Category Archives: Photography

On the road to Las Vegas

Around home, Cactus & Succulents, California, Camping, Photography

Monday morning, we got up pretty much with the sunrise and got going. It was easier and quicker than we had planned – we didn’t bring a stove which wasn’t planned but did speed up the mornings – and we were on the road out of the Carrizo Plain by seven AM. The Carrizo Plain is a large graben in the middle of the coast range. The San Andreas fault runs through it – actually, I guess, it is caused by the fault – like a zipper.

We camped just off the road – on the left side of the fault, on the Pacific Plate – in the picture above but, on the ground, everything looks pretty flat and we wouldn’t know – without being told – that one end of the road is on the Pacific Plate and the other on the North American Plate. Behind us, in the picture below  is the Trembler Range – great name! – and over it, past a few wildflowers blooming, is the San Joaquin Valley where they are still pumping out oil after over a hundred years. But first, we had to backtrack past the community center of the pseudo town just north of the Carrizo Plain. The picnic tables offer a great view of a future, sun powered, electric plant.

The it was just a matter of beating our way east – past Bakersfield, Tehachapi, Mojave, and Barstow – until we got to the Mojave National Preserve. I am not sure what a National Preserve is compared to a National Park except that a Preserve allows hunting – hunting what, here, I am not sure – but the Mojave National Preserve does have a heavy duty set of railroad tracks going through the middle and a lot of in-holdings. Our first stop was the Preserve headquarters at Kelso to get a couple of suggestions on camping spots.

Then it was up to Granite Pass at about 4,000 feet to find a legal camping spot. In Death Valley National Park, we can camp almost anywhere as long as we are three miles off the paved road; at Mojave, we had to camp where there was a fire ring. At DV, we can’t have ground fires and, at Mojave, we can (in the ring, presumably). I prefer the DV system because it spreads the campers out  and there are no overused fire rings. But the area was nice and, at 4,000 feet, we were starting to run into Junipers.

We spent the late afternoon wandering around, looking at blooming plants – including several Echinocereus engelmannii and a cute little echeveria type plant (maybe a   Dudleya saxosa) – and admiring the round, exfoliating, granite, boulders as the setting sun turned them orange.

On the road to Vegas with two lenses

Around home, Art, Camping, Photography

 

Ed Dieden and I took three days to drive to Las Vegas last week, camping as we went. The basic plan was to drive south along the coast until we got to about the southieness of Vegas and then we would turn left and drive east. For me, one of the main attractions was a chance to spend some time making photographs. I was getting my camera back from Canon and we would be spending three days in the kind of country I love, big spaces.

I did get the camera back, but it still didn’t work. After a lot of screwing around, including going back to the camera store,  I began to realize that the camera did work with my wide angle and tele zooms but not with my primary lens. My favorite lens! The lens that I use all the time. Shit!

I am re-reading  The Zen of Creativity by John Daido Loori and – I think – it helped keep me centered on the problem. What I wanted to do was spending some time photographing and being outside and not having my primary lens – my crutch – didn’t change that. In some ways, it could enhance it. It could help me see from a different point of view.

As planned, we drove south on Highway 101 and then turned east on State Highway 58. As we went inland, the country which was already pretty dry, got drier, the spaces got bigger, and the light got softer.

It also got windier and our camp site hunt became a lets find a place with as little wind as possible hunt. Strangely, that was a place pretty much in the open.

The wind stopped, the air got cooler, we put a some sausages and veggies on the grill and I had a couple of glasses of red wine. It was a very nice place in which to sit and feel the day end. (Double click to enlarge and notice the lonely power poles going across the valley.)

I don’t particularly like camping, I camp because I do particularly like being out in spaces like this at eventide. Feeling – more than seeing – the day slowly, slowly, drift into night; seeing the first star come out in the dusk – this spring it has been Jupiter, the king of the gods and the god of sky and thunder according to Wikipedia – feeling the darkness and stillness sop up the light. It is the witnessing of an ancient ritual in a huge cathedral. For me, it is being with The Sacred.

 

The genius of Richard Misrach

Art, Death Valley, Photography

I have been going to the California desert – on a pretty regular basis – for about 35 years. The great majority of that time has been when the light was hot and flat, washed out, the colors dull. Almost every photographer working in the desert shoots during what is called the sweet light or golden hour – between about an half hour before sunrise to about two hours after sunrise and the reverse – sort of – around sunset. Richard Misrach shoots during the middle of the day when the light is flat and washed out and his photographs looks like the desert actually seems to look when most people are actually looking at it.

Most “fine art photographers” tend to not use normal lenses, especially in the desert, with the wide angle being a perennial favorite. So there is some point of interest in the foreground but the real photograph is often the background. Art Wolfe is a terrific photographer; he is a photographer who does – more or less – conventional images in a conventional way better than anybody.  I love his shots but their strength is that they are not what most people see when they go to the desert.

Richard Misrach strength is that his shots show what most people see and are impacted by in the desert.

I love Misrach – his images – and he has had a huge impact on my photography but I have never been quite sure why I am so attracted to them. I have never been sure how he made them work. Over the weekend, we saw the same Misrach photographs displayed at both the Oakland Museum and the Berkeley Art Museum. (It was interesting how the same photographs took on a different feel – tone is better – when they are displayed differently. I preferred the Oakland show, BTW.) More importantly, for me, the two shows helped me understand Misrach’s photography much better.

Now, I think that the genius of Misrach is not in the content of his photographs – which are often pretty mundane – but in how that photograph is played, for lack of a better word. First his images – photo talk for pictures – are huge – like five by six feet huge – and that makes a big difference. And sharp; 8″ by 10″ camera sharp (or, if shot today, huge megapixel sharp).  It is easy to almost get lost in the photographs, they almost become a real life view. He has had the guts to just go for an outrageous size and the impact is worth it (except that they are too big for most homes. Second, the images are desaturated. Just like the desert light, at any time but the golden hour, is desaturated.

It will be fun to see how this plays out in my photography.