sauvie fog study, no. 3

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Recently, Susan and I went to see “Mr. Turner,” a movie that I have been dying to see, about the great 19th-century British painter, J.M.W. Turner. The movie was odd–with occasionally impenetrable dialogue and almost no exposition whatsoever–yet I found it compelling and thought-provoking in the end.[1. In a nutshell: if you could figure what was being said, riddle out out who was who (and who was really important to the story), and not be driven crazy by the random dissonance of the soundtrack, you very well might be fascinated by the lengthy character study of an eccentric, seemingly misogynistic man who also happened to be a genius painter. Not a qualified rave, but I am glad that I saw it.]

Thinking about the movie brought me back to a series of images I made early last year on Sauvie Island with Hudson (I’ve posted two photos: cormorants, sauvie island and love and fearlessness). I love the fog and the diffuse light that it often brings with it, and I had tried to work up a few landscapes that incorporated the river, the distant bank, and the clearing fog. I never really did anything with those shots, but last week, thinking about the light on that day, I decided to go back and view the series with a fresh set of eyes. Here’s one view…[2. I’m not equating myself with Turner; it’s more that I have always loved the way he dealt with light, detail and the vastness of a landscape, and he’s one of the artists that has inspired me. And, thinking about painting when looking at a scene with a camera is never a bad thing, in my opinion. I wasn’t channeling him when I was in the field here, but I do have a vision of creating photos in the fog that have both painterly and photographic qualities.]

see it bigger, | where is this?

cormorants, sauvie island

cormorants-sauvie-island

Hudson and I went shooting in the fog on Sauvie Island this morning, along the Multnomah Channel. I’ve been shooting this scene for years: every January, the fog comes in for a few weeks, and it’s just a glorious place to shoot.

I’m still working through all the photos we shot, but this one jumped out at me pretty quickly. I love the three cormorants on the pilings, all aligned in the same direction, and I just got lucky with the bird flying right above the water. (Check it out full size to really see all the detail.)

where is this?

[Check out Hudson’s blog: one of his Denali shots is on the cover of this month’s Sierra magazine, which is pretty friggin’ awesome.]

sauvie fog, study 4

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With the sub-freezing temperatures and the lack of rain, the early-morning fog is back in Portland. This morning, I went back to this location, and spent a short amount of time shooting with both the RX1 and the D800. I got a few nice shots, but, going with the minimalism theme I’ve been working on lately, I give you this, which I got right before I (quite stupidly) almost dropped myself into the Multnomah Channel because I was looking through the viewfinder instead of watching for the edge of the ledge I was walking on.

The fog was a bit thicker than the last time I shot here, but I think I like this a bit more, even if you can’t really discern the opposite shore as clearly as you could in the previous year’s shots. (You can decide, they’re all viewable via this link.)

Regarding the square crop, I love the format, and it’s one of the few things I wish that the Sony and the D800 had as an option. I shot 6×6 twin-lens cameras for quite a while, and there’s something special to me about visualizing a scene as a square. (It’s one of the things that made taking photos with Panasonic’s GF1 and GX1 so much fun; you could pick a 1:1 aspect ratio as one of your shooting options.)

As always, you can see it bigger and check out the waterfowl cruising up and down the channel. He hung out with me most of the time; obviously preferring the photographer over the hunters taking aim at his kin on the north part of the island: it is hunting season out on Sauvie right now.

sunflowers, sauvie island

sunflowers-sauvie-island

Lee and I made our annual trek over to Sauvie Island today, to hike around a bit, soak up the fall atmosphere, and to grab the first pumpkins of autumn. We ended up, as we always do, at Kruger Farms, which is a lovely farm stand stocked with local veggies, pick your own flowers (like these sunflowers), a beer truck (Guided by Porches brewery), and good grub. (The farm stand is across the street from this inlet, which I photographed in January.)

The bad news was that it was too early for the corn maze, but I’ll take that over the crowds that will descend upon this poor island starting next week.

sauvie fog {3}

sauvie-channel

I keep coming back to the set of images shot along the Columbia River, off of Sauvie Island, in January. They have been represented here on the blog twice so far: in Sauvie Island Fog and Sauvie Fog {alt}. They sit in the ‘working pix’ area of my library, and I regularly play with different versions from that day, trying to find the best representation of what I felt out there.

I like the vertical representation of the first image (Sauvie Island Fog) I posted, and I wish I hadn’t posted the {alt} version. I’m not sure that the version posted here is better than that first one, but I have returned to this one enough that I was compelled to work on it. There really isn’t a lot of image processing; it was mostly dust spotting, which was a result of grabbing the older camera and not paying attention to the sensor beforehand. I did look at a panoramic-style crop across the middle of the photo, but it felt extreme, and I tossed it.

What’s interesting when I look at the group of images in my library, there’s a tranquility in nearly all of them that was present on the day I was there. This one, which doesn’t have the (lovely) detail or color from the grasses along the riverbank, does have a more timeless quality and feel to me, and one that I like.

The next step will be to print them, and see which ones hold up better there. My gut tells me that it will be this one, but I never know until I get to the print.