Purpose: Make a series of between 5 and 15 photographs in response to a journey. This might be a journey that is familiar to you. If this is a case, look for new things along the route that you normally overlook or perhaps that have intrigued you but you've never explored further.
Walden Pond Revisited
(click on first image to open click through gallery)
Why Walden? This journey is return to a place that I hadn’t been to in quite some time. When I stepped onto the path around the pond memories of chasing my kids on the path, walking with my parents and friends visiting Boston, and unwinding during a challenging time came to mind. I was hoping that like those other times along the path I would see something new, something beautiful and come away refreshed and renewed on sunny fall morning on December 1, 2018. The added challenge to this journey was to try to capture some of beauty and uniqueness of this place in Concord, Massachusetts through my camera lens.
Reflection:
For this shoot I used a 50mm and a 24mm-105mm zoom lens. Unfortunately my schedule didn’t permit arriving to Walden in the early morning or late afternoon. I began around 11:30 so for the most part I was shooting when the sun was very intense. By the time I got to the far side of the pond the light was less intense—but very shadowy and in places it was dark. I took lots of time to I walk along looking for interesting details or moments. There were very few people, one duck and no one in the water so the focus was on the pond, reflection and natural wonders that caught my eye. I think given the day and the light challenges this was the best way for me to approach the journey. Having the camera forced me to move slowly and to observe more than I ever have. While on the walk, I noticed more natural details than i might have on a casual walk. I noticed another photographer also engrossed in the scene around her as well—it is just hard not too once you start to see what’s there. I think for this scene the shooting style was appropriate because enabled me to capture the pond in an interesting but realistic way.
I like several of the shots but wonder what I might have been able to do with a warmer light or being able to see the pond with more vivd color. I spent some time trying to get a photo of a rock being thrown on the cairn near Thoreau’s house. I have some shots that were interesting but they didn’t make the final cut. I included a shot of a splash in the water to break up the images of calm water and to have some fun (and to make up for the fact that my second assignment which required us to show stop action wasn’t quite up to par because the water in my image was moving too slowly!). I like the way the tree’s branches frame the pond in the first image and in the image looking up several tree trunks the way that the twisted trees draw your eyes up to the blue sky. I think my favorite image is the reflection of people and trees—the people along the path are in the middle third of the image combined with the balance of the trees on the top third and their reflection on the bottom third seemed to work well. I thought about cropping a little off the left but ended up leaving it as shot. I like the second image of the sunlit plant growing out of the water because of it’s simplicity and the catch of light on the leaves. The floating leaf and its shadow was also a nice natural moment during change of seasons period. In reviewing the images I noticed that although I did take some images using a shallow depth of field they didn’t make the cut (they were mostly of fungus, plants etc.) in the mix for this selection they didn’t rise to the top. If I did this again, I would do it over several shoots or at least try to find a time of day that would provide more interesting light and to perhaps capture some more people or a boat on the lake to give this collection more variety.
