Aaaaaand ... I'm back!

Spent some time in the northern parts of Wisconsin last week. Started by photographing a family on a Lake Michigan beach and ended with a few days in Door County. Experienced every type of weather Wisconsin can throw at you in July -- fog, heat, humidity, storms, sun, clouds, rain. Great for pictures.

This is the Sturgeon Bay North Pier Lighthouse, which I've photographed many times. This time, it was socked in by pea-soup fog. The lineup of seagulls on the overhead catwalk seemed to imply that air traffic control had imposed a ground stop on all flights around the lighthouse, save for one intrepid gull launching himself into the great unknown.

More pictures and stories to come.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Cooler by the lake

Weekend sailors enjoy the late afternoon at Reefpoint Marina in Racine, Wisconsin. This particular day, the cool lake air mixed with the hot humid onshore air to produce thick fog over the water.



But the fog didn't hamper the sunset in any way.



Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

Little bump on the prairie

A small glacial kame rises above the surrounding flatland at Moraine Hills State Park near McHenry, Illinois. A foggy morning helps to define the contours of the kame against the wooded backdrop -- I had been to the park several times and never really noticed this formation until this day.

Kames are formed by the flow of water through a narrow tunnel in a melting glacier. Dirt and debris form piles at the bottom of the glacier and are revealed as the glacier recedes. Kames can be the dominant feature in a post-glacial landscape.

So in this instance, it kame, it thawed, it conquered. Ba-dum.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Young'un

A young red winged blackbird surveys the fog-shrouded landscape. Moraine Hills State Park, McHenry, Illinois.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Earth. Why not give it a day of its own?

Photographing parts of the earth, I've come to appreciate its diversity, resilience and wonder. Why not give it a day of its own?

Of course, it's our attitudes and actions toward the planet on the other 364 days that really matter.

The photo above was taken in August of 2008 on a walk in the misty morning air in Dundee, Illinois. Beams of sunlight danced across the water of the Fox River. As my wife and I crossed a footbridge, I caught this image of a small tree perched on a rocky outcropping on the river. At this point, the tree was mostly dead. It has since become all dead, but for a brief moment, the sky reached down and the tree reached up and the two connected.

Enjoy your day, planet.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Winter silence

All I heard on this foggy winter morning was a gentle sigh of the wind -- the measured breathing of the world as it lay asleep under a blanket of white.

Sleep well.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Silent sentinels

The old guard standing watch over the foggy winter morning.

Photograph taken last week at the Paul Wolff Forest Preserve near Elgin, Illinois. After the candle photos taken with a strobe setup, these straight-up shots were a breeze. A warmer, drier breeze to be exact.

More fog photos to come, and at least one more candle shot. Stay tuned.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

This little light of mine

I've been thinking about this shot for a while. Ever since I did the red Christmas ornament shots a week or so ago, I've been pondering what to do next and thought of photographing a candle out in the woods. I've just been waiting for the right time. The right time being either a fresh coating of snow or a foggy winter day.

The foggy winter day came today, so I packed a candle, lighter, camera, boom stand, flash, gels and grid and headed out to a local forest preserve. It was a pretty straightforward shot once the light was set up - the boom allowed me to place the flash directly above the candle to create a ring of light with a grid attached. A double layer of CTO gels allowed me to shift the color balance to incandescent to simulate twilight while maintaining a warm white light on the candle -- this was shot mid-morning.

The setup for the flash is shown below. After that it was just a matter of laying on my side in the melting snow until I framed up a few shots that I liked. Then home to change out of my wet clothes.



Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Life goes on

Some time ago, I granted permission to display the above photograph to a web site dedicated to helping survivors of suicide deal with their grief. I hadn’t thought about it much until I received the following e-mail today:

Just had to tell you I ran across your photos on the Suicide Survivor website. They are ABSOLUTELY breathtaking! Your work is BEAUTIFUL-brought tears to my eyes! Much gratitude –Lisa

This particular photo was taken just a few days before my father suddenly took ill and passed away in October of 2007, so it holds a high degree of meaning for me. I’m happy that it and others are helping someone else like Lisa deal with her own grief.

