The Season of Light

I miss the darkroom. More specifically, I miss the darkroom in wintertime (it snowed here yesterday and last night, enough to cover everything, and the house today is filled with the white reflected light of snow, a wintery look...).

I miss the darkroom in winter because wintertime used to be the season when I'd spend the most time in it. I did photograph in the winter, when I was younger, but never very much, because I tend to photograph wherever I am, whatever I happen to be doing, and in the wintertime I don't like being outside for very long. Plus, the days are short and often gray. Light is...scarce. Not always poor. Scarce.

So winter was darkroom season. I suppose only one in ten photographers actually liked the darkroom, but I was one. It was a sanctuary, a nice place to be (even if some of my darkrooms were pretty dreadful little holes when you turned the white lights on!) and I enjoyed the process, the work, the amber glow and the comforting low burble of running water. If I had ever established any sort of career as a photographer—if I'd been able to sell prints, for instance, more than every now and then—I'd still be doing darkroom work.

A not-so-gentle reminder: if winter is a good season for indoor work, for being indoors out of the light, then spring is the opposite. Spring is for shooting. In most of the Northern Hemisphere, which I inhabit and I suppose a lot of you do too, spring is the best time of the year for shooting. Some photographers (poor souls) never learn the essential trick of photography, which is that photographs are about light—not about their subject, not about your equipment, not about colors or "sharpness" or proving you've been to the Statue of Liberty or Disneyland or what Uncle Fred looked like. Well, all of that, too. But mainly light. Light is the essential ingredient of a photograph. It can ennoble virtually any subject. More than that, it creates subjects. It structures the things we see. A photograph that doesn't depend on the light it was taken in has a lot of extra work to do to amount to anything.

And summer light is often as bad as winter light. Monotonous, overbearing, unmodulated—white skies and humid haze and smog on the horizon. Things aren't clear in the summertime. Or often aren't. In the summertime you have to resort to the old photographer's trick of using the angled light of dusk or dawn to help your photographs along.

Spring is the time for photographing. The wind blows, the weather changes, the clouds move; the air's often cold enough to be clear. Look especially for the edges of storms, as one departs or another looms; look for blankets of clouds high enough for the sun to get in under at the end of a day. Even the land changes fast in spring. Don't like the way a place looks today, come back tomorrow, or next week. Spring is the season of light. Get out in it. Use your eyes. Bring your camera along.

High style landscapes
If you still love the darkroom you might be interested in this: I heard from John Sexton recently, and he's still teaching his popular master-class workshops on printing called "The Expressive Black and White Print." John is a direct link to Ansel Adams: he learned his craft in Adams's Yosemite Workshops and from studying the prints of Ansel, Edward Weston, and Wynn Bullock; later, he was Ansel's last assistant. That's John in the illustrations of The New Ansel Adams Photography Series, The Camera, The Negative, and The Print, a trilogy of books any black-and-white film photographer (well, perhaps any film photographer, period) ought to own. He is of course a master craftsman in his own right, in the West Coast tradition, with four beautiful books to his credit. There are printers in the world who are "as good," but there are none better. John's workshops are as close as you can get today to the high style Zone System landscapists and the tradition they worked in, going back to to the heroic days of early California and the West.

 

John Sexton, Tree Fern

Of course, the workshops that are coming up soon (April, May of this year) are already full, as they always are. But John tells me there are places left in the ones scheduled for next fall and spring in Carmel Valley. Now would be the time to plan that, if you want a place. The fall workshops are for November 3–8 and 17–22, and the spring ones take place at about this time next year, March 9–14 and 23–28, 2010. The cost is $900, and it takes a $150 deposit to reserve a place, $100 of which is non-refundable. Here's the link to the brochure and the application.

Oh, and I note with pleasure that at John's Ventana Editions book page, Ray McSavaney's book Explorations is still available—signed, no less!—for a mere $60. (That's better than paying twice or three times that for a used copy from the usual sources.) The text of Ray's book is...well, not bad, exactly, but wooden, declarative, quotidian...earthbound, and I don't mean that in a good nature-y way. But the pictures soar. Pictorially, it's one of those transcendent books, in which every page offers a reward and, often as not, a thrill. Yes, an actual thrill. I love this book. Sorry if I'm gushing, but this is perhaps my #1 all-time favorite book of black-and-white large format nature photography (well, nature plus), or, at least, right up there with five or six now-unobtainable books in my library that I won't name for fear of frustrating you. If you like large-format black and white, don't miss Explorations. I had thought it was gone. It's not going to get any easier to find.

But back to springtime: now is the time of year to stop nattering over cameras, stop sitting around indoors, stop looking at...screens. (I know.) Pick a camera and get outdoors to watch the light. This is the shooting season. The season of light.

