The Daily Photograph™

I’m not sure this is a cliche

But it ought to be. Bare branches (with or without the snow) against a clear sky are to me some of the most natural sights to be found. Our ancestors grew to humanhood in the forest and the forest remains, in our deepest brain, the arch-type of both the best and the worst of places to be. It’s comforting under an overspread tree, it’s frightening amidst choking dense trunks at twilight.

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These are the homely tools

For bringing more than mere sustenance. In truth, we don’t really need to cook our food, for the most part. Okay, dried beans and rice need the touch of boiling water, but we don’t need Chili Verde con Carne y Frijoles, do we? Nor do we need Ginger Fried Rice. We need calories and proteins and certain minerals. Anything we do, beyond filling the need, to dress it up, is mere art, decoration, recreation. There is a school of thought that says the culinary is the original art, the first attempt at rising above the mundane, to achieve a place among the Gods.

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Be that as it may, cooking utensils present a challenge to the photographer in that they are often metallic, shiny, and have narrow lines. The whisk and the strainer were placed here specifically to test my ability to keep the foreground at the front. I think I did pretty well, but I see that I would have done better to have wiped off the toaster.

When is black and white better than color?

A: When the color gets in the way.

This photograph has spectacular color, straight out of the camera with no darkroom magic applied, but the gesture of the sky was obscured, the rush and scurry of the clouds was lost, amidst all the flash and spectacle. With color, this is just another sunset. It’s better this way.

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BW, as it’s called in short-hand-speak, is a difficult discipline. To be consistently successful, one must learn to see not only with the color sense shut off, but must understand the various colored filters and how they effect the light as it connects with the film. The scene must be embraced for it’s tone and not for it’s hue. My friend, Anna Lee Keefer, is a black&white photographer of sensibility and subtly, who creates with great intent. You can see some of her stuff, in collaboration with Ian Talbot, here.

The Entry Bowl is very precious

To Blue Bear. When it’s not holding the entries to the Thanksgiving Prize Drawing, it’s his to drink from what and when he will. Meantime, the deadline to enter the drawing is getting ever closer. Midnight, MST, Friday. As they say, if you don’t enter, you can’t win.

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I’ll announce the winner on Monday (probably just before Monday Night Football) and I’ll notify the winner directly by e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter Direct Message, as appropriate. The winner has to get back to me within 24 hours of notification, or the prize will go to the next in line.

We hit 10 below last night

Here in Casper. And we’ve spent the day huddled indoors, gathered by the trusty stove.

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There is still time to enter to win the Thanksgiving Prize. Just leave a comment here, or retweet (you can use the button above) with my @WalterHawn handle & the URL for any page on the site. Entries close at Midnight, MST, Friday.

It is a sad thing

When a dragon can’t get it’s way. But it’s a fact they are technologically challenged. Never met a dragon with a PC or smartphone. I think partly because the claws get in the way, and partly because they don’t read very well.

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You, on the other hand, don’t operate under those handicaps. You can enter, quite easily, to win a signed, original fine-art photograph, as detailed under ‘A Thanksgiving Prize,’ above, and you can purchase one for your very own right now at a significant discount, and if you’re a winner, I’ll give you another or refund your money! You choose. To win, you can tweet, comment here, or on my Facebook page. Check the rules for details.

Sorry dragon. Besides, dragon’s breath is very hard on photographs.

I’ve mentioned that these works

Are sketches or studies, and this is certainly the case here. I wanted to find out how emotional responses would change as color is removed from a scene, especially one that had been filled with very wild color to begin with. I took nearly every color away from this sunset. No greens, no yellows, nor browns (which, in fact, are a class of yellows), leaving only a bit of red, a touch of blue and a good deal of what we photographers call ‘tonal values;’ that is to say, blacks and grays. Compare this photograph with this one, which was made in the same place and only a few minutes earlier, but it was developed in a wholly different way.

I think here you can see the importance of the palette of colors used by an artist. Another example to illustrate: Monet’s painting technique is not greatly different from Van Gogh’s, but the emotional impact is much changed by the palette of each painter.

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And I’d like to remind you that I’m giving away a prize for Thanksgiving. To get your chance to win, you can tweet this page, along with my @walterhawn handle or post a comment here or on any page of this blog, or post to my Facebook profile. The complete details are here, or at the “A Thanksgiving Prize” link above. And I’m offering a splendid price on certain works to those who enter the prize drawing.
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These are the first few

And it’s filling rapidly. You may have heard that I’m giving an original fine-art photographic print to some lucky someone the Monday after Thanksgiving. The winner can choose among three works: “Wearing Whites”, “Purple Mountains, Purple Sage”, or “Long Time Livin’”. The complete rules and all can be found on the page, “A Thanksgiving Drawing”. But the short form is that you enter by tweeting (while including my @WalterHawn handle) any page from The Daily Photograph™, by commenting on any page here, or by commenting on any posting on my Facebook profile. You can enter every day, twice a day, until midnight Friday, November 26th. I hope you will!

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Also, I’m offering a darned good deal to anyone who enters: A signed, original fine-art photographic print of any of the three works, matted and mounted to fit an 11×14 frame, for only $89. That’s twenty-six dollars off the regular price of $115. And, on the rules page, you’ll find a way to get an additional ten dollar discount.

So, I hope you’ll enter, and I hope you’ll think about ordering a fine-art print for someone you love or for yourself.

It’s become winter

Suddenly on the flat. There has been some snow up high the past two weeks, but only a skiff one night a couple of weeks ago in my backyard. Today that changed, and no more will the colors of autumn be seen. From here on out, the skeletal trees will strive to scratch the sky until Spring comes to relieve the itch of Winter.

Mountains and oceans

Have a few things in common. Among them, the morning and evening breezes. East to West in the morning, then West to East at nightfall on these mountains. This particular evening, the wind was a brisk forty or fifty miles an hour, and the sun filtered its light through just the right amount of cloud and dust to light up the West end of Muddy Mountain like a bar-room sign. The clouds above the mountain had a hard time holding their shapes in the evening breeze.