The Water's Colored: Sunrise Near Osterville, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Just before the sun rose over Cape Cod colors almost became neon. The Cape's about water, and the palette seemed washed onto the frame with soft brushes. Alone on that bridge I felt as if I ought to have a tripod, canvas, and a large tin of watercolor pigment. 

Watercolors have a cellophane transparency as they wash across one another and sink into paper. The thing about this medium that really resonates with me is the lack of detail when colors are well diluted. I stood there and watched an abstract come to life along this back-lit tidal channel. About a quarter mile down the road to my right there's a tiny port where a fishing boat motor dieseled to life and the scent of sizzling bacon mixed with salty air. 

I hand-held five shots with my Canon 7D through an EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5) at 10mm. then merged the them into a pano in PS4. Then I sucked out the color in a layer processed in Topaz B&W Effects 2. Then I worked the color range back in from a layer I processed in Alien Skin's Exposure X starting with Kodachrome II then shifting it warmer. Each region of the merged layers was carefully processed in PS4 to bring the dynamic range into a dreamy mood. Then I worked the merged frame in AlienSkin's Snap Art4: Water Color, carefully laying in the brush strokes. Sometimes people ask how much time I expend in a final image like this. This one took about 11 hours to replicate how I felt standing on this narrow Osterville bridge at sunrise on a cool September Tuesday morning. 

Can you feel the breeze in your face?

What's the Magic?

Nauset Light (1877) • Cape Cod, MA

Nauset Light (1877), Barnstable, Mass, Cape Cod - United States

Once upon a time, - boys and girls - Nauset Light was a key part of the Global Positioning System. And from 1877 on,  if you were near Barnstable on the North Atlantic at night... it was a part of the Cape Cod 8-lighthouse Positioning System.

Today's GPS is a disruptive tech. It made this cone at daybreak only pretty. It's been decommissioned and the keeper's house was given, along with the light, to a preservation society.

It's one of the East Coast's least photographed lights, and hard to find sitting smack in the middle of a neighborhood of cottages that grew around it.

Now, here's the question... Why the hell do we feel driven to make images of these things? They were public utilities. So are dumpsters and fire hydrants. Have you got many dumpster/hydrant pix? Okay, maybe it's a supply/demand thing? Not as many lighthouses around... Does that explain it? If that's the reason, well then why don't we picture every old bridge? Or municipal hall? Or ... you get the, um, picture, right?

And yet... yet... I don't care what sort of art you're into, you gotta' admit that the itch to do something with a lighthouse tingles-right? What's the magic?

Here's what late summer looks like in Nauset through my Canon 7D's  EFS 70-300mm lens after I poke and sculpt it in PS4. And here's why people buy homes on Cape Cod and others travel so far to vacation here, or on the nearby islands. For a quarter of a century we lived in New England... And even thirty years later, as I sit here in Lancaster County tonight... I feel its tug.

BTW... How's this look on your monitor? Too dark?

So I Got This Problem...

Nature

The house teeters up there, its hope simultaneously resting behind boulders piled against the nature of the North Atlantic, and a cardboard sign against the nature of humans. But I wonder: isn’t the latter intended to protect the structure from the whims of taxpayers who erected the former?
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How fragile security seems when looked at from behind a pile of rocks that won’t alter the nature of climate, nor signs that can't change the nature of humans.
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The morning after a stormy night my Canon 7D's wide angle 10-22mm  found some steps rising from Corporation Beach in E. Dennis, Massachusetts on the bay side of Cape Cod. There's so much color smoldering to life at sunrise... Maybe too much? Perhaps this palette shrink-wraps reality behind a romantic patina that distracts us away from life's harshness? Maybe colors are the tools of poets and cynics while monochrome is a tool of realists and skeptics?
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Or maybe this is just a house perched atop a dune? :-)

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But that's not the problem in the title of this post. Well over a half century ago I started thinking about palette and photography. That meant struggling with all sorts of color theory and its aesthetics. The thing is that down deep I like a lot of chrome. I mean I want it cranked up to 11 on a dial that goes to 10! And now, thanks to technology, I can twirl that dial all the way... WHIP!

