The first image in my book ‘Instant Grammar 2013’ was captured on January 1, 2013; a very nice day with snow left on the ground from a weather system that came through earlier in the week.
Janurary 1, 2013 – House at the Squannacook River Dam in Groton, MA.
My good friend and fellow photographer, George, was visiting from Connecticut, so we planned to do a bit of wandering around on New Years Day and explore the area for some photo opportunities.
I had some locations in mind from my daily commute to the high-tech part of my life. This commute used to take me through various small towns with lots of interesting older architecture and locations. The Squannacook River Dam in this image was one of the locations on my list, as I enjoy water in my images and I knew there was potential for a good image.
It took a bit of clambering down the embankment to get the angle and framing of the image that is shown here. I wanted the house to rise above the dam and falls and use the sky and snow to complement one another, so as to provide a combination of the majesty of nature and structure, along with a sense of peaceful coexistence.
Hope you like this one! More can be found in the book at
During this past week I spent a good amount of time going through all the images from last year’s 365 Project that I described in a previous post (365 Projects – What’s Next? ). After gathering all the images, the task of culling them to a number that would produce a reasonably priced book was harder than I expected, but nonetheless gratifying even in some unexpected ways.
The Cows are Hamming it Up!
There may be some good reasons for all of us to go through a process like this once in a while. It’s healthy to go back through a body of work and make decisions about what we’re going to include for publication in print (I gently put forth the concept that having photography in print is a different level of visceral connection to a work than on a computer screen; I may have to write a blog post about that concept). It certainly felt like a cleansing to me with a much more positive outlook on my work as a result.
Fingall’s Cave on the Island of Staffa.
First to describe the process that I used. I took the 365+ candidate images (there were some days, where I had several interesting images, so I included these for this process rather than prejudging). I assigned rating stars to all of the potentially publishable images, which wound up ranging from 3 to 5 stars. Including all the extra images, this resulted in 229 images at 3+ stars: too many! At this point, I did a quick re-scan to ensure that non of the 3-star images should have a change in rating and set the cut-off at 4+ stars: 164 images! Still way too many, as my target was slight less than 60, so that I could publish it in a 60 page book.
Dunkin’ Donuts and the Weather
Another quick scan allowed me to get the number of potential images down to about 130, which was moving in the right direction.
Rather than continuing to pare down the number of images through this methodology, I decided to start formatting the book, which gave me the opportunity to get a sense of how the various images would work together on facing pages. As I did this, a sense of flow and story was developing, which resulted in a very satisfying end product (I’m still writing the afterword, but that’s a matter of another 30 minutes max) that will go out later today for production. I’m psyched!
Oh, almost forgot: go out and do something likes this for one of your projects and you’ll appreciate your own work a lot more!
A week or so back, I wrote about this year’s 365 Instagram project, which focuses on capturing skies on a daily basis; it is still going strong, as I captured Sky #42 today for the year. In that blog post I also mentioned that I completed a 365 Instagram project in 2013.
The big question after completing a project is what to do with that completion? My decision around the end of 2013 was to pull together a book of the images and publish it (at least electronically, and possibly, if there is enough interest, in print format).
Farm Landscape
With a wealth of new images, albeit in Instagram format and size, I figured there would at least be some among them that are worth sharing with the general public. Therefore, I have started the process of pulling all the images together in LightRoom and picking my favorites from among them.
Looking Down the Old Railroad
Of course, it is easier said than done to cull the entire year’s worth of images to the top 60 or so that will fit nicely in an 8×8 Blurb book and provide a reasonable representation of the year’s catch.
As I also mentioned in the prior post, there was clearly a bit of development in my Instagram skills, as the year progressed, which, when coupled with an increasing amount of inspiration resulted in some very acceptable images (acceptable is a high level of self-praise among photographers 🙂 ).
There were also some themes that evolved, some of which shouldn’t be a surprise to me, if I took the time to listen to my own skills: lots of rather cool landscapes and the odd bit of dramatic sky. A new area of interest that snuck in somewhat unanticipated was that of graveyards; there are lots of interesting graveyards in the New England area and some were clearly worth capturing on days that I passed them during my commute or other travels.
