25-OCT-2005
Hidalgo Market, Guanajuato, Mexico, 2005
The huge iron framed hall opened in 1910. It now features enormous Mexican movie posters. I base this composition on the rhythmic repetition of the six curving arched roof supports, seven smaller diagonal supporting bars, and the three huge posters. The incongruously cartoonish posters offer a diagonal band of color that flows in steps from the left hand edge to the lower right corner of the picture, while the series of arching roof supports reach from the lower left towards the upper right hand corner. These crossing diagonals flow in opposite directions, pulling the eye through the image twice.
26-OCT-2005
Church of San Roque, Guanajuato, Mexico, 2005
I express the age and character of this little church, built in 1726, by emphasizing the line, color, and texture within a small intersection of its surfaces. In composing this image, I’ve isolated the repeating diagonals on the left side of the frame, and contrasted them to the repeating verticals on the right hand side. Putting this picture together was like completing a puzzle, making each part fit perfectly into the other. I’ve tried to make this small section represent the beauty of the whole.
12-JUN-2005
Old Roofs, Bruges, Belgium, 2005
This image expresses the passage of time, as the roofs of these old houses and a single puffy cloud flow across the frame. The composition of the picture helps us accomplish this. Composing this image involved two critical decisions – where to stand, and when to release the shutter. I selected my vantage point first, because that determines what is in and what is out of my frame. I chose a camera position that includes four chimneys and one dormer window, carrying the eye from the upper left hand corner across the frame to just below the middle of the right hand edge. I also kept the spacing around the chimneys at the edges of the frame as consistent as possible, creating tension to energize the image. The mid-day sun creates high key lighting contrast along these roofs. I used this contrasting interplay of light and shadow to build a series of four repeating diagonal thrusts between the tiled roofs. The cloud is also an important element of the composition. It explodes across the right hand side of the frame, carrying the eye out of the picture. I had to wait a few minutes for that cloud to get where I wanted it to go, and only then did I squeeze the shutter release.
07-JUN-2005
The Journey, Brussels, Belgium, 2005
I pre-visualized the composition of this image, basing my idea on how the late evening light was striking the posts that lined a reflecting pool near Brussels’ old fish market. Using a 24mm wideangle lens, I anchor the image with the large diagonal slab at lower right, positioning it to lead the eye through the series of the twenty or so posts that gradually fade into the background. The fading light illuminates the closest post to the camera, then falls into shadow, shining again on the sixth through twelfth posts. This repetition of lighted posts created a pattern of movement offering a symbolic context for a human subject. All I needed was a person walking towards me along the narrow ledge next to the water. It took a while, but eventually this woman materialized -- exactly as I had pre-visualized it. I saw her emerge from the shadows, and when she reached this spot, I made this image. She had journeyed from darkness into light, and will soon pass into darkness again, offering a metaphor for the cycle of life itself.
12-JUN-2005
Historical character, Bruges, Belgium, 2005
It is the quaint ornamental detail such as this that gives historical character to the architecture of Bruges. Instead of photographing a whole building or group of buildings, I used a medium telephoto lens to reach out and bring these symbolic embellishments together in a coherent, expressive way. I narrowed my composition down to three rectangular posts and one triangular spire, supporting four characteristic details -- two weathervanes, an ornamental sculpture and a heraldic beast. The morning light created strong contrasts and deep shadows. I chose a vertical format to extend the height of these embellishments as much as possible. My decision to place the heraldic beast within the triangular spire behind it was an important one. It gives this image a consistent diagonal flow of movement beginning in the lower left hand corner and carrying the eye through to the upper right hand corner. The image gradually soars upwards with whimsy, grace, and elegance, a study in historical character, expressed largely through detail.
18-JAN-2005
Monastery Fence, Huay Xai, Laos, 2005
The lotus, an emblem of Buddhism, adorns the posts of this monastery fence. I organized this image in a series of three layers. The first layer, focal point of the photograph, is built around the fence and the lotus sculpture, the subjects of this image. I placed the lotus just to the right of the softly focused door in the background wall, the second layer. The eye exits through a softly focused gateway at right, leading to the third and final layer, a shadowed wall with a painting on it. I wanted this image to express a sense of serenity and quiet, which is very much the nature of the monastery it represents.
19-JAN-2005
Hmong Children, near Pak Beng, Laos, 2005
Large groups of Hmong children greeted us in the dusty river villages along the Mekong River. I originally had composed this image as a horizontal, including eight children instead of five. It was a fragmented, diffused grouping, which had some of the children looking in different directions, and poor spacing between those at the right and left hand edges. I reorganized the image by cropping it into to a vertical format, including only this tightly integrated cluster of five children. Their positions of the hands and feet vary, yet the heads of the children on each end are higher than the others, and serve as visual “bookends.” These children have grouped themselves alongside of a log that moves us diagonally through the image. More importantly, the group has arranged itself with coherence instead of chaos. All are fascinated as they watch visiting tourists move into their small village, and all look in the same direction. The colors of their clothing relate as well – none scream for attention. The image expresses a cultural divide as well –although all of them harmonize in terms of color, some wear contemporary clothes while the others wear traditional garments. Times are changing, even in remote of Laotian river villages. The only thing I did to organize this image for coherence and meaning – was to crop it. The children spontaneously composed the rest of it for me.
