Charles T. Low Photography
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Photography in the Interstices
-finding tiny openings
Very Early River Dawn
Being only human, I will begin with an internal contradiction: I preach that how art is made is far secondary to the impact which it makes (over-simplified, I know), but the fact remains that my life has been busy — mostly good busy, thankfully — and I have had to fit some fine-art photography more consciously into the interstices of a bit of a frenetic whirlwind.
Interstices: noun
an intervening space, especially a very small one
If I have done this well, then that will not be apparent in the following images.
I have also included some variety. I'm still doing dawn (e.g. above, for those of you who were worried!) — but the interstices haven't recently as often aligned with those early hours.
Below is a mid-day image under (at that moment, from between the clouds), a for-me uncharacteristic full-sun light. We can't find the name of this feeder-river but it leads into Little Playgreen Lake in northern Manitoba, from whence flows the well-known but seldom-visited Canadian icon, the Nelson River. (I have boated on the Nelson River.)
Getting to northern Manitoba while exercising pandemic risk-mitigation measures, on the road, was a feat in itself, and the hours driving/navigating were only one of many factors which cut into my camera-time.
Composition: let me delve briefly into art-theory. What is the subject of this photograph? A photographic maxim is to close in on your subject, and to remove extraneous details, and ... I agree with that. But it's not a rule, it's a tool, and it requires skill and nuance to wield well. So, what do you think of the leaning blue structure and the red canoe in the lower left? Are they part of the subject
of this image? I'm going to hazard a no
, but block them out with your thumb, and see what happens. What happens (to my eye) isn't that great. I have yet to learn a name for this phenomenon — some sort of visual anchoring perhaps — but this is by no means the first time I've come across it (or created it).
Confession: it's a cellphone image, from a compressed file. When I can, I use a proper
camera and edit from an uncompressed file, but contrary to conventional wisdom, editing from a lesser
file does not immediately cause catastrophic ruptures in the space-time continuum. (And cellphone cameras have come a long way.)
Nelson River feeder northern Manitoba
Tiny Island northern Manitoba
The tiny boreal island, shown above, was also made under a mid-day, full-sun light (and with a cellphone — the best camera is the one you have with you
). Some of you may remember a more icy setting for the same location, made last Spring. (Melting occurs late, in the north!)
Again, is the subject the island, or the sky, or the water-reflections? Do the splaying tree-trunks, echoing the lines in the clouds, matter? Is the tiny bit of gravel road in the lower left another visual anchor? The answer to all of those questions is a definite probably yes.
Dam Chair Monochrome
The image above, of a lonely chair in the middle of dam, seemed best served in black-and-white, not my usual at all. People have liked this, and may I suggest that it isn't because of its great inherent beauty (but feel free to think otherwise!), but because it raises the obvious question: what is a broken chair doing in the middle of a dam?
I don't know, and that's probably why I photographed it. On my art-framework of beauty-interest-meaning, I think that this one leans heavily towards interest and meaning.
On the chance that you wonder if it's really me, I will throw in two final images, both made at dawn.
The one above is of clouds. I come by this honestly: my grandfather photographed clouds, and a brother photographs clouds (almost daily). Both produce(d) glorious work. Neither would have been voluntarily circulating, however, at this time of day.
The final image, further below, I made this morning, and (seeing as I'm being uncharacteristic so often in this blog) I will let it speak for itself.
Interstices
There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. –Leonard Cohen
Thank you all so much for reading! Kindly comment.
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Charles T. Low
Photographer
Blog #85
2022-10-04
