Have you ever paged through your catalog of photos and come across a photo that captures your attention, and then you think, “I should photograph more images like that one?”
I have. Often.
For me, it’s almost always the detail shots that aren’t a macro shot but are tightly shot and just a little abstract. In some locations, I force myself to shoot them, and I’m always happy that I come home with the shots that I get. For example, when I’m on Badlands National Park I shoot shots of the textures and patterns in the dried mud.
Where I’m always disappointed is when I’m shooting on Lake Superior. During the frozen months, I shoot the patterns of ice in wave pools, but during the rest of the year, I miss many potential detail shots.
Missing those shots is the same as not seeing them them or just failing to explore curiosity (see my 2014 essay Photography is Curiosity, Creativity, Math, Science and Imagination).
I have to wonder if my focus on the grand landscapes that get reactions on social media has forced me to set aside my interest in the small details of the world. It’s not that I don’t love to travel for grand landscapes, I do, but since I was in high school I always thought that there’s so much more to explore near where I live or in my country that I don’t need to travel that far. Maybe if I focused on the small details of locations I’d want to travel less.
There’s likely a lifetime of photography potentials on the five acres of land that I live on. I walk past them every day because the land I live on always feels the same — probably because my curiosity about the details has gone missing.
If you remember from my Winter Project Conclusions newsletter, I had a project in mind for this summer. Now that summer is over on Lake Superior’s north shore, I realize that I didn’t even start the idea. I got sidetracked with training for a trip that I may do in October. Instead of trying to chase the project in the waning days of August and the early days of fall, I have a new idea.
My new idea is to focus on shooting not only the grand landscapes, but also I’m going to work to see and work to explore and work to expand my curiosity by photographing those detail shots that I always walk past. Every day that I’m outside with my camera, I’m going to try and find a good detail shot.
This is going to be a hard challenge to get into the habit of, especially since I often beeline to the grand vistas or waterfalls and then gallop back to my car. But, I’m going to try. You should try to hold me to account.
How about you? Do you find types of shots in your collection of images that you wish you had made more of? If so, let’s make more of them this fall.
Until next time
With winter coming soon, you should sign up for one of my winter workshops on Lake Superior. I’m offering two next year. The first is my annual Lake Superior Winter Photography Workshop. During the first one, we explore the shore and the nearby river canyons. The second is my Winter Along the Gunflint Photography Workshop. It includes some sunrises and sunsets on Lake Superior and some inland along the Gunflint Trail. We also explore inland frozen river canyons and the forests and lakes along the Gunflint Trail.
Winter is my favorite time to photograph northern Minnesota and Lake Superior. Lake Superior near Grand Marais becomes a world-class photography destination in winter.
I hope you enjoyed this issue of my newsletter. I’ll see you again in two weeks.
This article really made me think about how I take photographs. I hope you are successful in your challenge and I’m going to attempt the same challenge for my upcoming trips to Northern Wisconsin ( Fifield Wisconsin). I hope you have a wonderful week and I look forward to seeing your detail/ smaller shots.
Warning - long comment:
There truly are two photographs not taken that never will be.
Photo not taken #1 - We were returning from a week-long camping trip at Cascade River State Park in Minnesota, on a beautiful Sunday morning, blue sky, breeze off of Lake Superior,
perfect day, probably in the mid-1990’s. This was in the days of film photography before digital, and you had only x number of pictures on a roll of film, usually 24-36. We were cruising down Highway 61, approaching Taconite Harbor near Schroeder, Minnesota, when I saw a train parked on an overpass, waiting to deliver its load to a waiting ore carrier. This was no ordinary train for railfans, it was a full set of four LTV Mining Railroad locomotives pulling a string of taconite ore cars that stretched up the hill beyond sight. The sun was shining on the brightly colored locomotives, and I literally pulled the car to the shoulder to look at it. I had no film, having used my last shot sometime the day before. I pondered for a while what to do: shrug it off and go on, or turn around, go back to a little general store back up Hwy 61 and pay an exorbitant amount for a roll of film, and take the chance that the train would still be sitting there when we got back. No one else in the car was in the mood for option 2, everyone just wanted to get home. So, outnumbered (although I think I could have cajoled enough voters to my side) we pulled back on the highway and I drove unusually slowly past that train, hoping that maybe on one of our next trips to the North Shore I might be as lucky. What made any likelihood of this picture ever being taken after that day was the fact that in 1997, those 4 locomotives lost their brakes coming down the grade into the harbor and derailed, wrecking the locomotives beyond repair. When I heard the news, my heart just sank, not because I felt bad for the railroad but because I knew it was the end of an era.
Photo not taken #2 - We were winding up our 10-day vacation in France in June 2007. It was the night before we were to catch a train from Avignon to Paris to fly home. We were walking around the town square in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence on a warm summer evening, taking in the atmosphere and becoming melancholy about our trip’s impending end. We decided to get an ice cream cone and just hang around the square, taking it all in. As we came up to the ice cream stand, there were two elderly women, at least one likely a grandmother, with three little girls around 6 years old, each getting an ice cream cone. As soon as they all had their cones, the girls sat together in a line on a park bench and giggled and tittered in French, enjoying their ice cream. I only had space on the camera card in my (now digital) camera for a few shots. I thought of surreptitiously taking a shot (“street photography” they call it now) but didn’t want to seem like an inconsiderate (“ugly”) American. I had absolutely no idea how to ask (the grandmothers) in French if I could take the girls picture, and after a brief consultation with my wife I abandoned the shot. But to this day, I can visualize the image: three little girls on a park bench in the early evening, protected from the setting sun by large shade trees, loving their ice cream, being casually but constantly watched over by their grandmothers as the world
goes about winding down for the day. That moment in time is truly irreplaceable.