Looking back, you'll see a few recent posts here that got monochromed... FWUUUP! The sound of color sucked away to reveal the haunting underlayerment of feeling. But monochrome's a false choice in most cases. Kicking away everything but 50 shades of gray... Well, that'll make for a hot commercial novel, but the power of my original narrative here, in this image... Isn't best served by sheering away the color fabric, is it?

I've found that full-on color grabs attention, but it's like deep cleavage, y'know? It serves a certain, um, function, but it's hard to get the audience to look in your eye...

So I've got this problem... How to overcome an addiction to chromo-blasting? Wall space is so scarce. Without a story arc, there's no reason to return to an image... It has no aura. No wonder... And art without wonder is merely craft. If I can't get something new from an image each time I return to it, well, I don't want to live with it. Won't give it a piece of that scarce wall space.

As you climb the stairs to my office, the walls and the landing are filled with photographs wonderfully lit by indirect sun light. Some are mine, others are by resonant minds that make me VERY careful which of mine I dare hang near them. Increasingly I've found that the work which endures has the color cranked down to six or seven. Yet, first-time visitors invariably are drawn to pulsating color.

Okay, I should please myself, forget others. But that would wall off learning and growth. Nope, not a good idea. Any suggestions? As you scroll backward in this blog, look how blatant the image colors are. But would you... could you... live with those neon palettes?

What therapy do they do at a rehab for color addiction?Thoughts?

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Here's the just-before-sunrise-original...

Technicolor Sunrise

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The mosquitos were big as birds as the sun rose over Chatham beach here on Cape Cod... Well, that's how they felt. The buggers seemed to hit like bean bags as they drilled into me. I'd been out of my car maybe four minutes as I grabbed at this pano then dashed back ahead of the snarling swarm. I still can't decide if they resented my arrival or welcomed it like a hungry lion herd felt when they stumbled upon a lonely wildebeest. I think I've left less blood behind when I've donated the stuff at the hospital.

Anywayzzzz.... you can see from the virgin images which I tugged into this pano below that the photos could have used more time for color balancing, even straightening, huh? What's more the Coast Guard station there in Chatham (the Atlantic Ocean's on the other side of that dune the building sits upon) was way small thanks to the perspective of my wide angle lens. So, how to create a powerful image that didn't look enhanced?

Well, first off I stripped away the blue and warmed everything up by color balancing the image with the curves tool, then added a warming color filter layer that I first blocked then brushed into the appropriate areas. Then I teased the building larger and moved it a tad leftward to honor the rule of thirds. It took a bit of time to hide the seams from both that move, that enlargement and of course the lines where PS merged the three pano panes. If I'd had more time, I'd have balanced the three original exposures more carefully when I took them but those bugs were spattering off my body and worse... attacking my eyes. EEEEEEP!

Then there was the straightening problem. So I used the ruler tool and aligned the roof line to vertical, bringing the entire frame into balance. After that came the relative dynamic ranges needed to balance the lower half of the image with the sky. All done with adjustment layers of course. Additional adjustment layers allowed me to brush back in the highlights in the grasses so they both sparkled and pulled the eye toward the building.

What I was after was a classic sunrise image where the enhancements, while considerable, were invisible. Did it happen? Does the final image at the top create the illusion of authenticity? Hope so... One of the reasons I enjoy enahced phtographic art is that the tools let me reveal what my feelings want to find in an image. And sometimes create ImageFiction. Which of course is the um, clever name of this blogsite, right? :-)

Cannon 7D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm (f3.5-4.5) Handheld three panel pano. PS4.

Almost Autumn

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In moments
It seems
They’ll burst.

Leaves afire
To sear
Your eyes.

And your heart
But not
Till then.

In moments?

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Chatham, Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Canon 7D, PS4: pano, Topaz, Custom feelings

Dawn At Whalebone Mansion

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Wealth from whales
They thought – was
Forever.

Hope unsullied by
Knowledge of
Scarcity
Or pain.

Momentary hope without
Maturity or experience
Is nestled upon
Ignorance.