Yogic Tree
More than anything else, last year’s project taught me to keep my eyes open at all times and be aware of my environment with a keen sense of curiosity. It is rewarding to see a subject, such as a tree, on different days with varying light and atmospheric conditions and capture some of this variety during the year. Trees have always had a lot of power for me, as they remind me of endurance and perseverance despite the best efforts of the elements and time. Some of their shapes can be nothing short of spectacular, such as the ‘Yogic Tree’ in this post (expect more about this tree, as I have visited her many times).
Work on the book is progressing nicely and will complete within the next week or two; I will provide an update with a link to the electronic version when complete. I know that finishing the book will give me a sense of accomplishment and closure on last year’s endeavor.
Many of us have looked at means to keep our photography fresh throughout the year, particularly those of us who suffer from one or more of the following symptoms:
not enough hours in the day
perfectionism, perfectionism, perfectionism
chasing the ideal shot
and many other maladies that get in the way of what we might term our creative muse. Of course, most of these are self-inflicted, except, possibly, needing more than 24 hours to accomplish everything that we would like to do. All of these are a matter of priorities, some of which you may say are outside the sphere of our control.
Morning at Tougas Farm.
One of the crutches that many of us photographers will use is to undertake a longer-term, simple project to give us at least the feeling that we’re accomplishing something along the lines of our craft (dear reader, there is a hint of sarcasm there….more on that later). Two years ago, I made the decision to grab a crutch and start a 365 day project, which went pretty well for a while, until I missed a day. The project was to simply take a photo every day, which seems simple enough, but wasn’t simple enough for me to complete; I think I lasted about 4 or so months.
Early light over Rocky Pond
Of course, the failure to complete this project had the opposite effect of the intended one: I was disappointed that I couldn’t complete something this simple; the cause of this failure was not my inability to perform simple tasks, but rather my failure to plan ahead, or, to be more precise for this case, to set the right criteria for success.
Nearly all of us enjoy the accomplishment of reaching a goal that we have set for ourselves or that we have accepted as a challenge from someone else. That being the case, why do so many of us fail to reach goals that we set for ourselves? I’ll admit freely that this is not the first ‘self-imposed’ photography project that I failed to complete (there are even some non-photography projects on this list).
The good part that came from this failure is that I spent a little bit of time mulling over the reasons that I didn’t complete this project; a little time, but not much, as there were other shiny objects to attract my attention in due time. Before I really understood the cause of my lack of success, I started another 365 Day project on January 1, 2013.
Snow with Blue Sky in Westborough.
This project had a slightly different scope than my previous attempt; rather than leaving the project without any constraints, I decided to take a slight different strategy by setting the following constraints:
Each image was to be taken and posted on the day it was due
Each image was to be an Instagram
I will grant you that this is not very different from the previous attempt, as there was no constraint on subject matter, so the resultant images started all over the place, raining from items on my desk to flowers, cows, display cases, landscapes, what have you!
Northborough Savanna.
The initial foray into the 2013 project ranged from mildly inspired to uninspired photography, but at least lived up to the constraints that I set. Clearly, uninspired photography is not what the goal is of a 365-day project, but it often comes with the territory, as we don’t always see things that inspire us in our daily journey through life.
What was different this time around, is that I started recognizing that there were opportunities for some inspired photography along the way, as I started seeing things in ways that I had not before both in terms of noticing items and being forced to think in a square format. The other side effect is that I was reminded that there is a particular set of subjects in photography, for which my eye has a natural affection and I tend to photograph pretty well (even, if I say so myself – of course, we tend to be tough self-critics, which is one of the other things I learned to let go.
You can guess that there is a happy finish to this tale; I completed the 2013 365-day Instagram project with enough images of sufficient quality that I am putting them together in an 8×8 book (more on this in a future post), and, on the heels of rampant success, I have started my 2014 365-day project: 365 Skies. What you will see posted for the year in this project are all Instagrams, but I am also taking the same scene with my DSLR, so that I can produce high-resolution HDR images of each day’s sky. The reason for this is that I want to build my own library of skies to use in images in another series that I am slowly putting together: Surreal Tales (yes, you guessed it….there will be a future post about this).
My apologies for this long-winded post, which I hope you enjoyed. If this reminds you of something that has been challenging for you, I’d love to hear about your experiences.
