A Cool Respite

the long view

Looking toward the west - Mt Scott - Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma

A Special Refuge

"Feeling and photographing what causes feeling is no assurance that others will feel. But after once discovering what one wants to arouse in other people, the knowledge that one may frequently fumble in trying is only a challenge." ---- Minor White

Mounts Sheridan & Roosevelt

Jed Johnson Lake

I have been spending a fair amount of time lately exploring and photographing in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge. The Refuge is for animals but I have been going there to retreat, relax and recharge for many years.
I believed I knew all about making a good landscape picture. Now, I again realize that I need constant practice and refocusing. For good and not so good reasons as well as some legitimate and some spurious causes I was out of touch with my photography. But, slowly the concentration and patience to work in a way that for me leads to good photographs is returning. I have stopped trying to see or do too much. Go to every place that I liked or where I knew there might be photo opportunities. I got the old, heavy tripod out and lug it around so that when I go to a place I take time to explore it visually and thoughtfully. I watch the animals and the way they interact with each other and their environment. I watch the Light, and I pay attention to what it is that is interesting and attracting me. I strive to be open to the questions that each moment and location poses and the multitude of answers that each image provides. I am reconnecting with photoself and the natural environment.

Thank goodness for the Refuges of this world.

Around The Circle

Processes have been simplified, cameras have become more fearfully and wonderfully made, lenses have acquired a flatter field, and some of them can conjure a foreground out of the dim distance; societies and conferences have multiplied, technique has, up to a point, improved, and all the world produces good photography; many reach the dead level of excellence, but how few get beyond! What a pity, in one sense it is that we do not have more that contains the "little more"; but, it is good to know that there is something not easily reached still left in photography.
Henry Peach Robinson, written circa 1870

USGS photo by George Irving Adams, 1900

Lone Peak, April 2009

Taken In

"Of all my photographs, the ones that have the most meaning for me are those I was moved to make from a certain vantage point, at a certain moment and no other, and for which I did not draw on my abilities to fabricate a picture, composition-wise or other-wise. You might say I was taken in." ........ Paul Caponigro