The title of this photo comes from the form of the fish
in the lower right of the photo.
While photographing outdoors in the middle of the 2005
Florida winter, late in the afternoon,
I was shooting with my Nikon D2H camera making hundreds
of exposures of the same subject.
In this case it was a clear vase that was reflecting a
beautiful late sky, and the grass and trees surrounding.
As always when I'm photographing, I focus on the
specular highlights that I can lock onto, and I begin a
repetitive dance with the camera, moving the lens and
camera in a gyro-motion, definitely eccentric yet
carefully controlled. Purposeful in attempting to
maintain steady, even movement while concentrating on
the subject and the colors of the reflection.
After about 300 hundred exposures, I began to relax into
a kind of daze
and began to loosen up, letting go of the tightness in
my wrists and arms, the way a potter lets go when
throwing.
I had nothing more on my mind then enjoying the
afternoon, feeling privileged to be photographing with
wonderful
light, great weather, and good gear and especially good
glass for the object to come through.
After sessions like this, my course is to bring the gear
in, as by this time it's getting late, and then to begin sifting,
wading through the hundreds and hundreds of exposures.
The exposures vary, but are mostly reiterations of what
was before and what came after, in terms of movement.
A slide show would seem as though the image was swaying
in the wind.
Crunching through the images, suddenly one caught my eye.
It was different, unusual. I pulled it up and out
of the rest by bringing it into Photoshop for a quick
edit, which was sometimes the way I worked back then.
As the image began to take shape and form through my
editing, I was astonished to find the fish in the lower
right hand corner just hovering there, as though in a
dream state.
It's a Koi, I muttered, a Coy, Koi. And I had my
title and a magical print followed. |