A September road trip, Part 2 ~ Coming & Going
There have been only subtle colour shifts in the trees and shrubs so far but the crisp autumn winds seem to be settling in and over the landscape. The autumn metamorphosis will be hastening now.
[Drive-by photographs made from a moving vehicle. *People sometimes ask if I make these images while driving and the answer is ‘no’ – This technique requires both hands and my full attention!]
© Karen McRae, 2014
A September road trip, Part 1 ~ 
It’s hard to think of a more beguiling name for a place than Singing Sands. Who could resist going when you find those words on a map? It’s here where the great Lake Huron breathes its cool water in and out, over the sands and the expansive fen, pushing and pulling like a small tide. Taking and leaving. Creating a landscape of rich and diverse flora and great beauty and peacefulness.
[Multiple exposures – some with camera movement – and layers of the landscape. Images made at Singing Sands (Dorcas Bay) in Bruce Peninsula National Park]
© Karen McRae, 2014
A profusion of Queen Anne’s Lace in the August fields.
[Multiple exposures of the umbels with the first image layered with a drive-by photograph. Interestingly, the modern carrot is a domesticated cultivar of this plant which is also known as a wild carrot, Daucus carota]
© Karen McRae, 2014
As I sift through my photographs I realize that they are often much more painterly than many of the paintings I have made. I guess I have done enough ‘making of photographs’ that it becomes easier to let go – to be experimental – to play.
Somehow in all that play we stumble across visuals that lure us in and keep us going. That keep us making. Images that express something we want to say or something that we feel even if those things are not easily put into words. It is a beautiful thing to be completely drawn in by what you are working on; to be lost in images and ideas and explorations.
I suppose I am trying to get through a painting ‘slump’ as I look at the many abandoned works littering my studio. Those canvasses seem to be getting impatient, though. I hope at some point the freedom I feel when wielding a camera will shift into a paint brush, or a pencil. These photographs I have been working on are nudging me towards something more tactile; not attempts to recreate what I have done photographically – though surely these things speak to each other – but to push past the stumbling block of expecting perfection and specific outcomes when I put a brush to canvas. This is what I am learning – let go. There is nothing to lose, really, except the risk of getting lost in the work.
From the photographic series ‘Colour Field’
© Karen McRae, 2014
A photograph made by blending three different ‘drive-by’ images (and a smattering of selective erasing on 2 of the layers). It seems I am obsessively endlessly fascinated by the exploration of ‘movement’ when making photographs. : )
From the photographic series ‘Colour Field’
© Karen McRae, 2014
The roadside wildflowers are rich and beautiful at the moment. I can’t resist trying to capture compositions as we zip by.
[A drive-by photograph, layered and tweaked]
From the photographic series ‘Colour Field’
© Karen McRae, 2014
Long exposures of fast-moving water at night. These photographs were made during a paddling/camping trip and although there were lots of stars in the inky sky there was no glowing moon, so in order to light the first and last images I ‘painted’ the slipping-by water with my headlamp and set the camera to make 30 second exposures. In the middle image you can see my paddling friends are lighting the rapids (and the fluttery bugs) with their own headlamps.
(Unfortunately, I didn’t have the camera set to raw mode when I made these photographs – poorly planned on my part – so the image quality is not that great…)
© Karen McRae, 2014
[A composite (layered) image ~ swallows & grasses]
© Karen McRae, 2014
draw and shoot 