Upcoming Show - Phase Change

A few posts ago, I described getting materials ready for matting and framing for an exhibit. Now, I can tell you a bit more about it. The exhibit, "Phase Change - Water In Winter" will be at Matthaei Botanical Gardens from February 18 to March 27. MBG is located at 1800 North Dixboro Rd., Ann Arbor.

Getting the images together - some of which started as digital, some as film, is perhaps the most challenging part. In fact, although making the images required some planning, some of my most memorable shots were due to pure luck. Some of my best shots were taken on a whim in March 2009 when I stopped at Dexter-Huron Metropark and saw some wonderful ice shapes and patterns that I have not seen since. Nature is like that, and it shows that one really has to be ready to shoot when an opportunity presents itself. On top of it ll, winter weather is often unpredictable. Waiting a few more days to go shooting might put me right in the middle of a thaw. So, shoot while the ice is cold, I say.



Winter photography is hard work, though. I like shooting on gray days when the contrast isn't so great, and I don't have to worry about glare and specular highlghts.



Most of my shots are taken on TechPan film when I am using film. The tonality and slowness of the film allows me to take longer exposures over water without the use of filters. In some case, the juxtaposition of the hard ice surface and the flowing water provided me with an opportunity to make some surreal images.


I am slowly building up a large number of images of water in winter that may end up as a book at some time. For now, this first show is just a sample of what I have been doing just in and around Ann Arbor, proving once again, that you can do some good work right where you live, in the place that you know the best.

What I found in making these photos, was that the conditions forced me to slow down and think about what I was seeing. There are abstractions, patterns, and miniature landscapes in these water shots. Often, instead of using the wide view, I used a zoom telephoto to capture a small part of scene, that isolated, gives a different impression than a full-scene view might have. In some images, the scale is evident, in others it is not.