The Thankful Photographer

Today is the day symbolically dedicated to overeating and endless football giving thanks. In no order of importance, here are a few things photographers may be thankful for.

1. People Who Share Their Knowledge & Inspire Us

Teachers, mentors, bloggers…and other photographers.

2. The Internet

For the capabilities and possibilities it offers.

3. The Camera Equipment You Currently Own

Take an honest look at the contents of your camera bag and see if you don't find an embarrassment of riches inside.

4. The Camera Equipment You Wish You Owned

Camera companies make the models they think we want (power windows and heated seats), and sometimes they're right.

5. Computer Prices

Terabytes have replaced megabytes, at the same (or lower) cost. Monitors are high-resolution color, included with your purchase. Powerful software is built-in. Remember the Mac Plus?

6. The Freedom to Self-Publish

I'm doing it right now. There's never been a better time to get a soapbox blog. Or print a book.

7. The Digital Evolution

For bringing creativity out of the darkroom and onto the desktop.

8. Traditional Image-making Technologies

For keeping the game in perspective, and offering alternatives.

9. Software Developers

For making 1s and 0s do magic.

10. THIS SPACE RESERVED…for you.

Be it a special place, or person…remember to give thanks more than once a year for those things that make photography a special passion.

The Morning Paper

Dawn arrived today in typical late-November style. Shifting layers of fog filled the valley, moving silently over dark hillsides as tall clouds caught the first direct sunlight and gave back traces of subtle colors, with the wild approval of passing geese. These last moments before sunrise are one of my favorite times of day, and it coincides with the delivery of our daily newspaper.

When I got to the paper box I noted that the potholes on our gravel road are becoming substantial in size and depth, and I expect the county will send a road-grader out soon to smooth things over.

It's too bad they can't patch up the problems our newspapers are having.

Monday's paper has always been the runt of the week, but this is sad. The classifieds must be with the comics (my wife took those to work), but they've shrunk to six pages…people advertise their goods on eBay or craigslist now…and there aren't many Help Wanteds, either.

The sports section has been pared too, but it's still second only to the main section, and they get the majority of photos. We do love our games. Most of the news in the main section, by the way, was on the internet yesterday, except for local weather conditions, features, and late-breaking stories. I know this because that's where I read most of it.

The most disappointing section of the paper is local and regional news. They'd cut it to three pages if that were possible…I guess there just isn't much happening in town now.

Probably, everyone's inside reading the paper online.

The Dust Bath

An American bison (Bison bison) rolls in a wallow in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley.

Reflective

There won't be any fine afternoon light coming in the kitchen window today: the weather's awful. But it's Oregon, after all, and unless you fall off your bicycle (and drown) everything's as it should be.

Yesterday, before this mess arrived, a decorative prism in that same window caught the light and projected it onto a leaf above the sink.

Hurricane Vent

Norris Geyser Basin is one of Yellowstone Park's most active and interesting thermal areas…there's a lot of hissing and bubbling going on. Sitting quietly on a hillside overlooking the Porcelain Basin, Hurricane Vent is overshadowed by its flashier neighbors. Yet, with a thin blanket of steam pushed around by morning breezes, there isn't a place at Norris I'd rather be.


The basics: earth, wind, and a hot fire down below…the water temperatures at steam vents can easily exceed 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ready For Winter

To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world. —Charles Dudley Warner

The Ghost Goose

The road from Mammoth Hot Springs to the Norris Geyser Basin passes two small Twin Lakes, North and South. Fog is common most mornings, and on this day I was lucky to capture a ghost goose as it lifted off from the North.

Fading

North of Livingston, Montana, a barn resists the tug of gravity…but not for too much longer. The day was bright and blue-skied, but I've employed Photoshop to interpret what the scene felt like: fading, and mostly forgotten, a snapshot in time.

Might As Well Jump

I was watching oak leaves fall by the basketful yesterday and got to thinking about words. Like the leaves, too many to count. A couple came to mind for no apparent reason.

Fall was first, perhaps because of what I was seeing, but my mental movie then skipped to a forever hapless character in pursuit of his ever-elusive target, and that got me to thinking about todays' time change, which (as I explained to the cats as they waited impatiently for breakfast) is remembered as fall back.

Hot on the heels of fall was jump. I've got a tune by Van Halen on my iPod, so David Lee Roth came at me in mid-air, but I was able to move quickly and avoid him, and go on instead to the noted photographer Philippe Halsman, also a master of suspension. Halsman's subjects were many and famous, and the photographer employed what he came to call jumpology during portrait sessions. "When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears." Out of that practice came Philippe Halsman's Jump Book in 1959, featuring (among others) a spry-looking Richard Nixon.