This image is a bit different in the ‘Kryptomorphaics’ series in that it did not include any camera-based manipulation of the image. ‘Invasive Species’ became apparent to me, as I was wondering through the systematic garden at Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, Massachusetts. I was on the prowl for some great new additions to the aforementioned series of abstract images and found a good number of them (the album can be found on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/frankjansenphotography/ – under ‘Projects in Progress’ ). When I first looked at the flora presented to me in the small pond, my eyes went to some of the flowers and its structure against the sky; they presented an interesting subject, but didn’t have the pull, for which I tend to look in a subject. Allowing my eyes to trace the outline of the reeds and flowers downward, I was surprised by the stillness of the reflection and closed in for a better look.
Taking a step unto the stone surround of the pond, I noticed that there was a hint of a breeze at the top of the reeds, while the surface of the pond remained quiet and glassy. There was an abundance of small particulate matter floating in the pond, which gave me a sense of stellar matter floating throughout a galaxy; the tentative reflection of a bit of cloud hints at a galaxy that is reasonably close on the scale of the universe, but still distant enough to not directly affect the species floating throughout the vast empty space. As the story of this plant-like species’ journey through the vastness of space began to unfold in my mind, I could see it taking the role of an invasive species looking to colonize some unsuspecting planet that suited its particular needs. Surrounded by a cloud of seedlings, which are purposed to protect the main organism and scan the space ahead for a potential home world. We cannot fully grasp the scale of the organism: it may be the size of a large city, such as New York, or as large as a small moon. Only the destruction that it leaves in its wake gives us a measure of its voracity and appetite.
Enjoy this image, and don’t hesitate to let me know what it means to you. I am curious how you may read the image.
Technical Details
This image was captured at 100 ISO, F/13 at 1/30 second shutter speed. Color and contrast were adjusted for the desired effect in Photoshop.
On a beautiful Summer’s day I stopped at a rolling meadow to capture some of the landscape with my camera; less than twenty minutes later I got back in my car with a number of images, one of which is ‘Centripetus’.
In photographing landscapes, there is always a desire in me to capture something unusual that has not been seen the same way by all who were at the site. Whether it is the beauty of the sky, unusual features traversing the landscape or an alternate point of view, there should be something in a landscape image that makes the viewer want to look more than once.
With my eyes alertly searching for just the right kind of view that would make an interesting photograph, I squinted a bit as I walked past a tree and some small bushes growing next to it; looking through the bushes toward a horizon that showed a beautiful color palette across the sky, I sensed something more.
The more that I sensed consists of a view through these very bushes toward the reality that lies beyond them, not a clear view, but one filtered through a veritable web of perception. This view draws us in with the knowledge that there is more to be discovered beyond these bushes; we thirst to pass through the web and uncover what our eyes cannot yet see, while our entire being is tugged by the impetus to approach the center.
Take a moment to allow the eyes to slowly adjust and let themselves be drawn in; float with them and feel the force that resides within the green world in front of us.
Technical Details
This image was captured at 100 ISO, F/22 at 1/3 second shutter speed. A snappy zoom twist with a modicum of camera rotation was used to create a sense of webbed delight.
In this image, ‘Introspection’, a sense of deep blue thoughts is evoked from within a deposit of rocks, brought to the site most likely with the help of the slow, methodical, yet inexorable power of a glacier. These rocks have seen much change around them, while they themselves have changed only slowly; withstanding the test of time, they absorb the vibrations of the universe, as they pulse through them. These rocks are an ancient recording device, filled with information, which may have immense value, if only it can be extracted.
The wisdom of the rocks stands in stark juxtaposition to the assumptions that we, humans, make about them; we hurl rocks as an insult to those, who we consider of inferior intellect: you have ROCKS for BRAINS! If we take into consideration that every rock has been a receiver of universal data for many aeons, we should be astounded by the cornucopia of knowledge that resides within each pebble; the volumes of data that exist within a brain-sized boulder will indubitably contain all of Einstein’s theories, quantum mechanics and string theory. If we think what might be stored in the rocks that make up Stonehenge, it will be well beyond our comprehension!
