Hit and miss trips, learning waves
#103
After getting the equipment for the spring break on Wednesday, 20th March, I went out Friday night to Bowling to see if I could photograph the river bed in the evening. I thought I’d be a good idea as I had mixed results photographing in the morning, due to the rising sun and the constantly changing light conditions. I took a train and got to the site, while it was still light (last light), however as I found out, the gates to the marina where closed already. There was no one to ask about this so I assume that they are still in the winter mode and close for the sunset.Â
Nevertheless, I attempted to get to the marina from the side of the train station. There is an ‘unofficial’ path (mostly for foxes, quite narrow, on the side of the water, running along the railway tracks) and I braved it to the point of the fence that has a ‘hole’ in it. The path is not the easiest to go through, mainly due to the jaggy plants that keep catching on to one’s clothes. My jacket is not too bad, but I wished I had more ‘sleek’ coverings on my legs, as I endured quite a few thorns... I had to use a torch from my phone as the plants are on all levels - body and eyes! Yikes. I remembered the jaggy thorns in the quarries. I guess I’m drawn to them :D The other obstacles that were even more dangerous were plastic bottles. They are horrendous on the path, because you just slide on them and it’s easy to fall, and the only thing to hold on to are the jaggy plants! It was a tough walk but I made it to the place where I had the best opportunities for pictures. I set up the camera but it was quite dark by that time. The lowest tide was just before 7pm, I must have set up around 8pm. Unfortunately, when I tried to meter the shot I set the camera for, the light meter showed ERR. I tried using my cycle light to shine on the spot I wanted to shoot, but the meter wouldn’t work. I guess it was too dark for it to see anything. What a lesson! Nevertheless, since I had all set up, well apart from being sure of the focus, I really couldn’t see much in the ground glass, I took a couple of around 1min30sec exposures. I say around because I had to hold the exposure button as I don’t have a cable release and I set up my phone alarm for 1min. Altogether I think the two exposures were about 1.5 min. I’ll be able to process them on Tuesday.Â
As a side note, I felt brave that night and took one of the stones I photographed a few weeks back, with me home. I will perhaps see how it looks like submerged in water, as per Nadav Kander post earlier on here.Â
Another trip I went to was on Saturday. This time I thought I’d go to Darnley as it was supposed to be a sunny day. I thought I’d have quite a good few hours shooting and should be able to practice the zone system I was reading about in Ansel Adam’s books on Thursday. Unfortunately, that was a miss as well. The levels of water were so low, there was nothing for me to shoot really. Not as I imagined my shots to be. I didn’t want to give up as it was a bit of a cycle, so I played with my infrared camera, trying to ‘see’ anything interesting. I noticed those interesting hair like textures on the water again. They are the effect of sun kissing the surface of the water. The result looks like surface tension, like hair, like something electrical, magical. I decided that since that is the only thing I can see, I’d try to photograph that. I set up the camera on the tripod and I think I spent about half an hour trying my best to find the place I wanted to shoot in focus. Somehow I had troubles finding the focus, so I struggled with the heavy camera raising it on the tripod higher and higher. I brought a couple of stones from the stream, to stand on, so that I could see the ground glass, to find the focus. I found the black cloth very helpful in seeing the image on the ground glass. However, my tripod was not strong enough to keep the camera still in place, it kept falling down so I abandoned the idea. As I was putting the camera down, still on the tripod, I suddenly found the shot I visualised in focus. I quickly tried to measure the light and find appropriate exposure settings and I did take one shot, but I think the sun was gone from the place so I’m rather expecting a black image only. We’ll see.Â
I also went to Pollok Park Thursday afternoon, as the rain stopped and the sun came out for a few hours. It was a very pleasant trip, I saw some fishermen in the river. I took about 12 exposures but man was that hard! I don’t have a clue if I’ve got any usable exposures. The meter was jumping with the readings, showing me exposures between 0.7 sec to even 180th of a second. Mental! So much for me trying to learn the Zone system... The images I took were mostly guessed...Again, I’ll see on Tuesday if there’s anything there...
Well, try again! :]
I don’t give up. I think this is just the way I am learning about the landscape. This is a journey of discovery. One can’t learn everything in an instant, in one day. It takes time to experience, to go through lessons, to analyse the results, or even the lack of them. I still enjoy the process. I find ‘failures’ valuable. They help me gather the knowledge I need to get better at understanding the cyclicality of the organic environment. It is not something I can control, it is something I visit and observe, take notes and learn from that.Â
















