Sunset Colors On The Lake

It had been gray and raining for most of the past several days, but it cleared out shortly before sunset last evening.

I had been working outside once again and noticed the change of light. Walking into the house, I grabbed a camera and long lens, then headed down to the edge of the lake.

Waiting maybe five minutes for the best color of the day, I photographed the colors of the clouds and sky reflected on the water.

It turned out to be another gorgeous evening.

I was outside last evening just after sunset and saw some amazing colors in the sky. Stepping into the house, I grabbed a camera with the appropriate lens and ran back outside.

Barely a hundred feet from my back door I was able to take these photos. It was just one of those moments and I guess I was in it.

Of course it didn't hurt that I've done this sort of thing many times before. But had I waited another five minutes, all those wonderful pinks and purples would have been gone.

The New York Times just published an excellent blog titled "A Moment In Time". Thousands of great images there from all across the globe. I was fortunate to have one of mine included in this impressive collection.

To view it, just go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/03/blogs/a-moment-in-time.html?hp#/4bde36be224fe20c1d000378

The Journey

I set off the other morning on a 2000-plus mile road trip. Though it actually had been relatively warm the last few days (relative, that is, to the sub-zero days we'd been having since before Christmas), I was leaving the cold and snowy Upper Midwest behind, headed for sunshine and warmth, and traveling as far south as the roads would take me. My destination was Key West, Florida, site of one of the best winter sailing regattas on the planet.

Leaving before daybreak, I got past the Minneapolis area ahead of the rush-hour congestion. As I crossed into Wisconsin, I noticed there now was a little color in the sky. In the next half-hour the sun would rise through a light fog, a glowing red-orange ball surrounded by a misty gray sky. What had been a winter gloom was now transformed into a scene like a Japanese print, and a colorful one at that. Shades of pastel pinks, purples and oranges covered the landscape and the next couple hours passed rather quickly for me as I mentally took pictures while driving.

By the time I stopped for lunch in central Illinois, the sun had finally broken through the thin clouds and it had warmed up enough to where the snow was seriously melting. It was like one of those days at the end of winter when you finally know that spring can't be too far away. The afternoon went by as I drove further south and the sun got lower in the sky. It was not long after 4:30 when it dropped beneath the trees. Just before it set I passed by a lake, noting its orange reflections on the broken ice and the long shadows cast by woods on the far side.

Darkness fell before I left Illinois and the nighttime drive through Kentucky became unremarkable. I was really putting on the miles now towards the day's destination in Tennessee.

The next morning dawned clear as I left Nashville. An hour out, I crossed the Cumberland Plateau, a climb of several hundred feet, followed by an awesome descent. Coming down the grade I looked upon the spectacular vista of a large piece of the southern mountains spread before me. Row upon row of forested ridges filled my view, each one receding a little fainter into the distance.
Enjoying the view of springtime in the Appalachians, it seemed at this point that I had truly left winter behind.

The road through Georgia witnessed red clay and pines. It remained hilly and stayed so through Atlanta, even while driving past the office towers and corporate centers that make up so much of this bustling city. finally flattening out an hour or so below the city and, as I headed further south, the landscape opened up once more and I noticed there were fewer trees and more farmland.

It had become another long day on the road by now. The sky had grown dark before I reached the Florida border, and the rest of the drive into Jacksonville was spent in this silence.

After enjoying a great day in Jacksonville catching up with an old friend, I was back on the road for one more full day of driving. While it had been cloudy the day before, the overnight rains had cleared the sky. Heading south under a brilliant blue sky, I was now enjoying the legendary Florida winter that has lured snowbirds for at least three generations.

As much as I was enjoying the experience, after three days of travel I seemed to want to hurry up this process. Unless I seriously sped, it was going to take a full eight hours to get to, literally, the end of the road, and, if I stopped for lunch, I'd never make it before sunset. And, as much as I really wanted to be there before sundown, there were some downsides to pushing myself beyond the reasonable. Not paying attention to where I was and what I was experiencing was a most important one.

In the end, I chose to live deliberately, take the time needed to see where I was going and get there that much richer from the experiences gathered. While I didn't make Key West before the sun set, I did manage to get a great photo of "just another evening in paradise" only a few miles from my final stop. It's at the top if this blog.

After all, life isn't so much about the destination as the journey.

F-Eight And Be There

There's a story that goes about a visitor to a gallery where a photographer is displaying his work. Walking through the show, the visitor finds one of the prints to be particularly appealing, and calling over to the photographer asks how he got the picture. Expecting to be told it was taken with a certain brand of camera, a lens of a particular focal length and exposed on a specific film (this story predates digital photography) at such and such a combination of shutter speed and aperture, the visitor is surprised when the photographer simply replies, "f-eight and be there".

It was not a very technically informative answer, but probably the most honest one. And, its truth is probably even more appropriate today than when first told a few decades back. In this age of technological wonders, where millions of people have access to image-making equipment that is at least as good as what top professionals used only a few years ago, the saying is more true than ever that equipment alone does not make make the photographer.

I currently work with top of the line multi-megapixel digital camera bodies and a collection of special-glass interchangeable lenses, but it's not just this new gear that's responsible for my best photos. I'll admit, I can take a lot more keeper-quality images in a day now, but being in the right place and at the right time I've found remains the most important quality for outstanding photos.

For me, that usually requires travel to location, boarding a boat, stepping into a plane or helicopter or maybe even hiking or climbing to a remote, often uncomfortable and sometimes precarious setting. Frequently weather conditions are not the best; there's too little wind or too much; the light is too contrasty or too flat - or not enough. And, whether it's hovering over a starting line, lining up at a mark for the fleet to round or climbing a mast, tower or rock face, there's usually some element of uncertainty thrown into the situation that makes things, well, let's call it interesting.

Many years ago I learned both the fundamentals as well as the more technical aspects of photography. Coming from an engineering school background, I guess I never found them particularly difficult. Much more challenging has been to be "front and center" on an often-moving platform and getting the shot at what Cartier-Bresson called "the decisive moment".

F-eight is the easy part.

Shooting The Breeze - An Introduction

For more than thirty years, almost my entire adult life, I've been a photographer, documenting what crossed my path. Or, perhaps more often, I altered mine upon observing something that attracted my attention.

As a child, I flew kites and was amazed that the wind could lift an object into the air. (Perhaps my first interest in flight, but that's a story for later.) Later, before I was a teenager, I learned to sail. It has been one of those skills that I have carried through life, it taking me on a far-ranging journey over the last few decades.

In my later teens I became aware of fragility of our environment and saw that the resources of Planet Earth were finite. It was some time after that when I put these facets together, hoping that what I saw and recorded could make a difference in the quality of our lives.

That I could make a career out of wind and water and light has been a bonus.