Field Guide – Linda & Robert Scarth

We are so pleased to be included in this year’s Chait Galleries Downtown’s Small Works Show. All three framed images that we submitted to this Iowa City gallery were accepted. The 12×12 inch framed images of beautiful rocks and minerals stand alone and work as a group.

Two were made at the Rachel Carson Salt Pond Preserve that appears in our September 3, 2011 post. The one on the right was also made along the Maine coast where lava and other mineral crystals intrude on one another.

We hope to meet you at the reception this Friday evening from 5 to 8 o’clock. Our invitation is pictured at the top of this post.

Last month while in the Northeast, we made a pilgrimage to The Rachel Carson Salt Pond Preserve near New Harbor, Maine. It was late afternoon and the tide was receding to reveal this quarter acre tidal pool. Rachel Carson studied the inhabitants of the Salt Pond which contributed to her book The Edge of the Sea.

The rocks at the outer edge are visible through the trees behind the plaque which was put there in 1970 by the Maine Chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC). TNC received the preserve’s original forty acres in 1966, just two years after Miss Carson’s death. Another 38 acres was donated in 1967. Miss Carson had helped to form the Maine Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

The shore is a marvelous mixture of rocks with a fascinating history. The gray bedrock called granulite is thought to be 420 million years old. The beach stones are multicolored from the various minerals and rock types.

As the tide receded a shallow pool became visible surrounded by a ring of rocky outcrops in the water. One could imagine a Stonehenge of the sea. It is a special place that inspires reverance for the natural world, as we watched the tide move out and the pond become a placid place of smooth water while the Atlantic Ocean outside the rocks continued to ruffle its surface.

The wonderful thing about beautiful rocks is that they do not run or fly away. Photographing them in quiet light revealed their various sized grains, textures and colors. No need for white umbrellas to diffuse light and deal with reflections from granite and quartz. The violent and hot history of the geology was seen in the traceries of various minerals and rock types weaving in and out in a multitude of patterns. Sometimes smooth bits of seaweed provided a counterpoint to the roughness.

As the light faded, we left and were grateful to those who protect one of the sites where Miss Carson explored, sat, thought, and considered how to alert people to the earth’s vulnerbility.

We sometimes think of our close-up images as intimate landscapes. One of our challenges is to make a large landscape intimate for us and the viewer. This is Catarata del Toro waterfall in Costa Rica. It falls into a magnificent gorge with trails to several vantage points. The gorge itself is a grand landscape worthy of a panorama. It is is reputed to be the tallest falls in Costa Rica but we have not found a verified height. The estimates vary and we think that meters and feet may be confounding one another in the figures we have seen. It plunges over columnar basalt from an ancient volcano.

It was a misty, cloudy day suitable for making sets of images for possible future HDR (high dynamic range) processing. We did some of that, but also liked the dark, moody, mysterious ambiance of the cloud forest. A single straight image exposed with the fern tree and the waterfall in mind, to which a slight curves adjustment was applied in Photoshop, allowed the three dimensional feeling to continue in two dimensions. This fern tree against the waterfall adds a bit of whimsey to an otherwise more typical portrayal of a waterfall landscape – a waterfall wearing a dancer’s tutu or an exotic fan dancer revealing what is underneath. The fern fronds add to the mystery by their translucence revealing vegetation, rock face and water through their lace.

We frequently heard the cloudforest and rainforest described as mysterious so wanted to portray that in some of the images, especially landscapes and night images. Photography has changed how humans see and what we remember. The characteristics of light are both ephemeral and everlasting in the images we all make.

As we staged our trip to the Monarch Butterfly Preserve, we visited several archeological and geological sites in the area around Morelia, Michoacan. The church at the Volcan de Paricutin was one of the fascinating places. We rode small, strong little horses down a rugged trail to the volcano area. They were especially appreciated on the return trip.

Local people regard it as a miracle that the lava flow which started in a corn field in 1943, eventually inundating the town and surrounding area, flowed into the church, but stopped just before the alter. This steeple is one of the visible parts with thick layers of lava sometimes colonized by small trees and flowers in the years since in cooled. Over the 9 years that the vent was active, vulcanologists from throughout the world were able to study its behavior.

We climbed over the lava to explore the ruins and look down into the alter area. It is regularly decorated by pilgrims and locals who visit to remember.

From a distance, looking at the expanse of the lava flow, the church is hidden in plain site in the roughness and color of the landscape. Up close, the alter was surprisingly white among the dark gray chunks of lava at its base and pile high around the structure. The forces of nature are always amazing.

Lately we have been a bit nostalgic for the years we lived “Down Under” in Australia. Looking through old negatives, photographs and slides is a good way to travel back. In the process we found that some film is showing its age. When we scanned this negative we found scratches and embedded dust. So it was Photoshop to the rescue. When a photo optimizing software is used to restore images it is also restoring memories.

The dunes, near the ruins of the old telegraph station at Eucla, Western Australia, are a classic landscape. The telegraph station was built in 1877 near the state line with South Australia. A thriving small town developed but a rabbit plague in the 1890′s devoured the grass on the dunes. The destabilized Delisser Dunes grew and started moving, as they still do. The town was moved and the telegraph station was abandoned. We visited on a trip along the Great Australian Bight to see the Nullarbor Plain and watch for Right Whales from the cliffs along the coast. This is morning light as we were looking north.

After ‘spotting’ the dust and cloning out the the scratches, the image was optimized by dodging the dark side of the dune to reveal more detail. Optimizing the image was an exercise in thinking about and using the Zone System developed by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer to guide the range of illumination and amount of contrast distributed throughout the image. The resulting illumination and contrast in the negative and the image processing was controlled to emphasizes the lines.

In color work we think of it as the Tone System to spread the luminance from dark to light, irrespective of the colors. The digital darkroom emulates a wet darkroom without the chemicals and with greater control of the results.

This image breaks some landscape rules and is stronger for doing so. Instead of a line down the middle, it is often suggested that there be a diagonal through the landscape. The central line works because of the different textures and the counterbalancing of image weight (dark and light) in the lower right and upper left of the image. The dune edge line is repeated in the foreground ripples.

BTW, from a cliff top we did see a mother Right Whale, with the size and proportions of a box car, and her baby. The baby wanted to play with some dolphins that were cavorting nearby. But mother was a strict disciplinarian and kept the baby at her ‘hip’. There are sharks out there in the Bight.

Geologic formations are among the many beautiful things on earth. Gems and minerals are usually hidden from view but not at a rock, gem and mineral show. Today we visited one and enjoyed the generosity of exhibiters who let us photograph some of their specimens. This agate is a stone flower – with the lines of a morning glory.

Last night we went to the 26th annual Prairie Preview lecture in Iowa City. Dr. Paul Zales’ presentation about how he became involved in the rehabilitation of the Loess Hills was titled the ‘Lost Hills.’ The Loess Hills that parallel the Missouri River for 200 miles are one of the earth’s unique geologic features. Among his slides was one showing a 1832 painting of the Loess Hills by George Catlin. They were huge mounds of treeless prairie that had been made so by recurrent fire. He also showed nicely composed comparative photographs of two locations from about 1906 and 2006, with the newer ones illustrating how the hills are ‘lost’ in tree cover. Art again supported and sustains our knowledge of the changing world. Another demonstration of the 1/1000 image to word ratio.