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| Mt. Diablo SP, circa 1976 |
When I was a kid (perhaps between the ages of 7 and 8), we used to live in Concord CA, and my father would often take us out to Mt. Diablo. I used to borrow his camera, I believe a Nikkormat manual SLR, and take pictures in the park. I decided to look over the photos I kept, and I had fun looking at them and wondering why it is that I kept some of them. But in a few shots, it looks like I was beginning to think about composition. In fact, I make similar compositions today. The prints are about 35 years old and somewhat degraded, but I thought it might be fun to share a few of my earliest attempts at nature photography coupled with photographs I've taken much more recently. It seems to me that I continue to like some similar styles of composition today that I (whether intentionally or unintentionally) used then. In the photo above, circa 1976, I photographed hills with sky and two contrasting diagonal lines. In 2005 I did a very similar thing when I was in Turkey.
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| Cappadocia,Turkey, May 2005 |
In the tree photo below, I apparently didn't find it necessary to photograph the whole tree, but the swoop of the lower branches were sufficient. I still do the same kind of thing from time to time.
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| Mt. Diablo SP, circa 1976 |
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| Circle B Bar Reserve, Feb 2012 |
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| Patapsco State Park, May 2008 |
I took this shot looking down into a valley using black and white film. After scanning this shot, I cropped the bottom portion of the photograph. I don't remember what I was thinking when I took this photo, but today I find it interesting that there are diagonal lines swooping down toward the center, just like a photo I took at Deep Creek Lake a few years ago.
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| Mt. Diablo SP, circa 1976 |
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| Horse at Deep Creek Lake, Aug 2006 |
I don't want to read too much into it, especially since, if I were to show you the rest of the photos I kept from when we lived in Concord, you might chuckle with me. But with these three shots in particular, I suspect I was beginning to learn something about being a nature photographer.
=) So, going one step further, do you have any photos that your dad took?
ReplyDeleteI found an album w/shots my mom took and while there were some people photos, it was mostly nature shots, including landscapes, spring wildflowers, lichen, lots of single species portraits (to help ID individual species, I think). Then I look at my shots, and a few people, but mostly nature shots, including landscapes and lots of portraits to identify individual species. =)
My dad is a photographer too, and there are lots of similarities there as well. Kind of fun to think about.
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