Discovering a Subject Matter

When I first carried my camera into the woods of northern Michigan, much to my surprise, I turned my camera away from the grand landscape around me to a glow of light in the streambed at my feet. In that random choice, at nineteen, I discovered a subject matter that would spark a life-long exploration. I saw in the interaction of light and water a landscape where objects seemed to dissolve and reflections could look solid, where scale and volume blurred, and where the nature of materials appeared transformed. I felt I had touched something inexplicable and vast at the water’s edge that gripped my imagination as nothing had before.

Photographing the Invisible Landscape

The Invisible Landscape images are created by the interplay of light, wind, flora, and the reflective and transparent surface of water. In these malleable environments, a cloud passing overhead, a breath of wind, or the movement of my body in the water will alter a scene. The camera height, optics, and shutter speed also change how water and reflections are rendered. I cannot see fixed compositions before me per se but must rely on my intuition, preparedness, and the grace of natural elements to create final images.  

I begin by simply taking a picture of something that attracts my attention, knowing that exposing one image will help me see and prepare for another. The process is quick and intuitive: I anchor my tripod in the soft pond sediments and frame a composition; tilt the front lens of the view camera to focus across the water’s surface; still my body and take an exposure. I check sharpness in the image; refocus; wait for calm; take another exposure, and another. I repeat this process again and again, as I respond to changes in the environment and maneuver my camera along seeking new compositions. My approach is not deliberate, but one more of focused confusion where the success of my effort is not clear in the moment.

Revealing an Inner Landscape

The Invisible Landscape photographs do not depict a scene in nature you can see with your eyes. They are a version of nature constructed with my imagination. This is the power I discovered at the water’s edge so many years ago: my ability to  draw the exterior landscape into an interior place through a camera, where my imagination can illuminate and shape the world around me. I found in those close-up ephemeral environments a relationship to the natural world where the “grand landscape” is created by a place inside us that we can all access.