Author: Hitzeman Photography (Page 7 of 13)

Seeing Beauty

September 1, 2012 / Hitzeman Photography / 0 Comments

Seeing Beauty

I see these things with an intense joy,

and while I observe, there is no observer, only a beauty almost like love.

For an instant, I am absent, myself and my problems, my anxieties, my troubles,

nothing but the wonder exists.

— Krishnamurti

This poem is a word-painting of how I felt in the dance of capturing this photograph at sunset on Schoodic Point at Maine’s Acadia National Park. It had been a long day of driving, hiking, scouting locations. My daughter Helena and I had been to this spot earlier that day, in harsh, bright light. Then, the pinks in the granite were hidden by the sun’s sharp glare. But we got back for sunset. As the sun was dropping below the horizon, the eastern sky charged up its soft pink glow, blushing these granite rocks, staggering a cracked rugged pathway to heaven before us.

For several minutes as the sun was setting I quickly jumped from spot to spot, setting my tripod, arranging compositions in my camera’s viewfinder. You’d have thought me a mad scientist or a skittish mountain goat. But I knew the light was changing quickly, that each minute brought new shapes and colors into presence for my wondrous black box to record for later viewing and digital development. And in all of this, I was an extension of the camera, or, it was an extension of me? Like a dancer given a wondrous symphony to move to, I was glad I had practiced my steps. I moved from composition to composition, arranging the shapes and lens zoom, adjusting focus and exposure by feel. My fingers had learned where to poke and push, and my ears had learned to listen for the peeps and pops, confirming the camera’s syncopation with my artistic vision.

For that instant, my worries and troubles drop away, replaced by the joy and love before me. My gratitude is unspeakable. My self dissolves at the wonder.

Canyon Spring

May 16, 2012 / Hitzeman Photography / 0 Comments

Canyon Spring

One of the peaks of the grouping of mountains named Court of the Patriarchs in Zion National Park. The river in the foreground is the Virgin River.

Getting this shot with the river in the foreground and the mountains up above required me to come down a steep embankment and find a dry spot close to the river.

This envisioned photograph worked out because of a little sweat and a lot of desire!

Chicago Cultural Center

February 24, 2012 / Hitzeman Photography / 0 Comments

Chicago Cultural Center

The Chicago Cultural Center has two spectacular stained glass domes, two beautiful mosaic and marble staircases, glass-block flooring that emits light UP, and the huge Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Room. Here’s a description of the building from the website:

Designed by the Boston firm of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge as the first home of the Chicago Public Library, the Chicago Cultural Center was completed in 1897. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 31, 1972, and was designated a Chicago Landmark by the City Council on November 15, 1976.

The Beaux Arts style was influenced by the buildings of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The building’s interior features rooms modeled on the Doge’s Palace in Venice, the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, and the Acropolis in Athens. Its lush ornamentation includes two stained-glass domes, rare marbles inlaid with sparkling mosaics, and intricate, coffered ceilings.

What inspires me are the curves, the arches, the twinkling glass and gold leaf pieces in the mosaic inlays. And the lights in the floor are an unusual and dramatic sight. The glass block in the floor was originally there to allow light from the second floor domed rotunda to illuminate the first floor. Now the light direction is reversed!

What specific photo skills could you develop at the Cultural Center?

First, the skill of composition. Get high, get low, get left, get right, get tilted, get in the corner, get in the middle. Moving your viewpoint around until you see something dramatic or symmetric or diagonal or colorful. Playing with the bottom lighting. Getting Escher-like with the staircases.

Secondly, setting exposure to handle available light. This is primarily an indoor photo venue, and the existing lighting is set up for people, not necessarily for photography. It is far from uniform. On-camera flash is too harsh, so the key is using the available light with a vision to what you are creating in the frame. This means longer shutter speeds on a tripod, and that brings in the light hidden in the shadows.

I think you’ll be amazed at the beauty of the place, and delighted with the compositions to be created there.

Saints Volodymyr and Olha Church

February 16, 2012 / Hitzeman Photography / 0 Comments

SVOC Colors & Curves

Saints Volodymyr and Olha Church is a beautiful church in Chicago’s Ukranian Village. I was allowed to photograph from the choir loft. I wanted to create a composition that would capture the dramatic curve of the choir loft railing and still include the beautiful view of the church windows, arches, and a huge radiant chandelier.

This image was developed using HDR software in order to balance the bright light of the stained glass windows and the darker church interior.

You can view more photos of this impressive church in my flickr album for this church.

Rock Legends

October 15, 2011 / Hitzeman Photography / 0 Comments

Rock Plus Two

On a recent trip to Lake Powell, Arizona/Utah, I was hiking and looking for a photographic composition to capture my wonder at this place. And I saw these two rocks holding hands on a great smooth rock. I took the shot and have wondered why I so much like to photograph rocks.

Being of Capricorn persuasion, I am inclined to structure, tradition, achievement, austereness. Of the four elements — fire, water, air, and earth — I am earth. To me, a photograph of a rock is a small record of an instant in time on earth.

I have come to revere the silence and relative permanence (or simply the extremely slow rate of change for human perception) of the rocks. My car may last 10 years, my home 100 years, my city 1000 years, my planet – I don’t know. The rocks are changing too.

The pace of change we humans have now created flashes by in a world of tweets and likes, facespace, mybook, mytube and yourtube, and news cycles that are shorter in life span than a fruit fly. We love seeing people get kicked off the island (or the runway, kitchen, dance floor, etc,) . We can now make a video of ourselves and loved ones. An almost instantaneous record of what is happening NOW, for all to see for as long as the bits are stored on a disk drive in a computer, and the facebook accounts are still open.

But who sees the changes of the rocks? And how did they get that way? They have left us a record of their state now, but how did they get here? These two rocks were (and probably still are) sitting out on a smooth place on another rock, brought here by – an avalanche? — a flood? – a thawing iceberg? And how long will it take for them to become sand, scattered over the surface of the earth by the chaotic movements of the wind and rain? What really is their history? Are they brothers, sisters, lovers?

When we are young, we think our physical bodies are immortal, like the rocks. As we get older, we know that we are here in these bodies but a nanosecond compared to a simple rock.

I do appreciate their history and mystery, even though it is unknown, as much as the history and mystery of my very own soul.