Color, texture and pattern revisited

Being outdoors a lot provides opportunities to experience nature in a personal way.  The camera is usually close by and when I see something that peaks my interest, I try to make a picture of it.  Georgia O'Keeffe once said that unless art is good in an abstract way, it doesn't matter what the subject is.  Okay, so that is a more-or less quote.  What she meant is the building blocks of art need to be present in order to have a decent work of art.

Textures, of course, are an element of art and one photographers really need to pay close attention to and can, by itself, be an interesting subject.  (just as color and pattern are).  So all this rambling is leading to two images from a while back, but photographs I like which feature the above mentioned elements.  Maybe that's why I still like them, even a couple years later.

Barley Texture

Barley, our favorite hunting lab, is always by our side and about as good as they get.  Cold wet weather doesn't seem to phase her one bit.

Rooster Feathers

The rooster pheasant has to be about the beautiful bird in North America and one of the hardest to harvest at some points.  I'm always in awe of  when holding them in my hands.

NHS Digital Photography: Junkmans Window

NHS Digital Photography: Junkmans Window: "Time to put up or shut up. I keep telling my students to write more...to post more, but I need to realize they have more than just photogra..."

Mike in North Dakota

I wanted to re-visit some of my NoDak photographs and post some that I connect with and frankly, bring back good feelings.  I maybe have one more posting after this one of another series of images, but for now, these  lit here.

Mike and James headed to Wind Mill Pond

Mike is my oldest friend, not in years old (although we're getting there) -I've know him since moving to Rib Mountain as a kid and joining scouts.  We worked our way to Eagle Scout together and from those days on have spent many hours working  the woods and swamps for grouse and ducks.  We live in different towns now, so a chance to go afoot hunting is more than welcome.  James is his oldest son and in his second year of making the North Dakota trip.  No longer a rookie and I think he's hooked for life and he really is a hoot to have a long .  He works for the Minnesota Twins.  This image was from the first morning after the big blow, the day dawned sunny and beautiful and we made a huge plan to surround a series of pot holes.  Ice covered everything....plan didn't work out so well-it felt like we hiked to Saskatchewan.  We still managed to pick up a few birds. 
This picture I like a lot-I guess I hit the "magic hour" as we headed out laden with waders and decoys and shotguns.  There is a such a raw beauty out here.

Mike and Pete

Another photograph of Mike-this one a day later while hunting pheasants along a bean field.  Pete is a few years old now, a Yellow Lab picked up from a kennel in Neillsville, WI.  Color or black and white for this image?  I think the latter worked well.  I like the vastness of this area and it's accentuated by the lone tree on the horizon.  I like the bands of different textures from the ground cover also and movement of the grass-you can almost feel the wind.  While hunting, I feel more alive from that sharpness in my face.

Mike cleaning game

Last photo of Mike here-and this did not start out as a "mike post" at all-I changed the photographs here and the title along the way-I just felt my pictures and thought process changed directions mid-stream.  Film cameras gave us grain-sometimes bad, sometimes used as a "mood" or feeling.  Now digital cameras give us "noise" at high ISOs in dark conditions.  I've hated noise, but in the course of a few weeks, because of where I've been shooting, noise was inevitable.  Live with it Steve.  Just like my Twangfest picture a few days ago, the blurriness and the noise is second to what's happening here and my connection to it.  It's cold, we've marched all day hunting, food and a beer are all that is on our minds, yet we need to honor this game by cleaning it and finishing the hunt off properly.  Ducks and pheasants were lined up and quickly processed for the table.  For me, this illustrates our end of day routine.

Twangfest.

SO much I could write about Twangfest this year-gut busting laughter, man hugs, good camp food, hours in the woods, success and failures of the hunters, but a bond of brothers to be sure.  27 years we've been gathering each fall.  Some years I've taken tons of photos, some-not so much.

This photograph is dark, noisy, blurry and I love it.  It tells a story.  I think as hunters we love seeing a day wake and drift off into the night, so darkness accompanies us always.  The hunt can be successful or not.  This one, had  a great ending.  God blessed us with a harvest.  It shows also the brotherhood we have at Twang-sincerely happy with the success of each other and willing to help-it's part of camp life.

I guess life can be dark, noisy, blurry and.....we love it.

The Great Plains

I'm settling back in Wisconsin for a few days anyway and can finally get a new post up.  I was pretty happy I survived the trip out to North Dakota-crazy record low pressure reading and winds over 50 mph.  It took tow days, but we made it.  Hunting was not great-too deep of snow for pheasants and too hard of ice for ducks.  Still....had fun.  It is a beautiful place and I love spending time there, but I'd need my beloved trees to live.  I tried my new camera, the Samsung XXX model, and had my trusty Canon SD550 and my Canon SXI.  The new camera I was a bit afraid to carry while hunting, but used it on the trip and around camp.  Worked okay-some little things I don't care for, but I'm getting used to it.   This will probably be a multi-post thing, a few images here and some to follow.

Lone Cemetery Cottonwood

I can't remember what this cemetery was named on the topo map, but I'd run across it a few years ago.  We were doing a push for roosters across a big field and I knew this was near the end.  I had to visit it again.  These little cemeteries are tucked all over out here on the plains-postage stamp sized pieces of the harsh life out on this land.  It's not visible here, but the cottonwood was growing up thru the middle of a grave site, maybe 6' X 6' and was long forgotten.

Barley doin her thang

Barley is one of the best Labs I've met-small, compact, retrieves and has the whole get in their face pheasant thing figured out.  Amazing dog.  She seems to be featured in a lot of my photos and after a long day hunting, find my bed her favorite place to sleep.  I thought this photograph really summed up her as a hunting dog.  A picture tells a "tousand" words I do believe.