Mike
(Photo © 2009 John Sexton, all rights reserved)

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Comments

[Jason Anderson]

So well put - and hopefully the quiet that has been evident across the podcast/blogosphere has increased, it means many are realizing this and have taken to the light of day (or mornings/evenings to catch the best of the good light) to capture the beauty that surrounds us. Thanks as always for such insightful and valuable commentary Mike!

[James McDermott]

While agreeing about the attractions of spring, I have to give poor old winter a hand here. Admittedly, the UK's depths thereof don't come close to those of the American mid-west, but the season's low horizon, subtle light - particularly for those of us who spend serious time photographing old church interiors - is magical.

[John Camp]

There's a moment in September or October when Minnesota's light turns golden, almost like Italian light, but it only lasts for a month, or even less. I often wondered what caused it, if it could possibly related to harvest, an extra little bit of dust in the air...it's peculiar, but beautiful...

Went to the Ventana editions site but the book is out of stock. I think you did it again.

JC

[Ade]

Apropos the availability of suitable light, Ralph Gibson once said: "...lighting is always perfect - it's the photographer's interpretation of it that is sometimes lacking."

[Juha Haataja]

I must give a word of support for winter. Although this one was really dark in the beginning (before snow), I didn't stop taking photographs. In the end I started to enjoy it very much. Although the images weren't so good, at least I was able to see better what the winter is all about.

[Doug Howk]

McSavaney's book is still available at Freestyle Photo. Along with Sexton & Barnbaum, Ray represents the best of West Coast traditional photography.
Here, in North Florida, the late Winter light has been beautiful as it reflects off new leaves of the understory. A valuable time to photograph.

[Michael W]

Sydney has nice light most of the year. Because we are on the coast there is often wind to blow the clouds about. It never snows and in winter the sun heads north so we get longer shadows. However the light can be very hard & contrasty. Photographers from Europe freak out when they come to Australia as they are so used to soft light & low skies.

[James]

Mike, given your experience and stated preferences, I would have expected you to still be doing some darkroom work. Do you? And if not, may I ask why?

[Mike Johnston]

James,
I don't, because I don't have a darkroom. I was midway through building the "dream" darkroom I'd never had when I lost my last corporate job. As an addition to a house, a darkroom not only adds nothing to the house's value, it actually subtracts a little (because prospective buyers think they're paying for something they don't want or need). So, having to face hard choices, I stopped construction. I have never quite been able to resume. The darkroom is still studwalls in the basement.

Mike

[Dennis Ng]

It is hard sometimes as beginner of 8x10 black and white process to find reference. Of course there are a lot but which one. Per your recommendation, I just go ahead to order Ray McSavaney's book Explorations (which is back order). Still, I really think that you shall disclose the others. May be some of us can at least get to see them in some Arts Library or just wait for the chance.

[Dave]

Mike,

I agree with everything you said. Explorations is without a doubt my favorite photo book - period. And McSavaney is a heck of a nice guy.

John's workshop is fantastic. It was one of the high points of my photo experience. Imagine a group of photographers as crazy an committed as you are, learning from a master. I came away from that workshop so charged up that I could hardly contain myself. My darkroom printing immediately improved (and I had been doing it since I was in elementary school - I attended the workshop in my late 30's). The first print after the workshop was a dramatic improvement. There is lots of fun. John has a great sense of humor. Anne, his wife, is great (and an outstanding photographer), and you will learn almost more than your brain can handle!

[James]

Mike, well that's a shame, but understandable. I ask because I might like to have a darkroom myself someday, although completely impractical in present circumstances.

[Mike Mundy]

Doesn't it seem that most "art" photographers' income is derived from workshops or other teaching methods?

As opposed to selling photographs, that is.

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

It's true about light, but it's a strange thing. I bought that big Koudelka book you linked to recently, and two of my favorite pictures in it (black hound and tree in landscape) have the dullest winter light possible, but somehow it's still photographic light. So what *is* good light?

[Robert Prendergast]

As merely an amateur may I question some of your comments?
Isn't it just as much about the subject and interpretation as about the light? The light is one of the tools and the skill/art is about how you use it. That is in an active way. Passively you seek the light and accept what it does to your subject and Bob's your uncle.
Just going a bit further I find that nowadays, with the tools available, I am able to take my images and develop other interpretations. there are many who do this far nbetter than me and tehir work becomes art and it certainly does not depend on the light. Note that I used the word images rather than photographs but that is the point. Once we have our images we can choose to make traditional photos (which is my choice in 95% of cases) or, experiment in my case.
Yes, I enjoyed the creative process of the darkrrom but moreso I enjoy the new horizons of the digital world.
Best wishes, Robert in Luxembourg

[Chris]

More words of support for winter:

"It is a pleasure to the real lover of Nature to give winter all the glory he can, for summer will make its own way, and speak its own praises."

Dorothy Wordsworth, quoted in Rutstrum, Paradise below Zero.

I must admit I'm looking forward to winter, down here south of the equator. I won't have to get out of bed so early to catch the nice morning light!