After a one hour flight in this:
with its doors off:
where I was harnessed and tethered, I headed back to the motel in mid day heat to work the files, of which there were 437.
Here are a few from today's shoot in the Palouse in eastern Washington:
The yellow is Canola.
Chalking those up to being nice but a little insignificant? Think they don't hold up that well on your iPhone screen? Well, this is a crop of the barn in the lower right from a print size of 30 inches (at 245 pixels per inch):
meaning that these will be amazing. Can't wait to see them as prints. One of the all time best aerial shoots ever for me. Calm air, wonderful clarity, temp in the mid 60's, doors off the plane, no wing strut in the way. The 206 Cessna I used cost a little more but was really worth it.
Part of what's so wonderful about being a photographer is the opportunity it affords you to do things that are different than what most people do. You know I am all about the pictures, the results I get, but there is also the ability to have such wonderful experiences too.
This as I took a break from pointing down at 1000 feet above the Palouse:
When I get home and begin to work the files I will post Wheat 2014 on the site.
Want to know more about photographing aerially?
Go here:
Luminous Landscape 1
and
Luminous Landscape 2
Thanks for reading this blog! I hope you enjoy it.
I am not home anymore but on a photo shoot.
Uneventful flight to Spokane yesterday, through Minneapolis. Picked up Budget rental and drove to Colfax, Washington where I'll be for three days.
Where am I? In the heart of the Palouse, the wheat, lentil, barley area in eastern Washington I've photographed in for almost twenty years.
Take a look at:
Wheat 2009
Wheat 2010
Wheat 2011
Wheat 2012
I missed last year as I was in Iceland.
Early July the wheat crop is about mid thigh level, high enough to be blown in the wind but not so high that it can't support its own weight.
There's no harvesting yet, but that will come soon.
There's a softness to the landscape this time of year and the Palouse is really at its best right now; rich and sumptuous, an epitome of agricultural richness and prosperity.
What's a day like shooting here in late June? Try to get out and on the road by 5 to 5:30. Head north or south, east or west; it doesn't really matter.This is literally thousands of square miles of hilly fields covered in mostly wheat, with Colfax in the center. Best is to pick an unpaved farm road, get lost and roam, looking looking, stopping to set up and shoot, usually right next to the car but sometimes heading off into a field, or climbing a rise for a better vantage point, packing the gear back in the car and driving again, sometimes just around the corner to stop again and sometimes for miles in an endless succession of stops, shoot, drive on and stop, shoot and so on until the light gets flat and bright by 9:30 or so. Back to the hotel, late breakfast/early lunch, download files, pass out and cruise for a few hours only to pack it all in the car again and do the same routine from 5 until the sun sets about 9 pm.
Sometimes, like today, I will shoot midday anyway, even though the light's not at its best. Today was just too good: bright clear blue sky with puffy white clouds.
I am apt to hyperbole about this place but it truly is spectacularly beautiful. Put it on your list of must see places. Not touristy and not flashy, no five star Michelin hotels, food that's nothing to write home about, but simply the best place I know.
Tomorrow I will shoot aerials for an hour or so in the early morning. A first is that I will fly in a Cessna 206. This is a bigger plane than I've flown in before and two side doors will be removed for the flight. Can't wait.
I'm calling a new body of work "Before and After Aerials" as it is a portfolio of work from before I shot aerials one day in February in the Sacramento River Valley in California as well as pictures made after we landed. This was a marathon day and significant for me personally. It was an affirmation of worth and ability, that I was still able to make pictures of viability, substance and beauty and that I was continuing to move forward; important, if you think about it. Don't stay where you've been. Yes, it is safe there, but it is death artistically and creatively.
At any rate, on the way to the airport for my flight with pilot Stan in Yuba City, the light was beautiful. I was early, as I always seem to be, and stopped along the way to shoot in town.
And at the airstrip before we took off:
When we landed about an hour or so later, I headed back to town but saw this from the highway and got off at the next exit:
I'd never seen one of these before but the company website describes them as being like a BJ's or Costco without having to pay to join.
The store was huge:
If you look closely you can see there is a flock of pigeons circling in the sky above the store. Along the front were 8 Italian Cyprus trees, looking neglected and sad. The store was closed and it was midday during the week. Not good for Food Maxx.
