Thematic Interruption: The Elements of Style

Please forgive this brief intermission from the day-to-day reporting of my trip to the Canadian Rockies.  Every so often I have something I want to say beyond the chronological posting of images; this is one of those occasions and it will certainly happen at least one or two more times before I wrap up the trip.  The next post will be Day 5–my first full day at Jasper National Park.

In the more than five years that I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve discussed what it’s like to photograph landscapes in the American Midwest.  I’ll save everyone the unpleasant task of rereading the entirety of that description.  Suffice to say, the American Midwest is filled with various forms of development–commercial, residential and agricultural.  The areas of undeveloped landscape are largely flat, relatively cluttered woodlands and wetlands.  There are exceptions to this rather mundane generalization, but photographing effectively in this environment, in my view, requires particular attention to lighting conditions and the willingness to open one’s eyes to relatively narrow fields of vision.  Again, there are exceptions, but “grand landscapes” are comparatively few and far between.

Autumn Leaves, Devils Lake State Park, Wisconsin

Fallen Aspen Leaves, Wildland Trail, Jasper National Park, Alberta

It goes without saying, then, that the Midwestern landscape bears little resemblance to that of the Canadian Rockies.  There are no snow-capped mountain peaks reflected in alpine lakes; no glaciers; few wild rivers and massive, thundering waterfalls.  In short, photographing n the Midwest is an entirely different experience from doing so in the Canadian Rockies.

Right?

Above Upper Cataract Falls, Cataract Falls State Recreation Area, Indiana

River Rapids, Athabasca River, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Well, yes and no.  The “yes” part is pretty obvious.  It’s virtually impossible to ignore the aforementioned grand landscape opportunities that the Canadian Rockies present, especially for someone who’s new to the area.  I’m not sure that it’s possible to have an aesthetically sensible bone in one’s body and not gaze in wonder at those towering peaks, prodigious waterfalls and all the rest of the description presented above.  I trust that I’ve demonstrated this principle, to at least a small degree, in the posts covering the first four days of my trip.

Aspen Twins, Hillsdale Meadows, Banff National Park, Alberta

Big Twin Lake, Hiawatha National Forest, Michigan

But the “no” part…that’s the counterpoint provided by the pairs of images that accompany this essay.  Despite all of the obvious differences, it is possible to present the Canadian Rockies region in a manner that is more…let’s say typical…of a style endemic to the occasionally frustrated Midwest-based landscape photographer: a bit more subtle; more detail-oriented; more intimate; more graphically oriented; more founded on patterns and forms.

These are the elements that, for better or worse, I naturally bring with me, wherever I go, it seems.  They come with years and years of cutting my teeth in locations where focusing on these principles feels somehow necessary.  It’s reached the point, clearly, where it’s not even a conscious thing for me anymore (if it ever was); how else to explain taking a trip to the Canadian Rockies and coming up with so many images that–at least superficially–are similar in style and composition to those made in the Midwest?

Fall Forest Floor, Morton Arboretum, Illinois

Aspen Forest Floor, Jasper National Park, Alberta

It’s not as though I was consciously looking for images like these; they just naturally caught my eye…as they do almost literally every time I’m out in the field in my home region.  It’s an arguable point, but I don’t think the tendency to indulge my apparently embedded inclination to “see” images like this cost me any great opportunities to engage in the grand landscape opportunities for which the Canadian Rockies are so well known.  While I haven’t included any such images as part of this post, you’ve seen plenty of them in the earlier installments of the series (Day 1; Day 2; Day 3; Day 4) and you’ll surely see many, many more if you continue to follow along as I present the daily posts from the remainder of the trip.

Aspen Forest, Muleshoe Picnic Area, Banff National Park, Alberta

Birch Trees in Autumn Dress, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan

But you’ll also continue to see images of the sort that populate this post, because I have many, many more of them.  (In fact, I’ve posted a number of other such images during the already linked earlier posts.)  As I stated above, I seldom was specifically looking for “Midwest-like” images during my time in the Rockies.  There were one or two occasions when, during periods of overcast, I wandered into a wooded area in search of aspen intimates, for instance.  But the vast majority of the time, the types of shots you see here were obtained when I was off on a grand landscape hunt and something decidedly less grand caught my eye.

Oconaluftee River Reflections, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina

Reflections, Maligne River, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Art is an inherently personal, revealing exercise.  We’re always showing a little bit of ourselves through our aesthetic creations.  We reveal ourselves, to a greater or lesser extent, by the subjects we work with or depict; by the light we choose to use or eschew; and most intimately, I think, by the compositions we take control of and present.

Reeds & Lily Pads, Chain O’Lakes State Park, Illinois

Water Reeds, Beaver Lake, Jasper National Park, Alberta

I always like to “take what the landscape gives me,” rather than overtly imposing my personal will upon it.  And I think I’ve mostly succeeded in that endeavor over the years.  But I also like to allow a little bit of myself to permeate my imagery.  After all, it’s my view of the landscape that I’m trying to reveal through my photography.  I think that’s ultimately what’s happening here.  The grand landscape–the quintessential Canadian Rockies, if you will?  I’ve let that emerge (and I think you’ll increasingly see this as I continue to post the daily journal entries), as part of my intention to let the place reveal itself.  And the images like those accompanying this post?  That’s showing a little bit of what makes my imagery my imagery.

Next:  The Canadian Rockies, Day 5 – Patricia and Pyramid Lakes, Highway 93A and Mt. Edith Cavell