Return to Paradise 2

So, I've been at it a few days, photographing the remains of a whole town: Paradise, California.Though I am now here a year after the Camp Fire, the damage is no less impressive for there is so much, the extent of the fire so massive, that I still find it difficult to comprehend.

I drove farther east the other day, up through Paradise to the small town of Magalia, closer to where the fire started. Here the fire was spotty, some areas untouched just as some are a total disaster.

Trees are a powerful indicator of what that day in November 2018 must have been like. 50 mph winds pushing the fire ahead, throwing embers into the air, flames being fanned at times moving horizontally, trees on fire and singed then blown out as the firestorm moves on.

As I drove farther east up the ridge into the Sierras, the country opened up and became less inhabited.

I used a long lens to reach across the valley so I could describe for you how this fire behaved, its random nature hitting a stand of trees, only to move on and leave large areas untouched.

Getting lunch yesterday at a Taco truck (there are no restaurants open yet in Paradise), I spoke with an older man who lives in Magalia. He and his wife had evacuated east the day of the fire, away from Paradise, as the route down the main street called Ridgeway was blocked and people were gridlocked in their cars not able to get clear. He told me he left that day and wasn't able to get back to his home for six weeks, much of that time having no idea if his home was still standing or not. His home was untouched.

I also spoke with Robert, who lives on his property in town in a trailer as his house no longer exists. The day I spoke with him he was hoping to get electricity as he's been without for the past year. He said he will rebuild as he has nowhere else to go. He was carrying a sidearm and explained that looters have been a problem.

Most of the empty lots are sprayed with a kind of cover, much like what we see when a construction site is reseeded with grass.

This below from Ridgeway on the way down to Chico.

I've got one more day here in Chico and will spend it finishing up in Paradise, retracing my steps to make sure I've got all I need. Then tomorrow I head to Healdsburg to see what the Sonoma area looks like, the site of the Kincade fire in October.

Stay tuned. Your comments always welcome: here

Return to Paradise

I thought that perhaps Paradise would be coming back to life ten months after I was here the first time, two months after the Camp Fire. It is one year since the firestorm destroyed the town. To be clear, there are signs of renewal, some buildings are going up, some residents have returned, but the sheer scale of the job at hand is so huge, the destruction so extensive that real progress will need to be measured in decades, not months.

This above is contrasted with scenes like these:

Many of the homes and buildings I photographed in January have been demolished. What remains are whole neighborhoods of empty lots. And places for sale:

This being California where it is hot in the summer, many homes had pools. In an odd irony, they often remain, owners perhaps hoping to rebuild:

I've only been here a day so my sense of the place now is through first impression but as I was photographing one of the swimming pools, almost empty, I could hear water running and found some bushes and a little bit of grass being watered by a fine spray only to realize that the sprinkler system was still working, turning on each morning to water the garden.

Paradise is really a huge wound, scarred and devastated in a matter of a few hours in November 2018.

Going Back to Paradise

Safeway Market on Skyway, Paradise

Last January I went to Paradise, CA and photographed three months after the Camp Fire devastated the whole town.

PBS Frontline has an episode on the fire: https://www.pbs.org/video/fire-in-paradise-ncamrn/

I am going back in early November. I want to see how it looks now, how much they are rebuilding, how much evidence remains. I also want to get a sense of whether people are returning or if they have left.

Last winter I photographed the town on the ground and from the air: here.

85 people died from the Camp Fire in Paradise

I leave November 12 and will try to post to the blog during the trip. You can follow along by subscribing to the blog.

Stay tuned

Wheat Four 2019

This will finish the series I've been writing on the photographs I made in June of the wheat fields of the Palouse in Eastern Washington.

I am pleased to report that the portfolio is almost complete and that it just needs a few more reprints and a final edit to be ready to present.

If you would like to see the prints you can come to my studio to see them. Email me at: nrantoul@comcast.net

This is a small thing, but big if you are a printer and make portfolios. My prints in this series are on Red River San Gabriel Baryta paper in 17 x 25 inches. Archival Methods makes portfolio boxes, among other things. They now make a 17 x 25-inch drop-front box, seen here and also a 17 x 25-inch folio case. This is good news for those of us that like to use this slightly larger paper over the more standard 17 x 22-inch size. As a benefit, the DSLR full-frame fits this size paper better as well.

The last few days in Washington followed the already familiar pattern of getting up, driving, photographing, driving, photographing, on and on.

The latter part of Day 9 I started working in Pullman and this carried over to the next morning, which was my last:

These connect to a project I did in 2009 called Mallchitecture (here).

2011 Yuma Palms Mall, AZ

Rhode Island, 2009

I finished the trip with a few hours photographing the greenhouses at the University of Washington campus in Pullman:

That concludes this four-part series. I have been photographing in the area for 25 years, with trips every year or two. Am I finished? Hard to say. I feel like maybe I am, but in a year or two the Palouse will pull at me, just as it has many times before. It is a peculiar place, charming and very beautiful. The area has purity and honesty to it in a world so lacking in integrity and so perverse as to be defeating at times.

If you go, you could take a workshop, as there are several. Personally, I would hate that, being carted along to "choice spots" by a guide. I like the freedom to choose my places, my own time of day and time of year.

Wheat Three 2019

(Apologies: the blog was delayed as I took off for a week or so, first to the Cape and then to Martha's Vineyard. Just escaped the big winds from the edge of Dorian yesterday as I left the island. The ferries shut down after I left in the late morning.)

In the last post we looked at work fom Day 3 and 4. For this one we'll move on to Day 5 (the aerials) and Day 6.

For the past fifteen years or so I have included photographing aerially in most of the locations I go to. While some projects are aerial only, the Wheat pictures combine aerials with photographs made on the ground.

Day 5

There are so many variables in working aerially that you can't always predict the flight's success. To name a few: turbulence, clarity, time of day, time of year, temperature, where you choose to fly. With the prevalence now of consumer drones I often get asked if I use drones to make my pictures. I do not. In an hour or so over the Palouse I can cover a massive amount of territory. A drone is much more limiting and has to be landed, put back in the car and then driven to a new area.

Although I got a few from this year's flight that will remain in the portfolio, my success rate was lower than in past years.

Sometimes the photo gods ignore you and sometimes they shine down on you.The day before from the plane I'd made this one:

Day 6

Then, on Day 6 I came across this:

Day 6 was good, clear and calm. Wind can be bad, it makes it difficult to hold the camera steady making for unsharp photographs. Tripods can lose their effectiveness as they shake too in the wind.

After now many years of making pictures in the Palouse, I know that some of my photographs will sift down to be iconic in support of the overall work, standing as symbols for the work made that year. For instance:

1996 (from the permanent collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA)

or:

2009

or:

2010 (from the permanent collection of the Houston Museum of Art, Houston, Texas)

Back to my original intent with this series of blogs: experience counts. Got something you feel passionate about? Does it have an element of time to it? Is it something you could go back to and photograph again and again, building the quality of the work over multiple trips, taking months or perhaps years to complete? Stick to it. Who says the first time you see something is the best time to photograph it? Different seasons, different days, different light, different times. Excellent landscape work is often improved through a deep knowledge of what is in front of you and the camera. Want substance, subtlety, nuance and emotion from your landscape photographs? Don't go for the cheap shot: over saturated colors, fake skies, cliche, enhanced, over cooked, super sharp. Fake Fake Fake, I say. Keep the long view on your work, don't go for cheap thrills.