The ethereal brightness of the fog could signify the unknown future of the farming industry here in the USA.  Terry Evans expresses it as a "linear uniformity, leading to exhaustion".  The root system of a cornfield is very shallow.  We know growing the same crops year after year depletes the soil of nutrients.  Are we on our way to a barren wasteland, how long will it take?  

The heart of America, the work of the farmer, is supposedly what supports the American people.  These fog-field photographs could also signify the movement from dependency on the North American farmer to a dependency on global import for our citizens’ food. 

Terry Evans Photography-prarie image 008

Terry Evans Photography-prarie image14

  "The prairie expresses a cyclical or spiral system of growth based on diversity and self-renewel, wile the wheat filed expresses a linear system of growth based on uniformity and leading to exhaustion."  Read the rest of Terry Evans' statement and check out more of his work at ---- http://terryevansphotography.com/index.php?/projects/prairie-imagesstatement/

Types of Landscape Photography

I dislike using the word type.  It makes my work sound so typical.  No artist wants their work to be typical.  Yet for lack of a better word, I want to share a little about the way I often view landscape photographs, in two types.  

First, let's go over the painterly type of landscape photography.  While looking at a stack of my prints, a professor of mine once commented, "Your pictures look very painterly.  As if they are landscape paintings."  I agreed.  Art often transcends the medium with which it was created.  I think the biggest reason he would draw that conclusion about my images is that I use a painterly eye for composition.  Arranging the elements of a landscape in the frame of my camera is similar to the way a painter would arrange the same elements on a canvas.  An artist wants to keep the viewer interested in an photograph or painting by drawing the eyes from element to element, enjoying all the details.  


Next, we'll go over the experiential type of landscape photography.  You might notice that the second photograph does not include all the landscape elements that the first does.  The light, fog, and dew on the webs and the grass are the same but this image is considering just one thing, the rays of light shining through the fog and catching the land.     Highlighting this experience, this thing that is happening with the light is experiential landscape photography.  


To illustrate these painterly and experiential types of landscape photography here are two photographs to compare and or contrast.  These photographs were taken at the same time and in the same place.

painterly

experiential

Make sure you click on the images to view them at a larger scale.

Artistic Mother

morning walk

raising sons- morning light

These images show an important landmark in my life as a mother and landscape photographer.  Working as an artist with five beautiful children is a joy.  Like me, my kids love pictures.  My husband and I have four sons and one daughter.  We enjoy living in the country where there's plenty of room to run.  Some people feel at home in their neighborhoods or apartment complexes.  We have found our home in the fields and woods along the Missouri River.  Not that we live in a mud hut or anything, but we're not scared of working hard and getting dirty.  These pictures are sort of a hybrid of the two main types of photography I do.  First I'm a mother, or first I'm a landscape photographer.  It's sort of like the chicken and the egg, which came first?  Anyhow, they are both such a big part of my life that joining the two, my children and my art into one image was an epiphany.  I know I'm not the first mother to do this but I wanted to share.

This Week's River Pictures

Missouri River bluff

I was looking for something a little grander this particular morning.  The corn had been harvested a couple days prior so I could see past this field a little better.  This is about as normal as a foggy morning can be.  It's overcast and gray.  The fog is only following atop the river.  What was interesting to me was that the only thing visible to break up the river fog from the overcast clouds was the bluff on the opposite side of the Missouri River.  The bluff top looks like some sort of floating island in the clouds.  Just another way the fog can fragment the landscape.

aquatic puddle

Living along the river bottom is interesting because the landscape changes.  I guess it changes everywhere, especially with the seasons.  This is neat though.  In the middle of the soybeans this year there was enough water puddled to grow aquatic plants, which brought frogs, great blue heron, and other wildlife.  Check out this link to see the heron and make sure to play the voice feed and hear what this beautiful bird sounds like.  I thought is sounded similar to the toads/frogs. http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Blue_Heron/id

rural scene, red barn

This barn is looking a lot like this field, well used and patched up.  To me it has become part of the landscape.  I guess anything added to a landscape becomes part of it, even a coke can or a gum wrapper. Rural scenes always included red barns, white picket fences, and winding gravel roads.  This run down, well-used, rural scene reminds me more of the photographs I've seen from the Great Depression.

Magic of Light

light of morning

I explore the way early morning light is enhanced with fog.  Using this natural lighting effect in a rural landscape form makes the work transcend past a country farmland into a dreamlike state or a memory.  I am looking at what is around me in a sublime, ethereal light.  Each foggy morning is different from the next, transforming the land into fragmented arrangements of the familiar.  

glistening

To me part of the magic of light is what it allows you to see.  The light of morning gradually increases from a slight glow until rays of sunshine splash in and all is visible.  Fog, while similar to light in a way, being intangible or untouchable, clouds vision.  The refraction of light on the mist is glistening and resplendent.

fogscape puddle

While the light is magical the shadow is mysterious.  A blanket of fog can obscure vision in a vaporous blur.