With real regret, I'll miss the last class, so I'm posting a few more photographs here, and hoping that you will post yours on the blog so that I (and whoever else may miss the last class) may enjoy them. I learned so much in this class, from Barbara and from all of you, and I relished your company on our shoots.
One of the things I learned was that pursuing a single theme was not going to be an eight week project for me -- more like an eight year project. I looked at a number of approaches, such following the shift in the palette of colors we saw, from the yellow, red, orange and brown of fall to the blue, white, gray and black of winter. In the end, though, I kept coming back to photographs that tried to capture the essence of the landscape as would an abstract painting, so here are some in that theme.
Your comments are very welcome. Happy holidays, all. Janet
The American beech has the misfortune of smooth bark, inviting graffiti more than any other tree. As it heals, the scarred bark sometimes takes on the look of hieroglyphs, while reminding us of the human impact on the landscape.
This was at Pennyfield Lock, just as the snow began to fall. I like the circles and patterns of the ice and the ambiguity of a landscape within a landscape: are we a foot away or at a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, flying over some northern part of the globe?
This is shore ice at Dyke Marsh in Alexandria, Virginia. I left the polarizing filter on even as the sun went down, and I think that may have contributed to the bit of prismatic color in the ice shards.
The Potomac was in flood when we were at Carderock. I was trying to capture the river's tumult and after many starts and stops (and f. stops!), I found that a long shutter speed caught the spinning and eddying of the debris in the water. I chose the bottle over photographs of logs as another reminder of the human impact on the Potomac landscape.
Some of you saw this in class. This is scum on the canal surface at Lock Six. I chose it because it appears to be flowing, although it was still. Wherever and whenever we were taking pictures, even forest scenes, the moving, flowing, changing Potomac was the unforgettable backdrop.
