Watching the watchers

Sunsets are a spectator sport in Door County, Wisconsin. The descending solar orb draws a crowd at marinas and other easily accessible vantage points along the peninsula's western shore on Green Bay.

My first inclination this particular evening was to take in the sunset from a more remote location. I knew the perfect place -- a rocky beach at Nelson Point, within Peninsula State Park north of Fish Creek. I arrived only to find that rising lake levels had submerged the beach.

With that option gone, I headed into town and decided to visit a small village park that was built especially for sunset viewing. Dozens of others had gotten that idea ahead of me. Instead of shooting the sunset, I decided to photograph the sunset watchers. It wasn't hard. Everyone had a camera, so I blended right in. I could get right up to people and click away, since they likely assumed I was after the sun and not them.

After the sun dipped below the horizon, the crowd broke out in applause and began to filter out of the park.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Gold among the brown

That time of year when nature reminds us that we all eventually must return to the earth.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Out of bounds

A morning glory not paying much attention to the boundary established by a picket fence.

Love the luminous quality of the three blossoms -- one spent, one open, one yet to come.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Late bloomer

Seen in the chilly early autumn air. You go.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Let's get classic

Kind of makes you want to go on a road trip, doesn't it?

Have a great weekend.

Classic car show, Sturgeon bay, Wisconsin. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Golden field

On Wisconsin route 83 north of the town of Mukwonago lies a field of soybeans turned golden with the chill weather of early autumn. A lonely tree stands nestled between rises in the landscape.

Also in this location is a puzzled farmer who probably still wonders why the guy with the camera stopped to take pictures of his soybeans. He stood in his driveway watching me the entire time.

If he could only see the view from his place.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

The covered bridges of Ozaukee County

Okay, make that bridge, singular. Ozaukee County, Wisconsin is home to exactly one covered bridge -- the last one still standing in Wisconsin. So, in one fell swoop, I managed to photograph every covered bridge in the state. Whew.

The bridge is a neat piece of engineering, it is held together with wooden pins -- no nails.



So why did they cover bridges? Local folklore holds that teams of oxen got skittish when crossing a bridge with a view of the flowing waters in the creek below. This bridge is situated on Cedar Creek near the town of Cedarburg, itself a place filled with the history of the German immigrants who settled there in the early 1800s.

UPDATE: A little Googling has revealed that there are in fact more than 40 covered bridges in the state. What the heck? Even though the majority of the bridges are less than 30 years old, this discovery makes me suspicious of the Wisconsin towns that claim the invention of the ice cream sundae, Flag Day and the Republican party.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Creation, Day 3

What the dawn of time may have looked like. Taken at one of my favorite places on earth -- Cave Point, Door County Wisconsin.

Taken with a circular polarizer, 2-stop neutral density filter and graduated ND filter. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Embracing the backlight, or how I lost my fear of blown out backgrounds

I admit I've suffered from OCD when it comes to avoiding the bane of digital photography -- blowouts. Areas of pure white in an otherwise nicely exposed photo slap me in the face and force me to look -- and once I do, I can see nothing else in the photo. Nowhere is the blown out highlight more evident than the backlit photograph. I would either A) try to avoid situations where the light was behind my subject or B) become faniatical about checking the highlight mode of my LCD display. I'd dial down the exposure until every last black blinkie disappeared, then hoped that I could recover the remains of the shadows later in post processing.

I'm a whole lot better now. It all started while photographing guests arriving at a wedding a couple of weeks ago. I stood on a covered walkway, bouncing a flash off the white "ceiling" to throw some light on my subjects. One couple stopped in a pool of sunlight and I fired. The result was one of those "I think I'm on to something" moments. The couple were lit perfectly by the flash in front of them. Behind them, the background glowed. Their shadows were thrown forward. The effect was cool. From that point on, I waited for arriving guests to reach the pool of sunlight before I clicked the shutter.



Fast forward a couple of weeks. I'm shooting some street photos at a fall festival. I'm walking up the street into the morning sun and people are coming at me. I remember the "ain't it cool" photos I shot a couple of weeks earlier. I set my exposure value to +2 to compensate for metering into the sun, set a manual focus to about 5 feet in front of me, selected an aperture of f/8 for moderate depth of field and fired away whenever I saw someone who looked interesting in front of me.





