Tag Archives: Ansel Adams

Vermillion Cliffs Another Color Lesson

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Vermillion2312Click to enlarge

We talked about how color out here in the west works in the past, but  in reviewing this image of the Vermillion cliffs I noticed something new. If you look closely you will notice that there is just about every color available in the southwest in this shot. Click on it, the picture I mean, and look at all the different shades. I don’t even think there are names for some of these colors. The only other place I’ve seen that comes close to displaying these many shades is the Grand Canyon, but the canyon spreads its color over such a wide, deep space it is difficult to find a photographic area that you can shoot to include all these colors in one shot. Even wide-angle lens in the canyon don’t give you these effects.

We’re probably looking at several miles of cliff face from a distance of several more miles away and it was photographed as a panorama of 19 different images using a telephoto lens, then stitched together into one large image. That was done to bring the cliffs in closer in the image, as using a wide angle lens would have resulted in a tiny squinty little line of purple cliffs across the image that would have had you saying “What the hell, can’t that guy even take a picture?” and I don’t like it when people say that.

The rosy-purple of the cliffs in the center of the shot is produced by the shadows of the incoming storm clouds. Right before the clouds moved in that purple-ish series of cliffs was the same color as the taller line of cliffs behind it. The darker cliffs are some distance in front of the taller ones so the break in the clouds let light in on the back row, but out in the front row the denseness of the clouds put the cliffs in shadow which brought out the deep rich color you see.

None of this would be as noticeable if you were closer. It takes the distance in this case to bring out all the color available and to show the harmonious interplay between them. The lesson being that sometimes you have to step way back to see the overall effect in play. Like a couple of miles. Now I didn’t say this was going to be a great big Ansel Adams type of lesson. It’s just a tiny little lesson, one that doesn’t require a lot of brain power by either of us but sometimes that’s ok. And if all this is turning Greek to you just look at the picture instead of trying to figure it out. That’s what I do.

Tessellations

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Tessellations0808click to enlarge

As usual to qualify for the status of a commercial Non-for-Profit organization dedicated to the service of our country and to keeping as much cash running thru our shoddy books as possible, we here at the Institute have to provide a beneficial service to the community at large. To do this we occasionally run Public Service Announcements to keep our readers as informed as possible and to protect our phony baloney jobs, I mean keep our unblemished reputation intact.

So this quarters’ PSA is about the dangers of Tessellations and their effect on the new photographer specifically. As any student in their 25th or 26th year of study knows Tessellations are included and are a major portion of the study of Noneuclidean Tessellations and their groups, in which there are discontinuous groups and triangle Tessellations, Contiguity-based weights which are weights based on shared borders, Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA), and my personal favorite, the bivariate Moran’s scatter plot. (I used to think that read as a Moron’s Scatter Plot, just a little PhD humor there.) You have to have a high school diploma or three years active service in the Marines for me to even begin to get into what that is. Seriously, don’t even ask me to explain that  to you.

What that boils down to for the novice photographer is ‘Repeating Patterns’. Yes, Tessellations are just simply a pattern that repeats itself over and over like in the image above. Don’t be fooled by the simple definition however, for in that simplicity is the very danger we’re warning you about. This is something that most photographers only learn the hard way. If you’ve ever been out where there are a group of old-time photographers standing around, like in the Hayden valley waiting for a grizzly to wake up or anywhere for that matter, where they’re complaining about the weather, the lack of animals, what Nikon is or isn’t doing well, or about some tourist walking up and asking what they’re looking at so they miss the shot of their career, you will often notice that one or more of them have at least one or both of their front teeth chipped, or sometimes even missing completely. This is a result of Tessellation Disorder.

What happens is this. You see an interesting pattern that might make an unusual image and you begin to zoom in and isolate the pattern core, a meaningless photographic term, and as you do you notice an adjacent portion of the pattern and then another and another until you’re drawn in and you go all over dizzy of a sudden and fall down and chip your tooth. Yeah I know you’re going to say this can’t happen to me but you’d be wrong Mister, it could happen to you. I’ve heard from secret sources that even Ansel Adams the Godfather of Nature photography had a chipped tooth. It’s why you rarely see him smiling in any of his photographs. So unless you’re better than Ansel Adams you’re at risk.

“What do I do then?” you ask ” I live to take pictures of patterns out doors, what can I do to protect myself?” Well outside of wearing a protecting helmet like the ones those goofy professional bike riders wear, plus some kind of mouth guard, and carry one of those little push button medical warning devices in case you can’t get up, not much. What you have to do is train yourself to notice those patterns when they occur but do not focus on them until you’re ready to take the picture. Set your tripod up as if you’re going to shoot a bird or a mountain or something but not a pattern and generally point your camera at the pattern but do not give it the impression that you are aware of its existence, make sure you have your remote triggering device hooked up and it has fresh batteries, look quickly into the viewfinder and then quickly turn your head away, do not make eye contact with it, and press the shutter release on your remote. That will do it. As your experience grows you will be able to look longer at  the pattern until you can start to analyze it and soon you will be shooting these pesky Tessellations like a pro. This information should help you to become a better photographer, allow you to shoot your life’s dream and not fear those harmful Tessellations anymore. But more importantly it will help keep you safe in this dangerous world we live in.

So once again we’ve gotten this chore out-of-the-way, cleared the decks so we can proceed with our next grant proposal and make a buck and provided a worthwhile service to those in need. Not a bad days work.

Note to Newbies: Add dental to your company insurance.