Sunrise
The Penniman House
A captain’s mansion
Chatham, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

We vacationed in New England last month, just before flying to Turkey on what was more a business trip. Of course dawn on Cape Cod always sings to me an hour or so before it rises. And it pulls me out to ride or walk the back roads, this morning in Chatham which is on the Atlantic side of the Cape. From the chanticleer above the Penniman House you can see the sweep of Chatham harbor behind me as I took this image.

Canon 7D:3 part pano, PS4: Custom brushes and textures, Topaz, AlienSkin: Snap Art 3, impasto

Suppose...

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Suppose that sky
Met the water
Exactly where
A barn
Met them
Both…
Once upon a time.

West Dennis, MA – at high tide, low cloud and old barn.

Canon 7D: Canon EF-S 10-22mm, PS4: Topaz, Alien Skin: SnapArt2, Custom filters & brushes.

Melancholy

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Autumn sometimes gets me down. Rita and I were homebound this weekend. Missed a nice evening at friends' home. It is true, Autumn is a time when one starts to miss things, huh?

Of course this is a rework of an image I did some Autumns back at East Dennis on Cape Cod.

The first freeze came this morning and killed the flowers. Some seemed startled in their crystal casings especially the youngest blooms which had only begun to blossom. They were caught in that clear syrup of glassy death which only after minutes of sun caused them to wrinkle, brown, and droop from their leafy homes. I'm guessing they felt pretty safe last night... but somewhere in their sleep... Their season ended.

And they are among the things that Fall causes you to miss, huh?

Got A Question For You

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I've been wondering... What is the use of art? Matching the couch? Covering a hole in he wall? I know that a large number of furry little rodents decorate their burrows. Ditto the way a lot of birds weave stuff into their nests. Hmmmm.... are some animals driven to decorate? How do they decide between worthwhile decorations and junk?Are there more, um, fascinating decorations? Do some decorations resonate more than others? Is there a collection instinct? If there is, upon what is it focused? How do collectors of decoration decide? Do they have advisors? Are there experts? Critics? Educators? Analysts?

Apparently all human cultures collect art just like those cute rodents. Even ancient peoples seem, well, driven to decorate their graves with shiny things, drawings and statues. Decoration seems to be almost a necessary condition of human-ness.

So what are the uses of art? Body decoration? Balancing the palette in a bathroom? Is the value the picture, or inside the picture? Is art an object or a package?

Okay... my head is hurting now. Think I'll go find a Rolling Rock.

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Oh yeah, the picture here: I took it at dawn in Wellfleet on Cape Cod as the tide gurgled in under my feet. It actually does gurgle and hiss, oozing seemingly out of the muddy ground. Charming though, and it makes the sort of picture that blown up and framed... Well it goes pretty damned well with the couch, huh? :)

My 1934 Ford Coupe

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It's been a while since we've visited the sand dunes of E. Dennis Massachusetts at sundown. Recently I got a new, old, car. Look at this pristine 1934 Ford coupe I bought this Christmas from a guy who owns a convenience store in Pittsburgh. It's a pale lemon/cream with two seats and a stick shift on the floor. Better yet, it was kept so perfectly since its manufacturing, and driven so little - that it's needed NO refurbishing. I was able to take it from here in Lancaster to the sandy dune road with no difficulty at all. It's astonishing how quickly we covered that 350 mile distance.


Okay, the sunset's a tad over the top, but it overcomes the chill of January don't you think?


Here's another view I took a few minutes ago where I keep it parked here at my studio. It looks, I think, more impressive on Cape Cod - don't you agree?



Ooops... the caption on this picture is wrong... should read 1932. Sorry!

Changings

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Should we love or fear the future.

The folks who live here on the Wellfleet Marsh on Cape Cod can predict that twice each day this place will flood, then drain. The future will be nearly as like the past as possible. Yet no present moment will ever hold. The swings of changing tides, coupled with the beat of changing seasons, coupled with the predictable changes in summer versus winter people... all of these changes result in...

