An almost etching. I keep coming back to this photograph; adding layers, shifting colours. It intrigues me for some reason, and it bothers me too. I can’t quite put my finger on it. If an image wants your attention what are you to do?
This is what we’ve agreed upon, this photograph and I. For now. Maybe it will leave me alone for a while but I feel like it’s trying to show me something…
[An image made from two photographs, both of which were made from a moving car.]
© Karen McRae, 2013
Or, autumn by the roadside.
Photographs made from a moving car (I wasn’t driving, obviously). I found the intense colour a bit bothersome in these particular compositions so I converted them to sepia and adjusted the levels of some of the tones to bring out contrast.
These are made using a slow shutter speed and by panning the camera (following the subject) as the car moves along. I like employing this technique as it can result in some unusual photographs with some parts of the frame relatively in focus and other parts quite blurred, sometimes resulting in what appears to be opposing movement.
I like, too, not knowing what to expect when I look at the image. It’s always a bit of a surprise, with many failures and a few frames having a bit of interest. Well, and it is an alternative for those times when you see potential photographs speeding past your window but you are just unable to stop.
© Karen McRae, 2013
You never know what might be found in those in-between moments, they are worth seeking out.
© Karen McRae, 2013
I made several photographs of these Great Egrets quite a while ago but I never felt like the images really expressed the extraordinary experience of being with these graceful creatures. I say ‘being with’ because I was standing in the water not too far from them – there was no long lens in my camera bag that day so I was pushing my luck.
Anyway, I have played with this image a little, adding a layer of … recollection, I guess. This what it feels like to wade with the egrets.
© Karen McRae, 2013
© Karen McRae, 2013
A few days and memories stacked on top of each other
I’ve been away on another canoe trip. A bit different from the last one as this adventure involved whitewater. I’d never done a paddling trip like this before on a long winding river with many, many rapids. I spent a fair amount of time grinning while we paddled 65km of that river. I confess, though, there were times I was a bit nervous. Things can go wrong in a hurry. Mostly they don’t.
The yellow canoe is not the one I traveled in (we were 5 canoes in total) but it is the most storied. It has seen many rivers and has touched many rocks. It has some wisdom the other canoes do not. It also has more scars. If you are the older and wiser vessel you will know to carry a roll of Gorilla Tape in your hull. You will know that same tape might be the thing that gets you home in the end.
This image is 4 layered photographs. Each layer expresses a different aspect of the trip; The flat water, the landscape, the whitewater, and the fearless yellow canoe. The vertical dark stripe on the canoe interrupts the image, but it belongs there. It is a bandaged scar. The other side sports a similar scar in the horizontal. The yellow canoe was on its last trek.
(These merged images were made during a 4 day camping/canoe trip on the Rivière du Lièvre in beautiful Quebec.)
© Karen McRae, 2013
Sliver-thin layers and double exposures. From the series Surface, Submerge.
© Karen McRae, 2013
I suppose this image doesn’t seem to have much to do with the rest of this post but it is woven in with a fine thread…
In the past few months I have been very fortunate to be included in a couple of wonderful publications and I thought I would mention this as a way of perhaps introducing these magazines to anyone that might be interested.
The first is a gorgeous publication from the Netherlands called “Flow Magazine” and they included this blog(!) in an article all about nature blogs. (*Although the article is in Dutch, Flow Mag has recently started issuing international copies of their magazine in English. Also, I recommend checking out some of those other nature bloggers listed if you have the time.)
You can find a copy of that article here: Flow Magazine ‘Groene Bloggers’
I am honoured, also, to have art from my ‘Surface, Submerge’ series included in the latest print issue of Art & Science Journal along with some other very accomplished artists.
You can find that article here: Surface, Submerge
As well as print issues, Art & Science Journal has a very beautiful and interesting blog.
Many thanks to both of these publications for the recognition, and for allowing me to ‘reprint’ these articles [*copyright of these articles remains with each publication]. I hope you get a chance to check them out – click on the images below to be brought to their home pages.
Last night I walked down to the river to watch the sun slip away – some evenings are flawless and you need to be out in them.
I was drawn to the gently swaying wildflowers (hoary alyssum, bertéroa blanc) backlit against the waning reflected light. Each of these photographs was made using in-camera double exposures and very little editing. This is what the camera saw. The images seemed to work better as double exposures, to carry more weight even though in a sense they are ‘lighter’, less literal. There are times when I think ‘abstracting’ a particular subject may express it more fully. Like the sense of a lovely summer evening sitting on damp grass and fading into the night.
How the river looked, doubly exposed. If you look carefully (click to enlarge) you will see a tiny sailboat near the horizon.
© Karen McRae, 2013
In the stillness there are things to be seen that disappear when breathing resumes.
If you lie down on this quiet lake ~ put your ear to the cool surface ~ and look to the shore, this is what you would find. These ancient totems perpetually drawn and re-drawn by rock, wind and wave.
These creatures that are both there and not there. Embodied by both solid and liquid.
They are like the spirits of the land, I think. Reminding me of the people who first paddled these lakes, first walked this land, and lived in balance with the earth.
[All these images are (rotated) reflections on water, made during a canoe trip to
Killarney Provincial Park in Ontario.]
© Karen McRae, 2013
draw and shoot 