Another winter is in full swing in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. As a photographer, I lacked the motivation to get out and shoot the last few weeks. It has been cold, damp with snow one day and rain the next.

Yesterday I decided I had enough of cabin fever, grabbed my camera and headed out into woods to discover what I could ‘see.’ There was a very dense fog rolling in and I thought, “There had to be something out there that would spark my interest.”

The first image I came across was one of an old piece of rusted farm machinery that someone decided would make a nice sculpture in their front yard. After taking shots from a few different angles, I decided on the one below as my favorite.

© Copyright Reserved, Richard Lovison; 2008

I then thought it would be nice to drive up to one of my favourite areas, a local beaver pond with an overflow that feeds the stream behind our home. I arrived at the pond after trekking through the woods with 20 minutes of very difficult walking — there were at least 6 inches of soft snow covered by a thick layer of ice that held my weight for a brief moment on each step and then cracked and gave way, twisting my ankles. There were no signs of animal life — most likely frightened off by all the noise of the cracking ice as I walked — though the pond was shrouded in intense fog, so thick I could almost taste it.

I used my Olympus E-1 and Zuiko Digital 14-54mm for the following shots. The weatherproofing of the camera body and the lens came in handy as there was quite a bit of condensation that formed on both due to the high humidity as well as light intermittent sprinkles. Thankfully the lens hood was enough to keep moisture droplets off the front lens element.

© Copyright Reserved, Richard Lovison; 2008

© Copyright Reserved, Richard Lovison; 2008

© Copyright Reserved, Richard Lovison; 2008

I shot in RAW format and later used Olympus Studio with the ‘High Function’ converter to convert to 16-bit TIFFs. I chose to use the Centre-Weighted average metering mode and just opened up a little over one stop from what the meter suggested to keep the snow looking white. White Balance was set to 6000K although in post-processing, that had to be increased to 6500K and sometimes a bit more with a -1 to -2 tint setting to obtain a neutral print.

This last image was taken after the fog lifted.

© Copyright Reserved, Richard Lovison; 2008

All in all, I had a good experience doing what I love to do most — hiking in a remote area in the Berkshires. I find when I hike alone in the midst of nature that I’m able to quieten my mind and open myself up to what is presented to me. I venture out with no expectations or planned images in mind.

I have always been uncomfortable explaining to others my approach to landscape photography and the way I ‘see’. It’s such a personal journey and something that in my opinion, is not easy to teach. I will make an attempt in the hope of offering inspiration to others.

The late Frederick Franck; Courtesy of Simon Vinkenoog

I met Frederick Franck in 1994 while I was employed at the Albert Schweitzer Centre in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. There was an exhibit of his at the Centre and one of my responsibilities that evening was to set up his sculpture entitled, ‘Seven Generations’, on the front lawn.

As I was just about finished, Mr. Franck and his wife Claske arrived. We introduced ourselves and being a bit nervous, I asked him if I had set up his sculpture to his satisfaction. I don’t remember his exact words although I do recall being immediately put at ease with his answer and his warmth — something very few people have been able to do with me.

Front cover of ‘Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing’ by Frederick Franck

Later that evening I purchased a book of his entitled, ‘Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing.’ I thumbed through it the next day but it has sat unread on my shelf for many years until a week ago — a time it seems when I was ready to approach the contents within.

I immediately felt ‘at home’ while reading ‘Zen Seeing.’ Franck wrote, “…my eye always has been in love with the splendours of the world that surround us.” That is exactly how I’ve always felt about nature.

For Franck, drawing or sketching these wonders brought him immense joy for many years and one day he realised he couldn’t separate the ‘seeing’ from the ‘drawing’ — they were one. Drawing for Franck was his Way of being, the way he expressed his ‘artist-within’.

That is, too, how I view my landscape photography. I feel that my photography and ‘seeing’ are one. It is my Way of being, the expression of my ‘artist-within’. It is my way of being in contact with what is within the Self (my uniqueness) as well as the natural world around me.

© Copyright Reserved, Richard Lovison; 2005-2008

Franck felt that to draw, even something as simple as a leaf, was a way to learn to ‘see’ again (a gift unique to humans that we knew how to do at a very young age but somehow forgot) as opposed to just ‘looking-at’ something. The act of drawing forces one to focus intently on the subject, opening one’s eyes to the many details usually not seen by a casual glance. The eyes of the child are awakened to the wonders of the universe once again and the illusion of separation dissolves. Hence I highly recommend drawing as an exercise for improving one’s ‘seeing’ in photography.

When I do my nature photography, I ‘invite’ the surroundings in and try to connect — to feel at one with everything around me. Once I get into this peaceful state, I usually get a quick sense of what to frame and photograph. Hopefully the images that resulted from this outing bring similar feelings of peace and oneness to others that view them.

Cover images © 2004 Bryan Peterson ; ISBN 0-8174-6300-3; 2004 Published by Amphoto Books

Bryan Peterson, a well known professional photographer and instructor, has provided beginners to photography with a method for understanding exposure — something he feels is crucial for expressing one’s creativity through the medium of photography. His method focuses on the ‘interrelationship’ between aperture, shutter speed and ISO which he refers to as the ‘photographic triangle.’ It is the author’s hope that by understanding this relationship, the photographer can then consistently make correct exposures under varying and challenging lighting conditions as well as creatively use an aperture, shutter speed or ISO setting to produce the desired results.