Well let me try my wonderings differently. If nothing changed, would there be a future? If we were eternal... immortal... would the past have still happened? How, if nothing changed, would we compare the future with now, and now with then and.. and.. But if nothing changed, there'd be no sunrises like this one. If nothing changed... would there be beauty? How would we know it... if nothing changed?

How would we know anything? And if knowing is good. Then the first question.. in my first sentence has an answer, right?

Magic...

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Have you ever sat at symphony to hear the counter melody building from below... at first it's subtly low but recurring while the primary theme soars on the highest strings - until you're stirred and moved. But no, the left hand becomes insistent, growing - a fury blowing out the lacy harmonics of the violins and violas. It bursts through from below - and... and overwhelms all in its volume and unsettling, unresolvable, minor key. It storms its way through everything in harmonics that irritate... growling to a crescendo... dominating...

Then the disruptive figure in the bass falls silent, and the sweet romantic chords regain your attention... your spirit, your soul.

I have a visual obsession with counterpoint. Some have called it operatic. It comes out, more often than not, in my signature skies. And yet skies are so mystical while what's below them is unrelated fact. To believe that the heavens and earth are in cahoots is to believe in magic. But so frequently they form a stormy foreboding metaphor in my images. They seem to be as much a part of my visual voice as the disruptive symphonic bass line is to symphony.

Interesting how much we reveal about ourselves in a simple sunrise snapshot of a listing cottage atop a sand dune overlooking Cape Cod Bay. Are these clichés? Do you see this image and go, "Omagawd Ted, not more snarling clouds. Enough already!" Is there more to discover in this relationship, or has it been mined now for all its worth? Is it time for this disruptive figure in my bass to fall silent?

Gotta think on that.... (Grows quiet: peers at monitor sitting quietly rubbing his beard). "Hmmmmmmmm..."

Still But Not Hushed

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This stuff we do is "still" photography. Now the question for today boys and girls... Is it "quiet" photography? Can we render images which resonate sufficiently that viewers hear them as well?

This was a sunrise last October over Wellfleet. That's a village on Cape Cod. In its middle is this tidal marsh. The water was rushing in. All around me were gurglings. Within minutes the momentarily dry footing I perched upon turned soggy, then sank beneath feet of swirling salt waters. Birds awoke loudly. And somewhere behind me a lumber mill's "blahhhhhhhhh" ripped apart logs.

As you look at Marsh #11 I wonder if you hear that morning music? Is it only because the image transports me somewhere inside my memory that I see the racket of sunrise? Or have you heard enough of them to make this still photograph, noisy?

Two Painters And A Blonde

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Can there be a cinematic quality to still photography? The evocative photographer John Sexton thinks so. He feels that the best works capture a flow. That they speak of more than an instant. He says, "Once you make the exposure, you're always looking backward in time."

Hmmmm.... Look at this image i've posted here of a scene from a grassy lane on Nantucket Island. Yeah, in a sense we're looking back upon it. But, as you look around inside the frame, don't you start to take the story farther? Look at the guy on the roof. Look at the model, not looking at the guy on the roof.

I'll tell you something. I'll be the faceless narrator. The painting on that easel puts the woman exactly in that scene, in a vibrant and seductive gown from the early 19th century.

Will you imagine where the storyline goes? And if you do, are you looking backward, or rolling the scene you've never seen... forward?

Yes, I've cranked up the drama of the setting. And yes, I've added a painterly quality to the moment of two painters imagining a beautiful woman somewhere else - in time. The painter at the easel is imagining her backward in history, the painter on the roof is also imagining a beautiful woman, but probably not backward, but forward in time.

And the woman? What is she imagining?

Is there a cinematic quality to this crisp, still, late fall moment in the gardens of a Nantucket Lane? Can you compose the screenplay in your mind?

Grand Daddy's Furniture Marsh

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Arnold Newman thought that, "Photography is 90% moving furniture and 10% inspiration." That late great photographer, like the bulk of artists I've discussed it with, felt that much of his finished work was discovered during the process of creation. Notice... not intentionally sought out, then revealed by technique and craft, but discovered during the application of craft. Yet, there's an organic movement among photographers who cannot abide post processing PhotoShop techniques (PP in PS) which "add stuff" to the picture.

