CameraintheWild - Carolinas Nature Photographers Association

Creating
a
Series
Eve Turek
yellowhouseartgallery@yahoo.com
Electricity is one of those subjects I cannot
seem to grasp. I read and repeat, turn the
page, and my eyes glaze over. I do recall that
circuitry can be either parallel or in series
(just don’t ask me which is used for what),
and that if you hook the wires up correctly,
the juice will flow. I’ve been thinking about
electricity as a handy analogy for getting
our own creative juices flowing. Last year, I
spent a lot of time looking skyward, shooting
what could be thought of as images in
parallel, on assignment to produce a body of
work for a show on Sky photography. Once
the assignment was over, I found myself in
a sort of creative drought. The familiar was,
well, too familiar. I kept showing up, camera
in hand, but the motor wouldn’t turn over. I
needed to break out of my rut…but how?
Early this year, I realized one way to refresh
my outlook was to think, electrically speaking,
in series rather than in parallel.
I started thinking in terms of a series when
I realized, cataloging images for a new
website, that I had been quietly and persistently
photographing a similar image, over
and over. The image—a lone wave, illuminated—transcended
my other seascapes
20 • Camera in the Wild • Fall 2011
Sunlit Sea and Pelicans – Shooting into the light at sunrise silhouettes pelicans while capturing the morning sun
glinting through a clean breaking wave.
Pier and Wave in November 2010 Storm – After hours of pounding northeast winds and waves, and a monochromatic sea
and sky, a late day break in the clouds lit up a breaking wave.
The Great Wave Cloud – Sometimes you search out your theme; sometimes it finds you. In these clouds, I spied my
illuminated wave.
Frontal Boundary – As an afternoon storm front moved across the Outer Banks, bringing a brief April shower, rifts in the
clouds produced this scene.
Illumination – Overcast western skies near sunset produced a dull eastern seascape until the sun broke through in
shafts, illuminating isolated waves.
If you discover that the images have common elements but your
emotional responses are very different, your series and theme
might be built around those differences. Can you shoot the
familiar image in a way that evokes a myriad of emotions, and
let those different responses become your series?
in the emotional response I had felt upon
viewing the phenomena in real time and
attempting to translate that emotion
through photography. I’ve now shot that
wave over time with normal, wide, and telephoto
lenses and in both calm and stormy
conditions. I even saw the same image in
an early evening sky-show! I’ve lived on
the Outer Banks all my adult life, within
no more than four miles of the ocean. I
have LOTS of ocean photographs. But
this series seems different. Behind the
motif I discerned a motive. Within the
motive, I sense a larger purpose emerging.
All of a sudden, the familiar is once again
fresh. I have one photographer-friend who
asks, “What is the story here?” He finds
his answer in repeated shapes and forms.
Another fellow CNPA member, Matt
Gibson, is conscious of archetypes in a way I
think of as more literary than visual, and he
continues to create bodies of work around
these themes.
Viewers can find in my “lone wave, illuminated”
series their own emotions, motifs,
and stories, of course. The key point for us as
photographers is to identify these emotions,
motifs and stories for ourselves. In thinking
about freshening your work, here are some
questions you might ask yourself:
Forget for a minute what catches your eye.
What catches your breath? What scene or
aspect of nature have you found yourself
photographing again and again? Is there
a motif for you in these photographs that
would make them a series?
What emotion predominates for you when
you photograph these particular images—
and do you have the same response when
you view them later on your monitor? Are
there other images that evoke the same
emotional response? If yes, could they be
combined into a series?
If you discover that the images have
common elements but your emotional
responses are very different, your series and
theme might be built around those differences.
Can you shoot the familiar image in
a way that evokes a myriad of emotions, and
let those different responses become your
series?
Thinking of my emotional responses as the
circuitry that connects my images within
the framework of a series has given me a
new way to view this place that I so love.
Hopefully, the metaphor will be as helpful
to some of you.
Carolinas’ Nature Photographers Association • 21