To set the tone, the author begins by giving a brief definition of exposure and then presenting an exercise for the student to manually set an exposure in-camera. He then gives a detailed explanation of his ‘photographic triangle,’ placing the camera light meter in the center of the triangle as the tool used to determine exposure.

Image © 2008 Richard Lovison ; Drawn to simulate the equivalent of Bryan Peterson’s Photographic Triangle

Peterson does a wonderful job in giving elaborate explanations of what an f-stop, shutter speed and ISO setting are and how they interrelate when it comes to determining exposure. He then presents the reader with a list of seven ‘creative exposure’ options based on combinations of aperture and shutter speed settings and provides beautiful images as examples of these options. With this knowledge, any beginner in photography can now think for her/himself rather than rely on the camera’s ‘intelligence’ to make decisions. The door to the individual’s creativity can now be opened.

In his chapter on light, Peterson writes something a bit controversial — he places the importance of light as the “frosting” on the cake but not “the cake” itself. That statement departs from what is currently floating around the photographic circles where light is thought of as the prime importance of the image. Most likely the latter got started with the utterance from a landscape photographer looking for an angle to sell. The quality of light can certainly enhance an image though the subject of the image and how it is presented along with the emotional response it invokes is of main importance.

The author goes on to describe the many types of lighting – front lighting, side lighting, back lighting, etc – and once again gives outstanding images as examples. He explains how a reflective light meter sees the world in neutral gray and how that can affect an exposure as well as offers instructions on how to determine an exposure by metering a photographic Gray Card. An explanation on the use of an incident light meter and how that differs from a reflective one would have been helpful if included.

Another added bonus was how Peterson defined his approach to metering the sky or metering off something green with a -2/3 stop adjustment to determine exposures in difficult lighting conditions. He ends his book with a chapter on special techniques that includes the use of Polarising and Neutral Density (ND) filters as well as the creative use of double exposures.

All in all, ‘Understanding Exposure’ is a wonderful book for the beginner in photography. The author achieves his objective of providing a method for understanding exposure and its creative applications by writing in a style that is clear, concise and easily understandable. The book is of high quality, printed on heavy stock in 8½”x 11” format with 150 remarkably well illustrated examples that support the author’s teachings. Even though it was originally written with the film photographer in mind, Peterson’s methods can be applied to digital photography as well.

Any beginner to photography will walk away with a strong foundation in the understanding of exposure and the creative options it offers after reading Peterson’s book. ‘Understanding Exposure’ deserves a 4.5 star rating.

I purchased my first Olympus camera, an OM-1, as a replacement for a Mamiya/Sekor 500TL, a camera bought as a high school graduation gift by my parents. The 500TL was my first serious film camera though the OM-1 was my first venture into high-end 35mm film cameras.

Olympus OM-1 (released 1972); © Copyright Reserved, Richard Lovison; 2007

If my memory is correct, the OM was purchased sometime in 1976. My co-workers at a portrait studio recommended Olympus as an option to either Canon or Nikon and after doing some research, I discovered that the basic introductory model was within my budget.

The OM-1 was a huge improvement over the 500TL. The large and bright viewfinder within the OM allowed for accurate focusing and easy composition of the subject. The Zuiko lens was superb, producing sharper images than could be obtained with the 500TL optics. The light weight of the OM, the bright viewfinder as well as the manual mirror lock-up came in handy years later when I coupled the camera to an eight inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope for astrophotography.

Lunar Eclipse taken with Olympus OM-1 coupled to a Meade 2080 LX3; © Copyright Reserved, Richard Lovison; 2007

What wondrous paths we traveled down together and what many lessons I learned through the use of this marvelous tool. There was nothing ‘automatic’ about the OM-1. One had to manually set the shutter speed and lens aperture as well as manually focus the lens. The only true conveniences were a built-in center bottom-weighted light meter, interchangeable focusing screens and an optional motordrive.

Due to this lack of automation, which was typical of cameras of that time period, I learned a great deal about photography. I found out about aperture f-stops, shutter speeds, ASA (ISO) film speeds and how they relate to each other when calculating exposure as well as depth of field including how that changed depending on what aperture was chosen. I discovered very quickly how an averaging light meter worked and if one took a black-and-white image of a very dark scene or a very light one, the final image would be gray if no exposure compensation was made.

These were all basic lessons in photography that were needed to get acceptable images, at least anything better than a snapshot. I’m amazed to see today, how many people purchasing DSLRs that are far more expensive and sophisticated than my OM-1, do not have this basic understanding of photography.

Technology can be wonderful but if we lose the true understanding of the art of photography due to computer-driven convenience, I feel it’s a venture down the wrong path.

I remember watching a group of young tourists out on Cape Cod taking pictures of one another with a compact point-and-shoot digital camera, wildly pushing the shutter, relying completely on computerised automation and viewing the final outcome on the built-in LCD screen with amusement. They were all having a fun time, laughing, joking and hugging each other and it was quite wonderful to watch as well though it was also a little disconcerting. I immediately thought of the book ‘The Time Machine’ and of the ‘Eloi’ with their carefree life.

I wondered, “Was this the future of photography?” Was the new generation of photographers evolving into ‘Eloi’, mindlessly purchasing the endless stream of computer-driven machines released by the ‘Morlock’ high tech manufacturers?

Time will tell.