Friday Inspiration: Sal Taylor Kydd

Frog in the Hand

I’ve been enjoying looking at Sal Taylor Kydd’s photographs in the last couple of weeks. Her work really resonate with me. Home, family and nature are themes that are very present in Sal’s work, the importance of these to me has become heightened over the last year.

I was fortunate enough to get a copy of her book ‘Just When I Thought I had You’ that combines images of her children on Deer Isle with her poetry. In many ways it reminds me of how my kids spend their summers – outside in nature catching frogs and toads and doing all kinds of other fun stuff.

Take a look at the book in the video below.

I was interested to hear Sal’s description of her father, a chemist who collected vintage cameras. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that she is now playing in the darkroom and making platinum palladium prints of her work.

I was also drawn to the fact that Sal is making books as a way to complete her projects. These are either with small presses such as Datz in South Korea or hand made by Sal. I think the book is a perfect vehicle to complete projects and especially so for the intimate subjects that Sal has turned her camera towards.

Check out more of Sal Taylor Kidd’s work on her website here and hear her describe her work in the video below.

Friday Inspiration: Jamie Wyeth

One of the things that I often wonder about is ‘what does it take for the children of ‘successful’ parents to be successful in their own right?’ All too often the children of successful parents fail to step out of the shadows. Sometimes that’s by intent but I suspect more often that not it’s just that it doesn’t happen for those kids.

That clearly doesn’t seem to have been an issue for Jamie Wyeth, a third generation artist whose grandfather Newell Convers “N.C.” Wyeth and his father was Andrew Wyeth. Jamie seems to have had a somewhat unusual childhood having left school at 11 to be home schooled and to train as an artist under the guidance of his aunt Carolyn. I get the sense that while he may have had shown some talent as an artist early on that he’s really worked hard and received very open feedback on his work from one of the great american realist painters – his father. In the video below that shows him at work on ‘The Inferno’ (I couldn’t believe that was watercolors on cardboard) you hear Wyeth talk about painting being ‘drudgery’ at times but you keep working for those moments when it all comes together, a point that I have now heard many artists reiterate in their own way. The muses favor those that they find working!

Wyeth has a major retrospective exhibition going on at the MFA in Boston now until the end of the year. It looks like it would be fun to see since it pulls together all of the various aspects of Wyeth’s work in a way that hasn’t been done in a number of years. Check out the exhibition site here and hear Jamie Wyeth talking about his work below.

Pictures From An Exhibition

I’m back home after a cool and crazy time in Missoula last week. Hanging my show ‘Going Coastal’ went relatively smoothly, Alyssa and Melanie from RMSP were a huge help in getting the prints up on the wall and in dealing with the problems that cropped up along the way. I even got my name on the window out front. The RMSP staff are terrific and I’m looking forward to having a chance to go back later in the summer.

Friday Inspiration: Cig Harvey

My first experience of Cig Harvey‘s photography was the image above which ran as a cover for Maine Magazine. It made me pick up the magazine, which I absolutely love, but also gave me an reason to dig deeper into Cig Harvey’s work.

Cig Harvey was born and raised in Devon in the South of England and now divides her time between Boston and the coast of Maine. Her personal work seems to me to tell the stories of what’s going on in her life and includes a number of self-portraits, many of which show case her collection of vintage dresses.

To hear Cig speaking about her work, process and inspiration check out this video .

Where Do You Turn for Fall Color?

It’s almost peak fall color here in Massachusetts. I had grand intentions this year of talking some trips North to Vermont this year but I have missed my window of opportunity to do that. There are a number of websites that will either give you a prediction of the color or that use a network of spotters to give a more accurate representation of what the current status is. Of course if you live in New England like I am fortunate enough to do then these websites are useful, not so much if you booked your trip a year in an advance.

Okay so where to go? Not sure how you prepare for trips to new locations but I usually will use a combination of on-line searching with digging through books and if I can get some local knowledge so much the better. Jerry and Macy Monkman put together a book a few years ago called ‘The Colors of Fall: A Celebration of New England’s Foliage Season‘ that I quite enjoyed. They then followed that up with ‘The Colors of Fall Road Trip Guide’ which gives you a range potential New England trips, from ones that might be familiar such as the Park Loop Road in Acadia National Park to what might be less expected such as Rhode Island Beaches and Mansions.  While the book highlights good vantage points for leaf peeping it’s not specifically targeted towards photographers.

Countryman press have a range of books for the photographer that I’ve mentioned here before and that I’ve found generally useful.  The Photographer’s Guide to Vermont and The Photographer’s Guide to the Maine Coast both by David Middleton are good resources when planning trips at anytime of the year to either Maine or Vermont but especially during fall.

While it looks like I’ve missed my opportunity to travel north this fall I’m making the most of the color nearer to home.

Friday Inspiration: Paul Caponigro

My copy of the catalog for Paul Caponigro’s exhibition ‘The Hidden Presence of Places‘ arrived this week.  I was of course familar with, and particularly like, ‘Running White Deer‘ and aware of some of his still life studies but otherwise largely ignorant of much of his work.  This was an attempt to fill in that gap in my knowledge.  I was very pleased that I did.  The collection in ‘The Hidden Presence of Places‘ has a number of images that resonated with me – quiet and contemplative, exactly what I am striving towards.  The essay that leads off the book has a number of references, many of which I will add to my library over the next few months.  In the meantime I’m going to study the images in the catalog and plan a visit to the exhibition at the Farnsworth Gallery in Rockland before it closes Oct. 9th.

Going for a Spin

I have had a lot of fun so far this year looking for ways that I can bring a sense of motion into my photographs.  To do that I have been experimenting with moving the camera.  One series of experiments involved panning with a slow shutter speed, both vertically and horizontally, a variety of different subjects.  Some of the results I quite liked and I will continue on with those ideas.  On the day I took the photograph above I was headed back to the car after a morning shoot.  Although I wasn’t ready to be done, the sun was too bright for the kind of photographs that I prefer.  As I walked back down the road I noticed a patch of rocks that had interesting colors.  The straight shots I made were okay, but wanting something different I tried both panning the camera and rotating the camera.  The result of rotating the camera is shown above.

Friday Inspiration: Eliot Porter

I find Eliot Porter’s style of intimate landscapes particularly powerful.  I recently came across the video below, ‘A Look Back’, a documentary put together shortly after his death in 1990.  I quite enjoyed it and hope that you will too.  You can find out more about Eliot Porter on the web here.  Many of his books can be found used on amazon.com and are well worth looking out for.

Fogged In

It always surprises me that summer days along the coast can start off very foggy. This is typical of summers in Maine but also happens often in long island sound. Perhaps you already understand the phenomenon, I didn’t but after getting up at 3 am on a couple of mornings to find myself socked in with fog I thought that I ought to understand how to predict whether the morning will be foggy or not. This link seems to provide the answer.

Of course we can’t control the weather and with limited time sometimes you just have to roll with what nature serves up. This is exactly what I did on this morning. I was at a new beach and although I had a general sense of where I was going wasn’t 100% sure. I could hear the ocean but couldn’t see it. I headed along the beach until I found the rocks that I’d seen using google maps. Once on location I played around for a while and made the image below.

Trees in Motion

I have been playing with the interaction of still and moving, generally trying to combine the two into a single photograph.  When I saw these trees together on my way down to the beach recently I wondered whether I could build on my interest in motion to create an image that I was happy with.  I took a lot of frames but was happiest with the one above.  I may try more of these!