The Clocks [pinhole photograph]
January 31, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)
This was taken in a snow storm a little over a week ago (see the previous post). It is part of an on-going series of pinhole photographs I am working on called Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin. I do not have the entire series (15 images at the moment) posted in one place, but you can view several of them in the Pinhole section of this blog. The previous six posts are all from this series, too. I am in the midst of redesigning my main web site and the full series will be posted there once I get that done (hopefully in another week).
The Journey of the Clocks
I purchased these clocks at a garage sale in Maine in late June 2007 and I first photographed them for this series on July 1st at the base of a cliff. They were on rocks and the incoming tide swirled around them.
But I was never really pleased with those photos because I could not get the camera close enough to the clocks. One of the pleasures and compositional strengths of a wide angle pinhole camera is the fact that you can place objects very close to the pinhole to create some interesting foreground/background relationships. In the photos by the sea the clocks were just a bit too far away for my tastes.
So, I brought them back home to California (along with the old letters and the ledger) and put them on a shelf in my studio and waited until the muse would speak to me again. In the week of snow we had at the end of January, the muse rang me up and the clocks went for another journey into the forest around my home. Close to water once again, but this time frozen water in the form of snow. And I finally got the image that I had in my mind's eye when I first worked with them along the rocky Maine coast. Of course, I didn't imagine the snowy setting, but this is the general positioning of the clocks that I was thinking of. The wintry landscape is just an unexpected bonus.
Sometimes, you have to wait for a good photo. Even it is one that you set up, like this arranged still life in nature. For this image, I waited 7 months, but it paid off.
Upcoming Creative Collage Workshop
If you live in California near Monterey, Santa Cruz, or the San Francisco Bay Area, then you may be interested in a new weekend class that has just been added to my schedule. I'll be teaching a 2-day version of my Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop workshop at the Monterey Adult School on March 1st and 2nd.
For a complete listing of other upcoming workshops, click on over to the Workshops Page at my web site.
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