Shooting the Shooter Part Six - Portland Japanese Garden, Dan's Turn
One of the places that Ann and I had to return to when I got back to Oregon was Portland’s Japanese Gardens. We had such an incredible experience photographing there during the summer, we wanted to see what it was like in the fall and, hopefully, with the trees changing. But despite the fact that we were about a week or two early for the peak fall color (all across Oregon the leaves changed at an uneven rate, so while the leaves below are very green, others in the garden were brilliant orange and yellows that day), good photographs were harder to come by on this second effort, and a gardens volunteer tried her hardest to disturb our experience there, it was still a good trip.
We were fortunate to have the overcast yet not rainy day I was hope for. But as the day progressed and we took more and more photographs, it dawned on me that the gardens lose a certain brilliance in those conditions. In particular the ponds especially don’t reflect a wondrous blue. Still there were plenty of images to be made, just different types of images that require a different type of seeing.
This trip we brought the tripod and paid an extra $10.00 tripod fee ($5.00 for each person who would use the tripod - next time we’ll take 2 tripods and pay . . . only $10.00 extra!) so we could use slower shutter speeds and make more composed exposures.
Ann took this photograph of me fairly early in our day. One of the things I like about the camera system we have decided to invest in (ok, the decision was more mine, but Ann isn’t complaining I think) is that mirrorless camera systems allow you to look at the image on the back of the camera as well as use the viewfinder (electronic for Ann’s; electronic or optical for mine) depending on the situation. It took me a while to accept the notion that I might not use a viewfinder of a small camera to compose an image, but when it dawned on me that, while smaller, looking at the 3” lcd back of my camera to make composition decisions was no different than looking at the ground glass of a 4”x5” camera, I was hooked. That’s what Ann has captured here. Me looking at the image. It’s hard to explain to someone who has never experienced it, but there is a real difference between looking through a viewfinder and looking “at” an image. Especially a fairly large image. So while I don’t have the view camera movements on my Fujifilm x-100 that I used to have on my Sinar 4x5, I can have a similar experience of seeing, craft and precision on my x-100 that I used to enjoy from my large format work. And that is what this image is about, crafting an image.
When I walked down this path and then saw the well and the stones leading up to it, I recalled so much from a course I took as an undergraduate, Concepts in Japanese Architecture. I can even remember my professor’s name - Yuji Kishimoto - a guest professor from the University of Tokyo. The integration of the natural and the man-made, the precise spacing between the stepping stones, the transition from the linear formal path to the uneven, curving stones, and the aging of the materials used for the well cover and the equipment used to draw water from the well - each of these has a particular Japanese word associated with it in Japanese design. My goal was to photograph the beauty of this apparently “natural” setting that had nevertheless been very deliberately designed.
The precision of my own set up leaves a bit to be desired. Whether it’s due to the fact that I wasn’t working with a large 4x5 image to compose with, or whether I’m still re-acquiring the skills necessary to give this type of image the precision it deserves, I don’t know. What I do know is that while it is a fine image, the subject deserves better.
The story doesn't end there though because there was a person determined to ruin our day. As you can tell from the top photo, this area was a side trail in the garden that looped around to the left to meet back up with the main trail. Trying to be observant of the rules of the gardens (“tripods should never obstruct the path of guests to the gardens”) I moved as far as I could off the side path into the walkway leading to the well. As you can see, I was off the path. And while I was there for several minutes composing and trying to adjust things to be just right, I wasn’t blocking anyone. In fact 2 or 3 groups of people passed behind me as I was working, one couple even asked what I was photographing. But when I was done and started packing things up, Ann came over to me, stopped and photographed something 180 degrees from the direction I was shooting. She wasn’t photographing there more than 30 seconds when a loud, spiteful voice came out from the bushes further down the path, “You photographers have to keep moving - you can’t block the other guests from walking down the paths. If you can’t respect the rules, you’ll just have to leave!” I looked over and there was a volunteer on the ground working on some edging who had shouted it out. Even before the woman said anything, Ann had taken her shot and was about to turn to me as I finished folding my tripod to continue onward down the side path. To our right there was a group of people who had just started waking towards us, but were still about 10 feet away from us. We weren’t blocking anyone. And the half minute or so where the two of us blocked the path was no different than the several groups of non-photographers we encounter on both occasions at the gardens that had stopped for a moment or two on the many narrow paths in the garden and taken a moment to appreciate one beautiful thing or another. Apparently that woman had a thing against photographers and had no problems voicing it.
Anyway, such negativity is caustic. It has a way of polluting others and it definitely affected our mood as we tried to continue photographing and enjoying the garden. At one level, I pity the woman. She has to live with her spiteful self all the time. At another level I resent her. Why does she have to lash out at others? Wallowing in her own nastiness is one thing, projecting it onto others is another. For the next couple of hours, our conversation kept returning to the negativity that person displayed in such a serene place; it’s hard not to let it impact you.
Fortunately, the day at the garden ended well when, as we were leaving, we wound up walking down the hill with a gentleman who has been a member of the Japanese Gardens for its entirety and volunteers there as well. After asking about us, he gave us some background about the garden’s design and first two gardeners. Most of all he gave Ann and me some relief that there are also generous, kind people associated with the garden that are positive in their outlook and share in the many different pleasures the gardens give. Thanks to him, the thought of returning again to the gardens to photograph is much less likely to be accompanied by trepidation.