A make shift tripod

MOONSET

For the past 20 years my wife, Marianne, and I have spent part of every summer on the Cape Cod.  For me the Cape has been a place to recharge my batteries, read summer mysteries and watch my children grow up. Making summer pictures has also been a big part of vacationing for me. As I have said, it’s all about light.  My summer ritual has been to wake before sunrise, my eyes still full of sleep— coffee in hand—and find that perfect spot for an early morning picture.

 Many summer mornings, however, I have gone out and waited and the wonderful early light never arrived. It might have been because of rain or too much fog. It might have been because, at that perfect moment, a cloud covered the sun or the moon. There is a Zen to sunrise shooting; it’s hard to know what to expect. And remember, being a weatherman is the only job in the nation where you can be wrong 50% of the time and still have a job. 

Provincetown, with its beautiful light, is a common destination for my camera. For 20 years a series of small cottages just outside of town that the locals call the flower houses were the subject of camera journeys. At sunset the light is often breathtaking but the little cottages lost their quiet, understated charm under a mask of cars and people milling about, beer in hand. No, these small houses had to be photographed at sunrise or earlier at moonset when the locals were tucked in their beds. For years I tried and failed to make the image that was in my head. For one reason or the other, the weather or the light conspired against me.

I use Nikon cameras and for the most part a tripod is a heavy piece of equipment that I often leave in the trunk of my car. As it happened that morning, I didn’t have my tripod. As my wife and I approached the flower houses we saw the moonset of a lifetime.  The moon was so large that it seemed to fill the western sky while from the east the sun rose like a phoenix from the sea. It was the image I’d been waiting 20 years to make and I didn’t have a tripod to steady my camera for the long exposure. With quick thinking on my wife’s part, she offered to let me use her shoulder as a make shift tripod and the result is the Moonset picture. Twenty years in the making.

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Chasing the light

Painted Badlands

The camera is a magic box that can hold your thoughts and memories

The second in my series of Moab Utah pictures is one that I’ve called Painted Badlands. My wife and I had traveled to Moab to attend a music festival. Our host was Michael Barrett and his wife, Leslie, both founders of The Moab Music Festival. This area of Utah is called Red Rock country. It’s an area of great beauty so different from the landscapes we see in the east. As I have said on this blog, it is all about chasing the light and that morning was made more special by a storm that was stirring some twenty miles to the west. With the early morning sun to my back, the foreground took on a warm hue that made the stormy western sky seem darker and all that more interesting. I exposed for the light areas in the foreground and, using a polarizing filter, I was able to control the density of sky.

Always remember no matter what kind of camera you use film or digital it’s all about the light.

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The Landscape

Park Avenue

I've always enjoyed landscape photography. I made this image on a recent trip to Moab Utah. The light in Utah is like a magnet to me, it pulls at something deep inside and acts as a guide, growing my understanding of the place and its people. In future posts I will share more of my images from the Moab trip and ways to make your landscape photography more effective. I will also have postings on my upcoming shows, as well as chapters from my new books.