In ‘Technicolo(u)r’.
The colour is actually true to the photograph. There was that lovely warm light of late afternoon and I was using a polarizing filter which brings out those autumn colours and intensifies the blue of the sky. I find it all a bit frenzied but these are the flitting colours of the season and here they are hastening by.
[An image made from two photographs, both of which were made from a moving car.]
© Karen McRae, 2013
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
Wild apples, crisp and tart, floating gently in the dappled creek under a canopy of trees.
[Layered with surface reflections in post processing]
© Karen McRae, 2013
Wild apples floating in the creek, doubly exposed and ‘cooked’ three ways. (I think I like the black and white…) It seems the deer come to this hidden place to bob for apples, leaving behind deep footprints in the clay banks.
© Karen McRae, 2013
draw and shoot 