Starfish (and a fish out of water).

Infinity. Pier at a beach near my home in California.

Metal punches.

This image represents a new direction in my work. I am tentatively calling this project ‘Messages and Metaphors.’

My goal is to discover and capture symbols all around us; to explain the whole of something by identifying a representative part, capturing and simplifying it for clarity, and presenting it in such a way as to be charged with meaning. And whenever possible, create images that are beautiful as well as truthful.

These images of Zion National Park and Southern Utah were made on April 1st, 2012 (no fooling).

Zion National Park is one of the most popular parks in the US National Park System, and with good reason. Though lacking in ‘landmark’ features of other National Parks (Yosemite has Half-Dome, Yellowstone has Old Faithful, etc.), Zion is blessed with stunning vistas, unique geography, and is very accessible to most visitors. Zion is more about being there – being in the canyons, listening to the Cottonwood trees – then seeing a thing.

Because of it’s popularity, Zion is frequently crowded. Sadly, as a country we’ve so devalued our national resources that there are few remaining (mostly) untouched areas where people can experience the American Southwest. Visitors flock to the remaining areas of beauty, but even then aren’t able to experience them fully, for want of quiet and solitude. I wish I could have experienced the West before barbed wire, jet contrails, and super-interstate highways. Once, buffalo actually roamed here.

On the day of my visit, intermittent inclimate weather put many people out of the park, at least in the morning. The valley was treated to rain, high winds, and some snow flurries… and then it would clear and shine golden light that made the red rocks glow. By afternoon the storms were gone, and the tourists arrived in force, so we headed east out of the park to explore the high-altitude areas along Hwy. 9 (images 1, 4, 5, 9 and 10 were made outside the park).

I selected these 10 images to represent my time there because I feel they best describe how I experienced it; small details that are crisp in their specifics but point to the whole of the region, with pines trees being dwarfed by towering faces of red rock. These views remind me of how it could have been if we left the land untouched.

I believe the ability to see and capture ‘the extraordinary in the ordinary’ is a defining characteristic of the fully-engaged artist. Beauty is all around us, if we keep our eyes open. Those that do are rewarded with images like this.

This image was made spontaneously in the backyard of my good friend, Emanuele Tozzato, while visiting him and his family. As we talked, I couldn’t keep my eyes off this plant; the leaves were in perfect alignment and the late afternoon sun rendered the edge of the center-most leaf lighter than the ones around it. I was responding to the relationship of the shapes and tones… I pre-visualized the result in black and white, and find it less interesting rendered in color.

I made 3 similar exposures in quick succession, handheld with the Canon 5D and 50mm lens. The image above was created from the best of these. 11″ x 14″ is as large as this will make this print; it looks good with a large mat and I like it in 20″ x 20″.

/Ron Johnson

As far as environments go, the seashore is fairly antagonistic to photography. Wind gusts shakes tripods. Sand blasts against glass. Salty air fogs lenses and water corrodes metal. And waves threaten to wash tripod legs out from underneath a camera. [It was that last threat that made the day so eventful, when the Pacific Ocean ate my camera.]

A late afternoon in March, 2012, my friend John Cooney and I were exploring Crystal Cove state beach in California. As I often do, I was working within the tide zone, moving quickly in and out with waves. With each receding wave, I was treated a temporary composition created between the dry and wet sand that was as interesting as it was impermanent. The image you see above was made this way, standing just at the top edge of the tidal zone.

This image was the best of many nearly-identical exposures. Waves, like clouds, are always changing, and little fleeting details can make or break an image. I knew I wanted the lines of the image leading into the frame, like a 1-point perspective illustration. When the two rocks in the foreground were brought in and carried away by subsequent waves, I felt I had something special. The radiating lines they created broke up the uniformity of the scene and added visual interest.

The only other challenge was maintaining detail in the distant rocks while conveying the light of the scene; the values overall are muted, and it’s tempting to overdo the luminosity to create a brighter (and perhaps garish) image.

Here’s another image that is underserved by a little web preview. When viewed at 16″ x 20″, the details and color are remarkable.

I made this image at Point Fermin near San Pedro. If you look at a map of Los Angeles, almost due south from downtown is a triangle-shape of land that sticks out into the Pacific Ocean. This is Point Fermin, not too far from the California Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. If you find yourself here, on the top of the cliff is a small lighthouse. Hop the fence and climb down the cliff face to the seashore and you’ll be treated to a burst of colorful oceanic life (sea anemones, mussels, and the like).

This image was interesting to me because of the relationship of parts in motion and in stasis. I made it holding my camera on the end of my tripod, high above my head, shooting almost directly downward.

Ever see that crazy guy taking pictures out of the airplane during the entire flight? Well, that guy is me.

This image was made between San Francisco and Orange County. I’m guessing around San Jose, but really, water is water. It was made at midday, which explains the bright, almost glowing blue water of the Pacific Ocean. I love how the distance has rendered what were probably huge swells as small details, and the blue expanse of ocean has become an abstraction. And how, in the bottom of the image, the waves are viewed from almost directly above, while at the top we’re getting close to a vanishing horizon. We’re looking at a lot of water here.

I’m constantly searching for opportunities to make images like this. Photography, more than any other artform, creates tension between what is seen and what is understood. We see an image, and we want to understand what we’re looking at. Is it a picture of fabric?  A close-up of a painted surface? Our analytical mind strives to categorize and catalog the contents of the frame. A good abstraction confounds logic and lets the viewer respond only to color and tone, shape and pattern. And sometimes gives little hints to what we’re seeing.

/Ron

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