Rocky
April 17th, 2007
Have I mentioned the sun at Big Bend. The searing, brutal, relentless, glaring hot sun? I thought I had. Challenging light. From the moment the sun rose above the horizon until the moment it sank below it, it blasted us. It cooked us. It created lens flair. Hot highlights and dark shadows. Never a break. Now and then there would be a hint of clouds, but the sun would burn them off in no time.
This is on some rocks in the morning of our second day of shooting. It was fairly early in the morning. This was a great setting. With some relief from the sun, even a little bit of cloud cover or mist in the early morning there would have been lots of possibilities for compositions here. But the sun beating down on us dictated everything about the shot…camera angle, pose, composition all determined by the sun. And that’s the way it was at Big Bend.
At the movies
April 15th, 2007
There’s an old movie set in the Big Bend area. It looked real familiar when we stopped there. I’m sure I’ve seen it in some westerns. It made for some good backgrounds. Here’s Niecy in front of the “church.”
This is the last of the photos I’m going to post, at least for now, from our first day of shooting at Big Bend. I’m still editing the shoot. The next post will be from our second day, after Rose had joined our little photo party. After I work through the rest of the Big Bend shoot I’ll circle back and work on the earlier shoots on this trip, the Ozarks and the Houston area. Lots more photos to come from all of that.
It appears that all went well on Friday the 13th and on Ruination Day yesterday. We can relax now, maybe.
And, finally for today, thinking of Kurt Vonnegut who recently died after a long lifetime of challenging and inspiring us, here is one of my favorites of his many wonderful quotes:
“Listen: we are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”
OK…sorry, here are a couple more:
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ “
and,
“There is no way a beautiful woman can live up to what she looks like for any appreciable length of time.”
Kurt is up in heaven now… 😉
And, so it goes…
Niecy in Closed Canyon
April 13th, 2007
Here’s another photo of Niecy in the slot canyon we hiked on our first day at Big Bend. It was one of the very few places in the area where we were at least partially out of the sun while outdoors. But the canyon wasn’t as deep, as narrow or as colorful as slot canyons I’ve photographed in the red rock desert up around the Utah/Arizona border. Still it offered some shelter from the sun and some photo opportunities.
It’s Friday the 13th and tomorrow is Ruination Day…so you all be careful out there.
Niecy inside
April 12th, 2007
Getting away from that hot Big Bend sun.
Big Bend Panorama
April 11th, 2007
Here’s a view of morning in Big Bend. This was shot from near the old cemetery in Terlingua Ghost Town. The ghost town is not so ghostly these days with a gift shop and a number of restaurants along with many residents. I think they are really going to have to give up calling it a ghost town soon. We had breakfast one morning in the building to the right. That’s where we met the cook who had rolled his truck and the welder getting away from it all but hanging on to his bluetooth earpiece.
I did a real quick merge job on this pano, so the seams aren’t real good. I shot it hand-held, but I think when I get time to play with it I will be able to get a good clean merge. I may adjust exposure on a few of the frames before I merge it again to even things up a bit better. But not bad for a quickie assembled with the free software that came with my Canon G6. I used the Nikon D200 and 18-200 lens for these shots.
Niecy in a doorway
April 9th, 2007
Niecy on the rocks
April 7th, 2007
Why I use digital cameras
April 6th, 2007
It occurred to me that the photo in my last post is a good example of why I chose to use digital tools to make my photos. There are all sorts of cameras available and all sorts of reasons for choosing one over another. Some photographers like a challenge and chose equipment that requires much of them. Others find a particular camera fits their shooting style or subject matter better than others. All those are valid reasons for making choices.
Myself, I’m lazy. I try to tell myself that I’m lazy in a good way. I like to use the tool that makes the job easy to do. I don’t mind at all getting up at 5 a.m. and climbing a mountain to get to the right spot to take a photo. But when I get there I want to use the camera that requires the least attention from me, that weighs the least for that hike, and still does what I want it to do. It also helps that I don’t have to buy film, haul it up the mountain, then pay to get it processed.
But, there is also the matter of producing the image I want. In this case, the sun at Big Bend was so intense that it washed out all the colors in this scene. The eye just could not record the detail because it was so damn bright, even in the shade.
Here’s what that photo looked like straight out of the camera:
Now some of you may recognize that what I’ve done here is basic zone system stuff. But I can do it on a color image. You can’t adjust development times on color photos to control contrast. But you can make those changes in Photoshop.
So, I think I’ll stick with these tools. There’s a reason it’s called progress.
In the Shade
April 5th, 2007
About Big Bend
April 5th, 2007
Before I left for Big Bend my friend and fellow photographer, Tim Black, told me he had been there and didn’t think much of it. Of course, I had to go see for myself anyway. But I think Tim was at least partly right. I found some photos. Found some good places to shoot. But there are a lot of places in the desert southwest where I’d rather go. I don’t think I’ll be back to Big Bend. Everyone who was along for the shoot pretty much shared that opinion of the place.
And it seems strange. Maybe we were missing something. We kept running into people who told us it was their 4th trip back to the place. Our response was always, “Why?” They loved it there. Some said that people either love Big Bend or hate it. I don’t fall into either category. I don’t love it and I don’t hate it. I’m pretty much indifferent to it.
It’s a big place. It’s a harsh, cruel place. The sun is relentless. There is no “golden hour.” The sun beats down until it finally drops below the mountains. Remembering my belief that there is not “good” light and “bad” light, only easy light and challenging light…well the light is always a challenge at Big Bend. I found myself either working with the effects of the hard sunlight, or hiding the models from it in the shade. It was always a problem to be dealt with, not the gift of beauty that the sun sometimes provides.
On top of the natural setting is the culture of the people in the place. We only found one restaurant that served good food (not counting the park lodge restaurant with did a great breakfast buffet and even let us sneak in late one morning). Other places had interesting character, and characters, but the food was marginal. The restaurant at our motel offered nasty food and surly service.
In one local eating place we found a couple interesting local characters. One was a welder who pronounced that he loved Big Bend because he could escape all the hustle of modern life and work on “Terlingua time.” The fact that he was wearing a bluetooth earpiece while saying that somewhat belied the statement. I was reminded of a photo essay by my old friend and mentor, Bruce Humphrey, from back in our newspaper photographer days. The essay Bruce shot was entitled, “Incongruity.” A portrait of this fellow would have fit in well.
The other man in the restaurant that morning was the cook. He was moving slow and barely able to move one arm. He had rolled his truck a couple days earlier. We had seen the truck being gathered up by a tow truck the morning after. He had been checked out by the local EMTs who told him he probably had a few broken ribs and possibly a broken collar bone. He had not been to a doctor. The nearest doctor is in Alpine, 80 miles away…and his truck was a wreck.
The welder pronounced that to be the way it is in Big Bend. “Don’t fuck up,” he said, because there isn’t any help if you do.
Until a few years ago the school in the Terlingua area only went to the 8th grade. If a student wanted to go to high school they had to go that 80 miles to Alpine. That has changed, and other things are slowly changing. Who’s to say which of the changes are good and which are costing this unique, remote corner of the country the very things which have defined it.
Some are drawn to this community and this harsh desert. I’m not one of them. But I’m glad to have visited and to have had two very talented figure models there to help me make photos. I don’t think I’ll be back, though.
This is Niecy Moss on our first day of shooting. She’s in some partial shade from that cruel sun.
