Lone Tree, Jekyll Island, GA 

    I’ve long believed when applying a creative rendering to a given negative for darkroom Silver printing, “take the print in the direction it wants to go”  The same could easily be said when incorporating a sunrise as a central theme to an image, thus, color seems to carry the day for this particular image.

     The Photo Arts Xchange is only a month away on November 3 & 4th. The imagery I’ll share during the weekend will be a portfolio of Trees…Could this image be included as an “addition” to my expanded imagery? Why not make the trip to Rocky Hill, CT. for the FREE to all event, whether as a presenter, or simply a visual art enthusiast ! Details are contained in the blue PaX link above.  

      My general approach to making any kind of image is to depart from reality, look beyond what’s in front of me and see an image’s potential in shapes, relationships and tones. In that sense, a black and white rendering is an immediate departure from reality. Not so with this new medium known as color, clearly there will be a learning curve to see the potential in color, just as it did in B&W for the last 40+ years. 

            In the B&W process there are literally dozens of tricks / techniques to impart a creative style to a body of work or a singular image. I used to say, “whatever I know in Photoshop I can do better in the darkroom”. Having that knowledge is satisfying for sure, however, no longer as inspiring as the B&W learning curve has flattened, and Photoshop has exploded. Much of the mystery of making the final Silver Gelatin print comes down to applying a series of progressive steps to complete the puzzle, that puzzle being what my mind originally saw. In a broader sense, the unknown, what’s around the next corner is what inspires me more than ever. Cliche for sure, many photographers when asked what’s your best image… their response, “the next one” ! So, while I’m not yet enthralled with color photography, the mystery of what’s possible is a force that needs to be explored. Some of the best advice for an artist’s growth is, go outside your comfort zone, greater risk could yield greater rewards. For me that was crystal clear since a digital negative making workshop last Dec 2 & 3rd only a few days after making this month’s very image. The D-Neg thing for me is still a big challenge, but interesting nonetheless with endless potential, particularly as father-time pulls back the drapes on the window of the uncertain future. Difficult for an analog photographer to accept, the growing scratch-the-surface knowledge of PhotoShop I know, seems almost Houdini-like !

        I strive to design my imagery to yield a particular vision or rendering of the scene in front of me. My aesthetic and creative renderings begin at the very moment of, “yes I will make an image here”.  Having never been to Jekyll Island I showed up well before sunrise on November 28, 2022 with all the photo gear I own hoping to make a Large Format B&W negative. Being on the east coast I understood the East rising sun would have some impact on any imagery from that morning. I had no idea Driftwood Beach would face directly in line with the rising November sun.

       Soon it would become obvious, the sun back lighting something on the beach that morning would be my focus. So, with that mindset, at least in the early stages of embracing the C&D world (Color & Digital) it’s easy to say, if the sun is actually in the photograph, then the final medium will be a color rendering. As seen in the afternoon shot in B&W of the lone tree, this month’s image just seems more exciting, at least to me. For sure, digital capture and all the related “post processing” is a steep enough learning curve at my age !

      This is one of only a few upright trees on “Driftwood Beach”, and the only one with a pleasing symmetry. So, one might think having the same powerful Iphone that I have this image is within everyone’s grasp. There are a lot of little factors playing into the success of this lone tree image. Relative to the human eye, all types of photography, film or digital fall far short of recording the midday contrast in the real world. That is to say, humans process, and therefore see and compress contrast into a perceived image that cameras are simply not capable or recording. At sunrise a Kelvin color temperature of approximately 3200 is almost half of what midday’s sun @ 6000 degrees Kelvin carries. With film or digital, lower color temps mean more oranges and reds, this part of the color spectrum shows much more subtly and separation than that of the midday sun. The higher in the sky the sun is the light becomes decidedly blue in color temperature. Add into this image the slight haze that is obscuring the actual sun’s intensity provides for a softening of the sun’s contrast. However, this is the big one, knowing the tree should render in black, that allowed me to line up the sun in perfect silhouette and tap the screen on the area where the bright sun was brightest. For a few seconds, that tells the Iphone to make an exposure to render detail in the area I touched. With the tree remaining black allows the camera to record a much brighter portion of the scene without worrying about any texture or shadow detail in the tree.

      I don’t like garish colors that the wildly powerful world of Photoshop can produce with a few modifications. Rather I much more embrace a painterly quality. This image has reduced texture and edge sharpness as a means of departure from reality towards that end result. Colors are more aligned with my initial reaction from well before dawn. Consider the improbability of capturing the ball of sun so as to perfectly silhouette the tree with a camera that takes minutes to set-up. Relative to the sun the earth is spinning in an easterly direction, which means all celestial bodies are moving westward across the sky. At the longitude of Jekyll Island the earth’s position changes 15 degrees in an hour, or 59 miles of upward and westward movement in one minute. Thereby removing any real chance of a perfect halo behind the tree using a view camera. Even if that were to be carried off with the view camera, B&W film would simply reveal a white no texture blob behind the tree. Take the sun out of the equation as seen below in an afternoon shot of the same tree, for me, it’s not as exciting, or story telling as the feature image of this month’s Blog. For sure, digital capture and related “post processing” is a steep enough learning curve, particularly at my age, nevertheless, this image made the most sense for my 1st morning on Driftwood Beach.

     Garishness is only a few clicks away as seen in the St. Paddy’s Day version of Lone Tree, Jekyll Island !