One of those places I will never photograph... because so many others have already done it.
I'm thinking that's a defeatest attitude. There are always abstracts that will reveal themselves if you take the time to look. Yes, most people look at the 'grand view' and they miss the little things. Back in 2008 I was on a raft in G. Canyon....and guess what ?....almost everyone in harmony took the 'norm' photos. Indeed, and this was a photo-oriented 8 day trip. Draw your own conclusions.
Les
I'll let you know how it goes. And it seems most folks want to use digitally enlarged inkjet negatives...but it is still hard to beat a good camera negative.Originally Posted by Jan Pedersen
Vaughn
Poor OP. This thread has taken more twists and turns than The Wave itself.
Vaughn, I know you don't need encouragement from the the likes of me (Johnny, on the other hand...). Just a convenient and clumsy way of making a point. Of course ...and to the OP, you're only ever really competing with yourself (lottery aside).
I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but that Paria River area has all kinds of incredible stuff. Just wander off somewhere (with a good sense of direction and plenty of
water or course). One could hypothetically get "abstract" subject of layered rock like that
hundreds of place. Maybe not the same as walking into the "wave", but photographically
equivalent at least. One of the downsides of our culture of "secret location" photo workshops over the years is that these areas inevitably get trampled and ruine. Take
Cantaloupe Canyon for example. Only worse now that so many folks post pics on the internet with specific location and even GPS info. Taking the shot is only part of the experience. Sitting there listening to the sound of a wren and possibly the drip of water from some little crack in the rock, and the rustle of a lizard in a bit of foliage ... you know,
the Desert Solitaire things ... it makes the picture itself far more memorable. I don't know
how stock photographers can do it, always trying to bag something to sell to the herd.
And that's all that really matters right?
You had great time! I'm glad you enjoyed it even if you didn't see it first
Regards
Erik
LOL! Way too funny (in a funny sort of way, of course!)
Which should happen to threads once the original question has been completely discussed in the first 5 replies!Poor OP. This thread has taken more twists and turns than The Wave itself.
Vaughn
Have you been to the Wave?, and if so did you scout the whole area? I'll admit I over reacted but in retrospect I have to question whether you have even been there, and if so I would like to find out how much area of that you covered.
"One could hypothetically get "abstract" subject of layered rock like that"
Actually you don't need to explain anything. It's obvious to me how much you saw of the area when you were there.
I so agree with you, though there were no signs of any human activity when I was there. That is one reason that I suggested in my original post (in this thread) that if one hasn't been there, it's worth going even without camera. I also appreciate Drew's views, though I seldom read them anymore – I just don't have the time. I almost never shoot around other people, and shy away from iconic sites. So much so, that when I put together my first fine art show on Yosemite, I found myself with almost no recognizable views identifying the show as Yosemite. I had to go out of my way, out of my personal comfort zone, to include some iconic landmarks in order to anchor ("sell") the show. The unwitting corollary to this, and something which never fails to amuse my observing wife, is that whenever I stop to photograph within view of anyone with a camera, literally sometimes miles, the area around me soon fills up with brainless shooters.
Personally, I don't understand groups of photographers going out and shooting together, same time, same scene, whether socially or in workshops. I just don't know how original work gets done that way. But that's me, and I respect their reasons. By way of making the point, I believe it was Cedric Wright, shooting alongside Ansel Adams at Precipice Lake in the High Sierra when he made one of his most well known negatives, Frozen Lake and Cliffs, who after clicking his own shutter, looked into Ansel's ground glass, and was stupefied by the fineness of Ansel's composition, compared to the relative banality of his own. Incidentally, Wright, whom Adams idolized because of his physical beauty and talent with the violin and women, later took his own life.
I basically did not photograph for twenty years, content to do rather than take pictures of, because it had all "already been done". I was disabused of the notion that my particular view, my unique touch and print making, wasn't worthwhile, by brief interaction with academia, who recognized a waste of "talent" as they saw it, such as it is.
I didn't see any point in contaminating this thread any further by relating my own full experience at Coyote Buttes, because I felt your earlier post closely paralleled it. But now I recount a truly memorable and worthwhile experience:
By the time I arrived, I knew very little about The Wave, and had casually seen but a few pictures of it. I left the trailhead in darkness well an hour before light. I began picking my way between ravine and butte by starlight, quietly and blessedly alone. As I headed out towards the literal unknown, I felt as though I were a very small ship bobbing haplessly among the waves of a very great sea. When defining morning light finally broke the blackness, I found myself at the foot of the fabled Buttes, the "valley" of The Wave still unseen, but beckoning me like a siren's call. The sun's rays broke across the parched land just as I arrived at The Wave itself.
Sunrise, Coyote Buttes
Alone, I eagerly got to work on my own compositions, of geomorhphic incredulity previously unknown, to me. I finished up just as the voices of the second party of the day approached. I soaked up the warming morning sun and watched them bemusedly making their pix, somehow never even coming close to my own. I purposely delayed my departure from The Wave that day, to lunch with, and hike back to the cars with other Wavers. I had been mostly by myself, photographing throughout the Southwest, for over three weeks. I was so desperately lonely by that time that even though hiking through the unknown in the dark hadn't bothered me, hiking back alone over freshly trodden terrain in full daylight became unthinkable!
No, I certainly haven't been to 1% of the places in the Paria drainage or any of the rest of the Colorado Plateau. One could spend twenty lifetimes in that area and just begin to see it. But I have taken quite a few shots which if printed someone in this day and age would assume were taken at
Coyote Buttes or the Wave area. I've got nothin against seeing the sights.
I just don't have the time. If I'm going to drive all that distance and need to be back to work on schedule, I'm going to wander somewhere where at least I imagine I'm discovering the place. Even at a popular spot like Calf Creek Falls I was headed out before anyone else arrived, so had the
place to myself, and took an 8x10 shot of it unlike any I've seen published.
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