The First Invitational Rock Fest - Report from the Field

[Bruce Barlow]

Wow. What a trip. Take six crack photographers, turn them loose in a highly photogenic setting, make enough logistical arrangements to ensure decent lodging and good food, and watch how much fun you can have. Ask them to bring prints to show, and prints to swap. Spend a week together. That’s what just happened at the First Invitational Fine Focus Workshops Rock Fest (‘cuz we photographed mostly rocks, get it?).

We remembered our dear friend Ted Harris with raised glasses, funny stories, and missed turns (we used to affectionately call him “Wrong Way Harris” based on his sense of misdirection). We missed him keenly, but felt he was with us, looking over our shoulders and whispering to us to work hard and do our best.

We did this last week in Maine near Acadia. We spent our days photographing at such places as Schoodic Point, Otter Point, Stonington, and Pemaquid Point. We were blessed with mostly great weather and light. We looked at each other’s work in the evenings, and were deeply impressed by its quality. We swapped prints in a 3-round Yankee Swap, where even if you didn’t get exactly what you wanted, the work was so strong that no one came away disappointed. One member, happily for the rest of us, misinterpreted the directions and made a selection of gorgeous platinum prints and gave one to each of us. Thank you, Peter.

And we’re all are on the hook to send a print of our best work from the trip to the others, too. I’m eager to see how these guys saw those places. And those pictures are going to be whoppers because we all worked really hard.

And they are wonderful people: smart, funny, congenial. One couldn’t ask for better companions.

I encourage you to try to put something like this together with photographer friends of yours. It’s well worth it. If you want help or advice, feel free to contact me.

[Nathan Potter]

Wow Bruce, you make me homesick - those places are my hangouts, especially for rocks. I hope some of you noticed the folded metasedimentary rocks at Pemaquid. This is rock anthropomorphism at its best and the curved aspect of these structures look like archaic waves that have crashed to shore eons ago. Forget the lighthouse it's trite.

Schoodic point is a great place with one of the premier cobble barrier beaches on the east coast. But, and I've mentioned this before, you need to visit Grindstone Neck in Winter Harbour. There you will find some dandy black volcanic dikes that have been polished smooth on the surface of the shore. The monochromatic black surfaces are a great challenge for B&W images. I still have not done it right in my mind.

I'll be up there in mid november fiddling around and I'm sure that as I shoot Ted Harris will unavoidably spring to my mind as will memories of the great time I had a year ago shooting with he, you and Richard Ritter in Pittsburg NH.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[wfwhitaker]

Take six crack photographers, turn them loose in a highly photogenic setting...
That’s what just happened at the First Invitational Fine Focus Workshops Rock Fest (‘cuz we photographed mostly rocks, get
it?)....

And crack photographers photograph....??
No, wait!! Let me guess!

[ASRafferty]

I hope some of you noticed the folded metasedimentary rocks at Pemaquid. This is rock anthropomorphism at its best and the curved aspect of these structures look like archaic waves that have crashed to shore eons ago. Forget the lighthouse it's trite.

Smiling here, Nate... this is one of several angles from which he shot this, nearly every one in an attempt to minimize the lighthouse!

[John Bowen]

Schoodic point is a great place with one of the premier cobble barrier beaches on the east coast. But, and I've mentioned this before, you need to visit Grindstone Neck in Winter Harbour. There you will find some dandy black volcanic dikes that have been polished smooth on the surface of the shore. The monochromatic black surfaces are a great challenge for B&W images. I still have not done it right in my mind.


Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Nate,

We somehow missed the Grindstone Neck when we were in Winter Harbour, but we didn't miss the clam rolls! Now we have a reason to return

[Nathan Potter]

Amy, real nice. Thanks for posting. I confess I've done this wide shot at times - just can't help myself. The structure of the rocks is enigmatic. BTW, I know its heresy, but when I print this scene I like to print it in reverse - seems in better balance somehow.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[ASRafferty]

Nate, that's so interesting! (I'm sure the mods will kick me to "On Photography" for this.) I wonder if/how differences in orientation to the world (left-handedness or right-handedness, for instance) influence our sense of balance and proportion? In principle, reversing the image shouldn't matter, but, as you say, it does!