The effect is graphic -- everything in shadow looks normal. Everything else is transformed to almost pure white. Shadows reach out from the subjects toward the camera. Complex scenes are simplified.



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.

Uno mas

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Balanced

Taking advantage of some beautiful September weather to do some rock balancing. Tyler Creek Forest Preserve, Elgin, Illinois.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Fall balance

I know, it's an oxymoronic headline. It really should be "Autumn balance," but hey.

Rock balance in Tyler Creek in Elgin, Illinois. Hints of autumn are evident.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Seeing in black and white

I'm writing an article on digital black and white photography for a web site devoted to providing tips to beginning- to intermediate photographers.

This photo is the result of an exercise in using adjustment layers with Hue and Saturation to make the conversion. Worst thing you can do is shoot in Black and White mode or simply change the color image to grayscale in a photo editing program. Original photo in color is here.

I'll link to the article when it gets posted.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Under cloudy skies

The city of Chicago, as viewed from the waterfront of Evanston, Illinois to the north.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Green (energy) acres

With a kid in college in Urbana, Illinois, my wife and I occasionally make the trek from our suburban Chicago home to visit. Taking the backroads route down Illinois highway 47 this spring, we noticed dozens of wind turbines standing in the fields south of the town of Dwight. We recently swung by again so I could grab a few photos of the windmills.

The answer to some of the energy needs of northern Illinois, along with how to increase county revenues appear to be blowing in the wind. Iberdrola, an energy company headquartered in Spain, paved the way for the launch of several wind farms in a four-county area southwest of Chicago.



Between the towns of Emington and Odell, 65 turbines of Iberdrola’s Cayuga Ridge Wind Farm have sprouted since last fall, located in farm fields along with corn and soybeans. Motorists on Illinois Route 47 can view many of the towers.



The company plans to finish the installation of a total of 150 towers over 15,000 acres of land sometime in 2010. Several other energy companies, taking advantage of incentives provided by Washington, D.C., are in the process of planning additional wind farms in the development zone, a cooperative effort of the four counties involved.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Red ... rules

I was looking through my archive of images from Door County, Wisconsin last night to pull some submissions for a publication when I came across this photo of a maple tree north of Sister Bay, taken last October.

There was some major red rule action going on here. I took several shots of the tree at various focal lengths, but this particular crop seemed to do it for me the most. The result is a natural abstract image, a tapestry of red and black.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Meanwhile, back at the alpaca ranch ...

Cross another item off my life list of things to do. Visit an alpaca farm. Check.

The Waldron Grove alpaca farm is located a couple of miles west of Elgin, Illinois. Susan and Ron Waldron love their herd of wooly wanderers. They are now spending their retirement caring for dozens of alpacas, while building a business around Susan's alpaca fiber art.



Susan designs wall hangings, scarves, shawls and sweaters using hand-dyed alpaca fiber graciously donated by members of the Waldron herd. The Waldrons recently were afforded an opportunity for wider promotion of their products and Susan contacted me about creating some professional photographs of her products.



After meeting the herd and taking a close-up look at Susan's work, I'm enthusiastic about heading back to the ranch next week to do the photo shoot. More to come.

Waldron Grove is located at 39w856 McDonald Road in Elgin, IL 60124. Susan's designs can be seen here.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

The green leaves of summer ...

... won't be green for very long. The leaves are beginning to turn here in northern Illinois. Autumn's coming.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Stolen moment

After all the fussing, fretting and furious flurry of activity surrounding the wedding ceremony becomes a thing of the past, the new bride and groom relax and simply begin to enjoy the moment. I love being there when it happens.

Photos from Carlecia and Philip's wedding this past Saturday. The bride was originally from Elgin, moved to New York City and made a career in city government. She returned to Elgin with the man of her dreams and was married in the presence of friends and family from both locales. A reception will be held this coming Saturday in NYC. I'm processing several hundred photos and making selections for a slideshow to be shown at the reception. Two down, lots to go.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.