UPDATE: I wrote to Lisa to thank her for her kind words about my photography. She wrote back:

My brother killed himself on the 4th and your pictures are very peaceful, calming and soothing. I saved your site so I could keep looking at them-I can’t tell you what comfort they bring-Incredible.

Thank you again for your beautiful work-it does make a difference to someone.

Know when to ditch "Plan A"

I usually head into a photo session with a preconceived notion of what it is I want to capture. Nothing wrong with that. It's actually helpful as a starting point. The trick is to recognize when that plan is just no longer working for you, and as much as you are emotionally attached to that plan, to dump it in the rubbish bin. Otherwise Plan A becomes a dead weight around your neck, creatively speaking.

I stopped by the Bode Forest Preserve in Streamwood, Illinois this morning. Layers of fog lay draped over the trees and I wanted to capture bursts of sunlight streaming from between the branches. It looked oh, so pretty in my mind's eye. Reality, however, was not nearly so cooperative. It just wasn't happening the way I envisioned it.

So did I ditch Plan A to explore the other visual opportunities that lay before me? Of course not. I stubbornly tried to make the landscape bend to my will, wasting a lot of time and memory card space in the process.

I gave up and headed back to my car, passing a clearing that opened to Bode Lake. I stopped for a second, looked at the mist on the water and thought, It probably won't do any good, but I may as well look as long as I'm here. Not much of a Plan B, but there it was. I walked through the clearing.

Can't say the view was particularly spectacular, but I took a few shots using a fallen tree branch as the foreground interest, then decided to go for some "worm's eye" shots holding the camera an inch or so off the ground, pointing it in the general direction of the branch and seeing what would happen. What happened were some very simple abstract images that appealed to my Asian sensibilities. I varied the focal length between shots, and voila!



I meant to do that, yup. Yessir, that's the ticket.

(Side note: I was in Quebec a few years ago, and at my first meal in a restaurant there, the server brought my food and said, "Voila!" It made me laugh because it sounded corny. Then I realized those folks meant it up there.)

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Today's sunrise ...

... as seen from Sleepy Hollow, Illinois. Yes, there really is a Sleepy Hollow. It's located in Chicago's northwest suburbs. The town is a blend of three-quarter-million-dollar homes and large expanses of open space. If you skip the mansions and stick to the open areas, you can see some very nice views of nature.

"But yesterday you said you were starting a series of insect macro photographs to clear out your backlog of bug pictures." Yes, I did. And I'll hop right back on that tomorrow.

Unless, of course, today's sunset looks promising.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

"As a matter of fact, I do mind if you take my picture."

A perturbed pullet at the Kline Creek Farm, West Chicago, Illinois.

I've lived in Chicago's northwest suburbs for 18 years and didn't realize how many farms still existed within the confines of the metroplex. The Kline Creek Farm is a vintage 1800s farm that is owned and operated by DuPage County, is manned by volunteers and still raises crops and livestock.

Visitors can get a glimpse into late 1800s farm life through interpretive displays in the visitor center and by touring the farm's barns, outbuildings, livestock pens and restored farm house. Interactive demonstrations allow kids to participate in the "chores experience."

Kline Creek Farm is open daily and admission is free.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Here comes the sun

And I say it's alright.

Gotta give a shout out to Sandy, who kindly steered the readers of her two blogs here yesterday. Thanks, all, for the kind words about my pictures. Glad you like.

I'm finishing off the series of foggy woods photos with this one taken at the Burnidge Forest Preserve in Kane County, Illinois, not too long after the shots posted yesterday and the day before. By then, the sun was quickly burning off the fog and making its presence known. Just a few minutes after taking this image, the magic had disappeared.

Fog presents an interesting challenge to a digital camera. The automatic focus mechanism struggles to latch onto something solid and the auto exposure can be fooled into making the fog too light and/or everything else too dark.