The massive parking lot free of cars gave me a unique opportunity to put my Mallchitecture hat on once again:
After lunch I was headed back west across the valley towards the coast where I was living in Santa Rosa. But once again, the area was so good I had to stop.
Where there was a barn, derelict and on its way out for sure, looking used and possibly unsafe, standing there proud and beautiful in its purity of form:
About as elegant as anything I'd ever seen.
So, what I've shown you here are the bookends of the day. I wrote about the aerials I made that day here and here. It was a major day. The last thing I made a picture of on my way out of the valley and headed into the mountains to drive back to Santa Rosa was this:
of the fruit trees in bloom. These were the same trees I'd photographed from the air a few hours earlier:
Those of you that are subscribers probably know that I have been away for the past month in Santa Rosa, California. Living in a rented cottage in the hills about 20 minutes from town I have tasted the experience of living in the country and watched the light come up each morning in this very beautiful part of the world. Often I've been here at the end of the day when the sun goes down and fades away in a final blaze of glory.
From the deck of the cottage where I am staying just after the sun came up.
And across the valley at dawn on a rainy and foggy morning.
And just before sunset.
My point isn't so much the pictures I've made here where I've been living, although I've enjoyed making them and am glad I have them. It is that I have been able to have this experience, to revel in the sheer luxury of waking up each morning to the challenge of "what do I do today?" and "where do I go to photograph?"
Can you imagine? No TV, no phone, some internet so that I can post these blogs, high up on a ridge overlooking a valley and hills on either side, a dog named Din that comes over every morning from the neighbors to say hi, and the biggest problem I've got is do I go to the coast or inland up into the hills and mountains behind me to photograph. Yes, this is the luxury of retirement and affordability, yes it will come to an end and when home there will be chores, errands, hassles, things I have to do but don't want to do (April 15 is approaching, for instance), but I have had this time, this month, in which I could indulge a lifelong passion to see and to see with a camera in hand.
Today, for instance I am confronted with the choice of heading down the 101 to the last exit before the Golden Gate Bridge to photograph again at the "headlands". Why? Let me show you:
I made this picture across the parking lot from where you stop to walk through the WW II bunker to get a view of the bridge from above. There is a raindrop blurring the image in the lower right. Could I fake this and remove it in PS? Probably. But it would be better if I was there again standing in front of this very strange rock mound in no rain.
Or, do I head back to the coast again today to shoot more Tafoni? What? Tafoni? Yes. Italian for "weird rock formations", pretty much. Thanks to a friend's tip about the State Park at Salt Point I found these:
OMG! Amazing, yes? As I am in my last few days I'd better stop writing and get moving as the light is coming up, it is gray out but not raining and I've got places to go, clearly.
I don't know if this life I am leading is the reward for a career that was at times hard work or not but it sure is a very good thing. I am thankful for my lucky stars.
Okay, I can hear you now: "Enough already with the skate parks!" but I really do have to add something to the one already posted, the Healdsburg Skate Park.
I found another one, this one a much more typical skate park. A more typical one combines all those wonderful concrete curves, hills and valley, dips and things to jump over, with, you guessed it: graffiti.
In this case young artistic expression run amok. Total chaos in an orgiastic display of colors and design by spray cans used without restraint. So cool.
What I loved most about this place, besides its sheer exuberance, was how the paint totally subverted the form lying underneath. In some of the pictures, you can't really tell what the underlying shape is.
As I worked around the park and the afternoon wore on I could see that back light was going to play a role:
like the broad back of some sea monster lying in the sun:
I can hear it coming, you saying a few months from now: "Yeah, Rantoul lost it that winter he went out to California and started shooting skate parks. He got so into it, it was all he was talking about. And the pictures? Totally whacked. You know, no one's heard from him since? I bet he's still out there shooting those parks. Poor guy."
When I posted the Healdsburg blog (Skate Park) a friend wrote back and said "Wheat Fields!"meaning that the way I was seeing these was very much the way in which I photograph the wheat fields in Washington (Wheat 2011). I have used form to make content, used shape to denote space, used pattern for emphasis, used tonality and color to convey emotion, used light to deepen and used repetition of forms to deny and reinforce spatial relationships for a very long time and do not plan on stopping any time soon.
Do you think I'm finished with these, think we can now move on? Not bloody likely as I'm on a roll and having way too much fun. BTW: this one is in a park in Santa Rosa on Fulton Street right across from the high school.
Awesome!