When the vibrations from these glacial deposits operate in harmony with our mind, wondrous images appear, an epiphany of geological proportions; allow the rocks to speak to you and listen carefully to their incantations…
Technical Details
This image was captured at 100 ISO, F/22 at 0.5 second shutter speed. A reasonably quick twist of the zoom barrel brought out the flow from the rocks. The original image was cropped and rotated 90 degrees; color and contrast were enhanced in Photoshop, but no effects were added to alter the image from that captured in the camera.
‘Pyroplasm 3x’ is one of the images that sprang from the first series of abstract images that I created within my camera. Sitting around a campfire with a group of fellow photographers, I mused over photographing the fire in front of me; looking to capture more of the content that lies within the fire rather than a purely pictorial representation, I opened my senses to the nature of the fire and its very essence. As a purely physical phenomenon, fire is the oxygenation of gaseous materials; upon deeper examination fire shows itself to have a life-force, to which many firefighters surely relate, as they stare down the flames and try to understand the next move of the fire in font of them.
Allowing my senses to open themselves up further to the campfire, I not only watch the playful dance of flames and feel the heat projecting from the various parts of the fire, but also listen intently to the sounds emanating from the fire and smell the oils in the wood and the smoke. Going deeper, bringing myself to meditate while focused on the intensity of the center of the flames, I begin to feel the strength of the universal processes at work and begin to connect with the creative forces that are an innate part of fire’s destructive power. Through this connection, I capture this image of creation juxtaposed by destruction, a universal dance of life and death.
I expect that each may have a different reaction to this image at various emotional levels, ranging from the visceral to the intellectual. Enlarge the image and allow time for the senses to connect with it; please share what you feel in this capture, as I enjoy your thoughts and feedback.
Technical Details
This image was captured at 100 ISO, F/9 at 8 second shutter speed. A gentle zoom twist was employed to get the some of the sense of flow. A steady hand ensured that the continuity of the gaseous flow was preserved in the image. The original image was cropped and rotated 90 degrees; color and contrast were enhanced in Photoshop, but no effects were added to alter the image from that captured in the camera.
‘Exeunt Omnes’ is a view towards a doorway and past stables in an abandoned farm building near the former Westborough State Hospital in Massachusetts. The environment is rich with detail that asks to be examined at leisure by the viewer.
The scene invokes thoughts of being in a forsaken, lonely place, where those who came before have all left a long time ago. Despite their departure, we still feel them in how their existence impacted the environs in a palpable manner: initials on the door, drawings in the concrete, broken glass. What occurred at this site? Was it a warm, welcoming place at one time?
Allow yourself to be drawn in to explore in detail what you see ahead. Follow those who came before toward the exit and the warm light that beckons. Heed their warnings as you pass.
Technical Details
This image is an HDR composite of 5 exposures. Photomatix Pro was used for the HDR processing. It is also available as a limited edition print (16″x21″), which underscores the dramatic tension within the scene through rich tones and exquisite detail.
‘Brush Abstraction 1’ beckoned me to explore its possibilities, as I walked past a seemingly innocuous pile of twigs that remained from cleaning up the apple orchard that I was photographing. As I examined the brush pile, I felt drawn into a possible point of entry into an alternate space; not the traditional wormhole as described in physics and science fiction, but a solid connection with a plane of consciousness that hummed with the universal energy which pervades the universe.
As the eyes are relaxed and allowed to explore the various aspects of this image, you may feel your mind and maybe your entire presence drawn into the layered depths of exploration that surround all of us at all times. Go adrift and open all your senses while carefully listening to what they tell you. You may feel yourself accelerating at times, then spinning or alternately floating along threads within the universe that guide your everyday movements unbeknownst to you. Enjoy the feeling and breathe in the experience. Be sure to detach yourself slowly from this journey, so that its effects connect and possibly enrich into your daily life.
After reading this blog entry, click on the image and spend a minute or so absorbing the visual content while focusing only on your breath, as in meditation. Take a moment to reflect upon where the image takes you, and please share your experience in a comment to this entry; I look forward to hearing about your journey!
Technical Details
This image was captured at 100 ISO, F/22 at 1/13 second shutter speed. A snap zoom twist was employed to get the radial blur.
Dutch goes the Photo! 