Tip: Use your camera's spot metering function (I don't use anything else) and place it on an object that you are featuring in your photo -- in the case of the last two photos, I used the trunk of the foreground tree and grass/reeds in the middle ground -- then push your shutter button halfway to lock the exposure, recompose, then click. Check to be sure you haven't blown out any large areas -- if your camera has a highlights feature for the LCD, which causes pure white areas in an image to flash, use it; it's a life saver. Make exposure adjustments if needed and try again. For the record, I metered on the area midway between the sunburst and the ground in the photo above.

By the way, do you have a song stuck in your head now? If not, maybe this will do the trick:

Into the forest

Fog and trees go together quite nicely.

I walked back and forth in front of this stand of trees at the Paul Wolff Forest Preserve near Gilberts, Illinois to find the angle that would best distribute the trees throughout the shot. I settled on placing the two larger trunks just left of center and splitting the distance from the closest tree to the right edge of the frame with the three thinner trees in the distance, though at the time I wasn't thinking about subdividing the space, it just looked balanced to me.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Ghost trees in the forest

The remains of a tree appears in the mist. A memory of what once was, framed within the light and life of the present.

I took advantage of the foggy backdrop that was provided one morning last week to do some shooting at a couple of forest preserves near my home. A little Orton processing was added to this photo to heighten the dreamlike quality of the scene.

Hope you're making your way out of the fog on this Monday toward what will be a great week.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Ready to blossom

Spring is slowly gaining traction in Door County, Wisconsin. Last weekend, April showers fell on woods and fields that just began to hint at the green to come. Garden flowers were just beginning to open. Patches of snow stubbornly held their own on the high bluffs and in ditches along the roadways.

Like the cast of a play, these trees in a cherry orchard near Sevastapol patiently await their cue to display their blossoms.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

A few days on the road

My wife and I spent the weekend in Door County, Wisconsin. The prime objective was to deliver a number of photographs to an art gallery in Gills Rock. Eight black and white prints of Door County scenery in the twilight hours will be on display starting May 2 and will remain for the season which ends in October.

The pieces were well received. So well, that the gallery owner and I are discussing the possibility of a 5-week solo exhibition next year. I'm slowly building a photographic presence in the county. A lighthouse photo of mine runs across two pages of this year's official county visitor's guide. The same lighthouse (different photo) graces the introduction page of the city of Sturgeon Bay's promotional magazine.

The secondary objective was to add to my overall volume of Door County photos. The photo above is one of those new photographs. This is Clark Lake Road, which travels across the Door peninsula. It crests the high point of the county, passing farms and fields along either side. This is the view from the top on a cold, misty, early spring day.

In between rain showers, I was able to photograph some old buildings and cars, capturing an older, weathered side of the county.

Oh, yeah. I was able to stack a few rocks here and there.



Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

New day on the blog

I'm testing out a new template for Points of Light. For a while now I've not been happy with the way that Blogger displays photographs - too small and at too much of a loss of detail. I've tried to reconfigure my old template to no avail. I've just now upgraded to a newer and larger template and am trying to find the sweet spot between what looks great on my computer screen and what a fair number of visitors would see when they come here.

I'm staying with Blogger because I've invested almost four years into this blog and built up a lot of link love, a decent Google page rank and a goodly amount of search-friendliness. So I'm using the larger template space and linking directly to my photos on Flickr, hopefully to get the best of both worlds.

I've got some fixin' to do on my sidebar stuff, much of which disappeared in the switchover. Fortunately my feathers are numbered for just such an emergency. Do let me know if you spot anything funky on your browser.

Onward and forward.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Winter dream

Wake me up when spring gets here.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Three million turns make a straight line

The shortest path between two points may be a straight line, but that only works in theory and makes for a lousy story. Life is more complicated. The straightest path is still a series of turns - some small, some big – on the way to the destination.

Hope you’re negotiating those turns successfully today.

I been blogged: One of my photos has been grabbed to illustrate a post that advocates starting a journey in a big way.

Photo: Turn on a rural road in winter fog. Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.