Downtown Green Bay. Sunrise over the Fox River, featuring a paper mill and a couple of tall ships at rest. Gallery, five pictures.
I rarely shoot where I have to “follow the light,” but on this outing, I had a fine hands-on experience with just how rapidly the quality of light changes leading up to sunrise.
Two images
“I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.” Annie Dillard
I continue to return to the Pulliam Plant in search of pictures that grab me but have had mixed success capturing shots that give me full chestal thrum*. This is the first time I have tried it at night.
Score!
In this small set, the plant is a silent, hulking, mysterious presence. Or, at least, that’s what I was trying for, though the coppery reflections cancel out the whole Soviet factory vibe.
This is a strange place to take pictures. Not a soul around, but…holy cow!…loud, loud, loud. Look at the first picture and the lumpish things bisecting the river. Geese! The water is mostly open here and this is apparently a popular after-hours smorgasbord location. (You can often be rewarded during daylight hours by the sight of eagles who nest here year-around and fish the open waters.) I just didn’t think birds went out for dinner and drinks after dark.
Several earlier posts cover the Pulliam Plant. If you’re interested, you’ll find them under the Categories column on your left.
*Chestal Thrum: That feeling that a thousand small-but-invisible winged beings are doing a polka dance of joy in the general region of your heart and it is a sure sign that you are on to something good.
Tomorrow: Industrial Romantic
Three images
Taken from the footpath near the Museum (west side of the Fox.)
On Thursday night, the view from the Museum parking lot was outstanding: the Fox was covered in a glistening coat of ice and a full moon shone over it all. Wabi Sabi, however, was in full-on grown-up garb INCLUDING girl shoes and sans camera, en route from the opening reception for the Art Annual at the Neville (yes! I have a picture in the juried show!) to dinner with friends.
Because…and I’ve said it before…the whole point of making it into art shows is celebrating with friends afterwards.
I returned Sunday night wearing sturdy boots and carrying a tripod. The full moon was gone and the ice has begun to thin, but I was nonetheless pleased with the results.
I so rarely do black and white, but this last shot seemed to be designed for grays and blacks, shadows and highlights.
Because WHO lives under bridges?
If you have followed this blog for a while, then this bridge will be familiar to you. It is my favorite shoot-from-below space. This time, though, the Fox River is covered with a thin layer of ice–an effect I’d not captured before now.
Like yesterday’s post, “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder,” this shot was taken shortly after dawn on a Sunday morning in late December. I’m on the east bank of the Fox and down behind buildings that house sporting goods stores, boat supplies and repair shops and an Italian restaurant.
Sometimes when I am shooting industrial sites, I pick up some of the flavor of the area: the sugary-sweet vapor of the ethanol plant tangled itself in my hair and clothing and the inside of my car smelled like cotton candy long after the last glimpse of the plant had disappeared in the rear view mirror. In today’s case, the area behind the ristorante where I was shooting was redolent with garlic and I returned to the car smelling like a Saturday night “Garlic Bread Special.”
Six weeks later as I am prepping these pictures to show you, I could swear there is a faint but pungent cloud of garlic wafting up from my screen.
Three images which pretty much cry out to be viewed full-sized.
Just saying.
“Beauty, like supreme dominion
Is but supported by opinion”
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack
“Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,
Not utter’d by base sale of chapmen’s tongues”
William Shakespeare, Love’s Labors Lost
“Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.”
David Hume, Essays Moral and Political
“I just love me some smokestacks.”
Wabi Sabi, WordPress