Hunter Dave

As the camp photographer, a role I easily won over my pals, there rarely is any photos of me-I don't mind and enjoy making a book of each trip.  Dave is one of my closest friends and he, besides Barley, seems to get 'shot' a lot.  This image I liked-just the hunter hunting and the simpleness of the foreground-the pheasants habitat (which is sadly disappearing).

Return To North Dakota

As I write this-the winds here in Wisconsin are starting up and rain decided it was time to revisit once again.  In ten hours or so, Dave, one of my closest friends, Rick, Tenleys  man and labs Gracie and Barley, will begin our journey west.  In seven or eight hours of driving (if we're very lucky tonight- read: blow and snow) we'll arrive in Lehr ND.  This will be our fifth trip out west and every one brings excitement, laughter, friendship and memories.  There is a unique beauty there that I love.
This is also my chance to shoot a lot-with 12 guage and camera.  I usually make a photo book from the trip each year, and the guys love and charish that.  It feels good to share my images in that way.  At times I wonder what it would be like to just be a photographer during this annual hunt.  Sure would make things easier making good photographs.  The gun, shell, dogs and keeping a keen eye out for shooting (the gun) does hinder photography.

But, I guess if I only held a camera in my hands I would be an observer, and I really love being a participant.  So I do need to hold the gun, smell the burnt powder and harvest some game and hold them in my hands.  There is a difference....I can't really hunt with just a camera.

Dave in North Dakota

Twangfest 2010

This is a photo blog, right?  So I'll post the most unusual photo I have here, but really this isn't about the picture.  Hmmmm maybe it is.  Twangfest will see its 27th addition in a few weeks and I'm pretty amazed the group of guys have kept at it all along.  It started when we all were in college in La Crosse (WI ) and we'd take Sundays to head up to Black River Falls to bow hunt.  Somewhere along the line, someone came up with the brilliant idea to make it a weekend and camp, hunt and just enjoy ourselves....and call it Twangfest.  The bow hunting part has always been very important, but also the chance to get together each year as brothers.  Over all these years this group of guys have seen jobs come and go, marriages, divorce,  children brought into the world and sadly some our parents leave it.  We're scattered now across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Tennessee, but still make the journey back each fall.  It's funny... in a good way, that it takes all of 2 seconds to feel like we've just been together, even though a year has past.  We jump right back into our close knit friendships.  I guess the picture does tell some of the story-music, skits, hunting, autumn and goofiness which all play a role in Twangfest.  I know for myself, as the air cools, trees turn color and the first squawking of blue jays ("THERE he is....there HE is!") start, I get excited about Twang getting closer.  It effects all of us during the year too, new purchases of gear, vehicles, and hunting clothes all have a sense of Twangfest in the back of our minds.  "This will be great at Twang!"
Not too many days to go now-better start packing.  I can't wait.

The 1987 Twangfest Brothers

Molly

So Molly is slowly recovering from her broken hip-it's been 8 weeks now and she seems to have turned the corner physically and mentally.  She is excited about life again, acting like a lab should.  It was really hard during her recovery watching her waste away, no energy, not eating, not being able to do the things a dog loves to do.  She still can't quite run, but she has a good little jog and trot and water is always one of her favorite things.  I liked the full color of this shot from a late afternoon hike in the woods.  Most of the fall color is going quickly, soon no leaves will remain, but a new season is around the corner. :)

Molly at Pond

Twisty Branches

So I always have this contradictory feeling as fall slowly starts edging toward winter.  I love fall-the smell, the color, the coolness, the depth of feelings from years spent in Autumn woods.  But there is also an excitement around the corner-coolness changes to crisp cold and snow.  The real quality time with bow and gun starts soon and that is also such a part of me.  It's sad to see the color give way to the bare branch, but on a short walk yesterday I saw beauty in that also.

Mythical Sunrises

So sometimes I get an idea in my head and finally have to act on it-sleep sure wasn't working.  So photoshop elements was loaded at eleven thirty and I pulled up the recent sunrise images again to work on.  Maybe it was something I'd read about Ansel Adams today...about "post processing" and if that was "real " photography.  We do call this "making a picture," right?  The author stated Adams once said that shooting the photograph was just half the work, and the rest was creating the image in the dark room.  So we're back to our darkroom, the computer.  I do understand in journalistic terms images can't be altered, but in artistic terms, anything goes.  I'm not doing anything original here-other photographers have selected areas, copied, pasted, stretched, tweaked to get their vision of an image.  I had done a technique like this many years ago, but for whatever reason the idea came back when I worked on the sunrises yesterday.
Not knowing which of the images really turned out the best (in my mind) I kept rolling them in front of my eyes.  I still don't know.  They look mythical or dreamlike to me- whatever that really means.  Sometimes it's fun to just really work an image, and this is what sometimes happens....

Cave Point Sunrise

Sunrises and sunsets-I feel obligated to make pictures of them-they do stir the soul.  But...everyone does them.  It's a struggle to decide if I should or let someone else make those images.  In the end, I pressed the shutter because I made the effort to rise early, drive like a maniac to get to this location and manage to get lost.  By god, I was going to shoot this day!  Cave Point is just north west of Whitefish Dunes State Park and a photographers "got-to" location.  There were several other photogrpahers there when I arrived (after getting lost along the way!) who had been there since early morning.  It had looked like the light would be gone, but a distant cloud bank lifted and the morning light poured through.  It's amazing (and maybe shouldn't be) that I can take 50 frames and only have a couple "keepers" or images that I think are interesting.  So here are my sunrise pictures from an October morning in Door County.