Evening Cattle Drive, Bagan, Myanmar, 2005
Using a long 432mm telephoto lens, I could bring this parade of cattle on the road into juxtaposition with the ruins of the ancient temples behind them. Together they form a timeless vision of this ancient Burmese city where ruins and farms have existed side by side for centuries. I structured this image in a series of layers moving from bottom to top. The cattle form the base layer, the trees and farmhouse the middle layer, and the ruined temples and mountains form the background. The base layer is the subject of the picture itself, with the other two layers adding context for meaning. The middle ground portrays Bagan as it functions today – a farming community, while the background gives a sense of what Bagan might have looked like a thousand years ago, when it ruled a great Burmese empire. The fading dusky light has muted the colors, and given the image a flatness making it into a tapestry expressing the flavor of Old Bagan.
19-OCT-2004
Yellow, Green, White and Red, Near Bridgeport, California, 2004
I composed this image out of color itself. By moving in to isolate the snow covered red and green bushes in my frame, and using background entirely of yellow leaves, I create not only seasonal contrasts, but color contrasts as well. The rich yellow, a primary color, provides a vibrant, incongruous context for the snow-covered bushes. It ironic that snow, the subject of this picture, provides the most neutral color in this composition. This photograph expresses seasonal change – the end of fall and the coming of winter – in the Eastern Sierra.
17-OCT-2004
Sierra Snows, near Conway Summit, California, 2004
As the sun rises on the Sierra Nevada Mountains, we stop to photograph the almost theatrical effect of dawn light and color on the snow caped peaks, as well the desert of sagebrush leading up to them. I organize this image into a series of horizontal bands making up separate five layers. The first layer is the foreground, which I build around a road entering the picture at the bottom of the frame, and then curling right, into the heart of the sage. The second band is a transitional layer of sage that joins the desert to range of dark hills in the middle of the image. These hills, my third layer, are in shadow. Part of that shadow connects them to the dramatic snow capped peaks, making up the fourth layer – the focal point and subject of this image. The fifth and final layer is the sky, which is filled with thin golden clouds that echo the pinkish orange color of the snow on the mountains.
19-OCT-2004
Wet Curve, near the California-Nevada Border, 2004
A rainy fall day in the Eastern Sierras provides spectacular views of a rugged, yet beautiful, landscape. To make this scene work as a photograph, I compose it around a series of striking contrasts in color, texture, and directional thrusts. I fill the foreground with a wet road flanked by dual focal points – a brilliant yellow tree on the left, and a car about to take a curve to the right, its tires leaving a fine mist of water in its wake. I contrast this colorful flow of the road moving right, to a series of light brown hills bearing hundreds of leafless trees that zig and zag both to the left and to the right as they climb towards the top of the frame. A forest fire probably scourged these hills, still another way that nature works on the land. Man, nature, rain, fire, color, and movement – all play their parts in this memorable scene.
18-OCT-2004
Restaurant, Bridgeport, California, 2004
The Bridgeport Inn’s restaurant offers patrons the option of viewing Main Street from an outdoor stool as they dine. There were no takers while we were there. The temperature was in the 30’s. In this image I try to build layer after layer of potential meaning upon each other. I shot this scene from inside of the restaurant itself, and anchor it with the tops of two dining chairs flanking a small American flag, some flowers, and a glass. These objects are all in shadow so as not to conflict with the other layers. This abstracted foreground layer contrasts to the next layer – four outdoor stools. Behind them a neon sign is sandwiched between lace curtains and another American flag, which softly waves over the street. The neon, focal point of picture, as well as the genteel curtains, offer symbols referring to both time and place. Bridgeport is in rural America, where patriotism is boldly displayed at every opportunity. The sign, curtains and flag would have been just at home here fifty years ago. Still another layer is created by the geometry of woodwork that offers us a frame within a frame, drawing our eyes out to the street beyond. This framing gives the image its illusion of depth. The street scene in the back of the image is the last layer. All that comes before it is carefully controlled, as if it were a stage set. But the public street represents the real, almost accidental, world -- commercial buildings with “closed” signs in their windows, a man walking a dog, and a car for sale, which has been parked on the street for days. The comfortable Inn and its restaurant are designed to make visitors to Bridgeport feel at home, but the street outside is for everyone and everything.