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WHEN I FIRST MOVED TO THE ADIRONDACKS-nearly 25 years ago-I was all psyched up to take the making of pictures of the Adirondacks-grand and glorious landscapes and such-by storm. After 50 years of untold number of visits to the Adirondacks-many of which were paid for by picking up checks-from gallery sales of my Adirondack pictures-I finally had the opportunity to immerse myself full-time in creating what I was certain would be an incredible Adirondack-based body of work. It was my intention to build upon my existing 15 picture body of work (8x10 view camera / color negative film / 8x10 contact prints )-5 of which were flying off of gallery walls.
That written, it never happened…a variety of life events-none tragic, all good-conspired to keep me from concentrating on my intended picture making pursuit. The first and foremost amongst those events was photo related-the demise of the availability of film-based picture making products and services-film and processing labs-and the fact that I never got around to building my color printing darkroom (FYI, I never sold a print that I did not make myself). So most of my then picture making was devoted to making somewhat “standard”-although spectacular-Adirondack pictures for use in a wide variety of Adirondack advertising / marketing campaigns.
Eventually, after making the transition to the digital picture making world, I began to find time to make non-standard Adirondack-based pictures. By that time I was no longer interested in making “standard” landscape pictures and I turned my attention to the ubiquitous quotidian characteristic of the Adirondacks to which no one was paying attention-my scrub, thicket, and tree tangles work-much less making pictures thereof. A period of picture making which my son referred to as my Pollock Period. To this day, my eye and sensibilities are still pricked by such referents and I continue to make similar pictures but I am no longer in hot pursuit of such.
All of the above written, as I sit here today at Rist Camp, I have resolved to turn my Adirondack picture making intentions to a broader (yet still rather intimate) field of view of the forest itself. Unlike the vast majority of Adirondack picture makers who wander all over the place in picture making pursuit of “grand” and pictorially “glorious” Adirondack landscapes and who seem not to notice or picture, in their words, the plain old forest, my eye and sensibilities find a wealth of interesting-albeit “subdued”-picture possibilities.
Turning my picture making intentions to such a referent(s) should not be difficult. It should only require getting off, literally and figuratively, the “standard” picture making path.