“Monterey Cypress Trees, Cliffs and Surf” — Pacifc surf crashes against the base of cliffs with Monterey cypress trees.
Point Lobos and I go back a long ways. Shortly after my parents moved to the San Francisco Bay Area — I was four years old then — they began to take us on interesting day trips. A favorite was going to Monterey, which was a much smaller and quieter place then. A highlight of those visits was traveling a few miles south to Point Lobos, where we explored tide pools, walked the trails, and watched sea lions. This was one of the first places where I began to make photographs, likely with a simple Brownie camera and some black and white film.
I made this photograph the English town of Shrewsbury. (More about that place below.) If a photograph is “about” something, this one is about more than one thing. To be sure, it is a record of a specific spot in a particular town, a doorway to a building with a sign for “Alfred Mansell & Co. Auctioneers.”It is perhaps a record of some history, too, given the old brick walls, the weathered doorway, and the cobblestones at the bottom of the frame. But most of all, I think it is about color, the “temperature” contrast between the warm tones of partially-sunlit bricks and the very cool blues of the doorway in shadow.
“Tufa, Sky, and Water” — An island of tufa formations under early morning sky, Mono Lake.
I think of this photograph, in part, as a study in tones. I had been photographing a brilliant sunrise in color, but as the first wild sunrise colors diminished I began to think about monochrome. (Of course, my camera being digital, I was capturing color images, though monochrome results were in my mind.) The brightest areas of the clouds were extremely bright, while the facing side of the tufa formations, being backlit, were very close to black. My plan was to control the bright areas in the exposure and then lift the shadows in post, just enough to hint at details on the tufa.
“Wheat Field, The Cotswolds” — Trails cross a large wheat field in the Cotswolds.
At the end of May and beginning of June we waked for a week through England’s Cotswolds district hills. Our route took us from town to town, and each night we stayed in civilized accommodations. Yes, this is a lot different that the Sierra Nevada backpacking that I’ve done for decades! This area is, it seems, vacation country for a lot of Britons, and some of those towns can be pretty busy. After a day walking the green hills and woods, it can be something of a shock to enter them — but then again, there were comfortable beds and good food!
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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