Odd that the greatest artists believe in the creative abilities of process, and yet there are others, mostly amateurs attempting to master their grandfather's photography, who are anxious to replicate the discoveries of say... 1930, or 1960. It's as if generals were brought onto a new battelfield with the ability only to fight the last war.

Look at Marsh#10 I've posted today. It's one of those chestnuts I hid away last Fall so that I could gnaw at them during the fridgedest days of February and March. And as I moved about the furniture in that frame (and as you can see, the frame itself) I discovered the nuances which attracted my eye during that October sunrise over the great Wellfleet marsh. That's not a library sky... nope... it hung up there just like that. This isn't HDR. Nope, that was the tonal range captured by my Canon 20D. I haven't cranked up the color intensities or added polychromatic washes. In fact, I haven't even sharpened the print. It's what my Canon's 10-22mm captured.

But I did create multiple layers of ideas. I have blended and masked them together into this final image which my craft was able to discover among them. Is this "manipulation" or "enhancement"? You know what? It doesn't matter. I brought PS tools to bear in PP which never existed before this moment in time. And I've discovered an image which couldn't have existed before now. The relevant question isn't about PS in PP. The relevant question has to do with whether the image resonates with you and how.

If it does. And does it properly. The photographic based image works. Anyone who denies him/herself those tools - is fighting the last war with grand-daddy's furniture!

Marsh#9 And A Half

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Last Wednesday's post (January 17th-"DarkMarsh") was about a marsh boat at dawn. As I prepared that image for posting, an entirely different idea occurred to me. Here it is. Same boat, same camera click, different emotion.
That's what we do isn't it? We hold wildly different emotions and ideas simultaneously. As we skitter back and fro among them, we seem to feel firm only in the last one we examined. And we're firm until we examine them again. I have no idea whether my Wednesday idea about this moment I've posted here on Friday was better. I know it was more correct, Wednesday. Today, I'm going with the ramped up saturations of this feeling. Wonder what tomorrow will bring?
It's that wonder that keeps us agile, don't you think? Of course, if you didn't think, you'd not be coming back to this website. So, do all of us a favor (according to Google Analytics there are a bunch of you who come here every day)... Do us all a favor and think at me.
A thought is one of the few things you can give away and have more remaining.

Summer's End

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On a back road on a stormy Fall morning, the first school bus comes at half-past daybreak.

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Incidentally, the gremlins attacked me. I tried to set up a new AirPort Express to extend the reach of my Mac's AirPort Wi-Fi here in my city town house. I was hours on the phone with Mac. Nothing seemed to work. Only a half hour ago did we finally beat them off. So all I had time to prepare was this visual thought about the niche between Summer and Fall. The image I promised yesterday has arrived - take a look at the last posting. Sorry for the delay gang. Grumble....

DarkMarsh

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At first the sun isn't really a glow. Nope, at a certain time of morning your eyes start to make out objects in what was just black only moments before. For some few moments it's almost as if your sight improved, or if things somehow pulsated color from within themselves. It's a brief time when the essence of shapes come out.
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This is the post I promised to make here. Finally I am back on sched. Sorry about the delay, life has a nasty way of intruding upon my hobby.

Heroic?

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Brant Point juts out into Nantucket Harbor. Odd, it's almost impossible to render a lighthouse image that doesn't seem heroic. Why is that? After all it's just a building. Do we bring our own psychic baggage to making or viewing their images? Thoughts?

Un-Natural Palette

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It should have been a lot colder the morning I took this picture. By late October Cape Cod Bay is usually whipped around by winds off the North Atlantic and the color largely gone from the beach grasses. So this is an image of two seasons overlaid in ways that they don't usually. It's almost a summer morning picture, yet it looks too brisk for that. And it's almost a winter picture, yet the foliage just doesn't fit. So I tried to tease as much out of this strangely mixed palette as possible. I think this has a calm-before-the-storm quality. But the storm is something larger, perhaps this year, or next - regardless - nature will adjust.