A Sand country Almanac: Inspiration in Literature

It is interesting to ponder the cycle of creative drive. In the past these lulls in my photography used to concern me as I would wonder if I had come to the end of the road for this activity. However, over time I find that there is a natural cycle, and these low points are part of it. I suppose some part fatigue which is probably a protective mechanism to not get obsessed with something.

I haven’t done much serious picture taking since February but really going back to January if you don’t count ‘finishing off a roll’ as real work. In the meantime, I have been printing some back catalog images using lith printing, so it is not like I have not been engaged, merely differently. I also realize that I have made some great lith images (by my own judgement). This is turn fueled or rekindled some work I did this morning. 

My First Rekindling

On another front I have the pleasure of taking Mollie out for her early morning walks. She gets me up early between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning with her ‘scribble-scrabble’ on the bed and her happy face being impossible to resist no matter how drowsy I am. 

We head down to the meadows, especially as the ground is so dry now. Nobody else is up this early so we have the meadows and river to ourselves. As spring evolved and we watched the changes I became aware of the birds flying about the meadow. The Jurassic slow low liftoff of the gray heron, the noisy chatter of four geese, the panicked staccato cry of the green woodpecker, the crow, noisy whoosh and whistle of a triplet of swans, mallards, blackbird, black headed gulls, jackdaws, rooks, and an assortment of songbirds. 

In the early morning light and often mist and fog of this low country along the Ouse my mind started to sort these into little vignettes of motion and life. Eventually I thought to bring along a camera. 

I don’t shoot wildlife. It is probably more suited to digital and longer lenses and a kind of patience I may or may not have. In reality it doesn’t really occur to me. I seem to prefer to photograph the buildings and not the occupants. However, the germ of this project is more about form, movement, and life and less I think than about identity and taxonomy. 

So, the last few mornings I have hauled out my Mamiya 645 Pro. The choice was easy, lots of frames on a roll so I could feel generous about experimenting and making mistakes. It was an easy choice too because it has my longest lens. 150mm f3.5 with a 2x teleconverter gives me 300mm f7 (or 180mm for full frame 35mm film equivalent); my best chance at filling a frame with birdness. This combo, as I have waxed about before, has been an unexpected winner for intimate landscape and woodland work as well. 

Then what kind of film did I have? Turns out I have shot through all my HP5+ ISO 400 film and my Delta Pro 3200 which for me has a sweet spot at ISO 800 (fast and relatively low grain). I had 3 rolls, however, of Ilford XP2 Super which is an ISO 400 C41 process chromogenic black and white film. I wanted to shoot black and white as the motivation is to print the results in my darkroom. This I decided to push to ISO 800. I am not really looking for documentary images of birds so some grain and excess contrast may be ok. (This film does not technically have grain as the silver is bleached out in the process, but the dye areas are equivalent.) 

Now the easy choices are made how to meter? I will not have time to meter (or focus for that matter) shotting birds on the wing as it were. The light would also change through the morning. My Mamiya has the prism finder meter which I set to spot mode and as I emerged onto the meadow, I metered the ground/shadows and sought to underexpose by 2 stops. I confirmed this by metering the sky and seeing I was not more than 3-4 stops over exposed. I needed a fast enough shutter speed so decided on a minimum of 125th and 250th when it brightened. The aperture tended to sit at f5.6. Since most of the time the birds were effectively at infinity, I set my lens for that and in that situation depth of field is not a strong consideration. Anyway, that was my calculus. As the morning would brighten, I could quicken the shutter then reduce the aperture. 

It took three mornings to run through the first roll and a half. Getting my eye in for finding and tracking the birds as I shot. I tried to keep in mind what I learned from trap and skeet shooting to keep the camera moving after I released the shutter. The tendency when tracking a moving object is to stop at this moment and the bird blurs or escapes. The results will tell of my success. 

Second Rekindling

This happened this morning and gets us around to the title. I had started to reread ‘A Sand County Almanac’ by Aldo Leopold the last couple of days. It was published in 1949 as a book of conservation essays. It is exquisitely and written in a very approachable style. It is one of the founding texts of the American environmental movement. 

And so, this morning Mollie and I headed out with camera in hand, Mollie to chase rabbits and pheasant and me to photograph bird flight. We arrived at the meadow with patches of frost and low mist hung across the meadow and wafting off the streams and rivers. She got me up on the early side so the sun was just rising as we arrived. The sky clear and cloudless. This is when the second rekindling struck. I started to look for and find landscape images even as I tracked and snapped the waterfowl. Between the two I rattled off a roll and a half of film. This was my own visual almanac, a series of short works about the morning on Houghton meadows. The sudden resurgence of desire surprised me, and it was only on reflection I attributed it to my reading that past couple of days. The essays had put me back into touch with wonder and the sublime.

And so, I sent three rolls of XP2 Super off to Peak Imaging with instructions to push 1 stop. Sometime next week I should see my results. I find myself excited to see the results or learn from the disappointments. 

The Visions Morphs

I received the developed XP2 Super back and meanwhile I found 2 lost rolls of HP5+ in a camera bag and shot through both of those rolls on another morning, one at box speed and the other pushed to ISO 800. Now I have about 75 images to scan and process. In this HP5+ batch I had another (unexpected) morning of frost and fog. 

So now I knew I had my abstract birds some better than others but enough to move that project along. I also ended up with some more conventional landscape images.

These unintended additions ruminated for a day or so until another project came to mind. This I am calling ‘Morning on Houghton Meadows’. It represents a single morning on the meadows in spring. I will self-publish a set of about 30 or so black and white images from this series. The book will be hardcover in A5 (210mm x148mm) in landscape orientation. I will publish this at Mixam my favorite photo-book publisher. Here is what a PDF looks like… Move the gray slider in the right to scroll through the pages. 

I have a follow-up on the project here...