Route 2 Trilogy PT 4

Wait a minute. Can a "trilogy" have four parts?

Well, maybe. Read on.

The overall concept is to photograph Massachusetts Route 2 from the air starting about Rt 128 near Boston on out to where it stops at the western border with New York.

As I can only photograph about 1/3 of the state at a time the project broke down naturally into thirds, hence..."trilogy". But I have now photographed 4 times on the project, hence the "PT 4".

Thanks to new friends Jerry Muller (pilot) and Charlotte Richardson (plane owner) I have now flown twice to work on the Rt 2 Trilogy (Aerials) project on their kindness alone and I am most grateful. We take off from the air strip at Stow, MA and head west along Rt 2.

Today's flight was a little shorter than last time and by the time we were close to home the day was clouding up and it would rain soon.

Mid summer flights like this in New England are lush with vibrant greens, particularly if it hasn't been too dry. Today was like that, with a carpet of green trees everywhere.

Without dwelling too long on "tech", I was interested to see how a new camera would handle this very challenging way of photographing. I have just changed from the Nikon D800e to the new Nikon D810, a camera with the same size sensor but some significant improvements, one being a better, less vibration inducing shutter. The results from today are a clear step of improvement from the previous camera. I also tested a lens I haven't used for aerials before, the Nikon 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR AF-S NIKKOR and found that it works very well but that it is so big and long it tends to stick out the window of the plane, never good when you're flying 100 mph. These flights are in a Cessna 172, a plane so small that it is difficult to turn sideways and shoot out of the open window at about my right elbow.

Thank you both Charlotte and Jerry. I am most appreciative and grateful for your support of this project.

Footnote:

As we landed and were taxiing the Cessna up to the gas pumps to top off the tanks, we were confronted with this:

Which I learned later was a Beaver Float Plane with retractable wheels, that had been flown east from L.A. by the tenor saxophonist Kenny G, (who is the one on the right holding the sandwich).

As we pulled up, he hopped back in his plane and took off, lunch on board.

How cool is that?

Next up? I need to print the ones made today and last April to complete the series.

And I need to post them on the site.

Stay tuned.

ReRealized

Proposal:

For Exhibition: Large scale photographic panels created for the exhibition. Prints are @60 x 48 inches, mounted on aluminum and hung without frames, floating 1/2 inch off the wall. Gallery is painted a dark gray and lighting from above is only on the images. The room is dark and very quiet, with carpet on the floor. The show is called "ReRealized: photographs by Neal Rantoul". There is nothing else in the gallery. Although the final number of prints is yet to be determined as this would be dictated by the space assigned for the show, in order for the presentation to be effective there will need to be a minimum of 18 large scale prints in the show.

As you enter the gallery, this is printed on the right side wall, in white, with gray type:The impression when entering the room is of strong colors that are vibrant and saturated.

There is some unease at seeing these photographs displayed in this manner. There is discontinuity from the imagery to the presentation. The photographs fit squarely into the large format landscape tradition of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, yet are rendered in strong colors that offset this and place them into a definition that is almost disrespectful of their heritage.

Yet, standing in front of these large prints that envelope your full field of view it isn't long before the pervasive color is no longer a factor and the image comes through, loud and clear, rendered in acute detail.

Funding will need to be secured in order for the artist to consider showing this work. While a museum venue is assumed, prominent galleries may also wish to submit.

The exhibition could be ready to open in the year 2015.

If your museum or gallery would be interested in exhibiting ReRealized you may contact the artist's gallery directly at:

555 Gallery

Susan Nalband, owner

Boston, MA

email: nalband@comcast.net

Gallery: http://www.555gallery.com

Phone: 857-496-7234

All enquiries will be considered until the cut off date of December 31, 2014.

The artist's CV is on the site in the "About"heading. Please do not contact the artist directly.

Post Wheat 2014

I have to come up for air sometime, right? I can't be only about working on the new Wheat pictures, made over two weeks in late June and early July. Can I?

I have been so inside this work and so consumed by it that everything else feels like it takes second seat to it.

I also have been working on its various subsets which are: wheat on the ground, wheat in the air, the other stuff I shot while out there and two days in Grand Coulee in the center of the the state.

Today I am going to lead off with the aerial work which is now called American Wheat: Function and Form and is the aerial work I made while out there.

There is now an artist statement to the Wheat work in general that also references these new aerials:

Artist Statement: Wheat

Neal Rantoul

I first started photographing in the Palouse area of southeastern Washington in the mid 90’s and have been back most years since. It is my longest running project.

The work has evolved over the years, going from first black and white to color, from large format to digital, and from being based on the ground to including pictures made from the air. I have also photographed the area through the seasons.

In earlier writing about the project I referenced some of the great contemporary landscape photographers such as Robert Adams and Joe Deal, who was a good friend, and also cited Eugene Atget for the single mindedness of his intent. As a career artist I work in many different genres but this is the one that is perhaps the core vehicle of expression for my landscape work. While it has been challenging to find new approaches to this most wonderful of places, it also has been a privilege. Looking back at so much work now, I see more subtle changes from the earlier days to the present for I believe some of the basic principles in working there still apply: it is a landscape almost without scale due to few trees and little to reference size, the pictures can convey the movement of the wheat in the breeze at the same time as show the stillness and static nature of the topography, allowing photographs that convey sharpness and blur due to movement in the same image simultaneously and finally, in the more recent work since about 2000, colors, on their own, but also in relationship to each other.

I am very excited by the newest aerial work from the summer of 2014, as it represents a shift in intention with an evolved sense of the fields' function and their form where the work is perhaps its most abstract. Some of this work references the place by including a barn, a farm machine or trees, while some does not. Hence: Function and Form, the title for the new work. Function and Form constitutes a subset, which is, I hope, a powerful one, of the overall work made over the two-week shoot.

Neal Rantoul

July 2014

Function

and Form

Next up?

I will be posting most of American Wheat: Function and Form on the site over the next few days.

What's That Called?

What's that called? When you've established a precedent earlier in your career then seen what you did years ago gain recognition beyond your own work?

If you're a reader of this blog you know I am back in the wheat growing region of Washington state called The Palouse. I first photographed here in 1993 and have been back most years since. (If you like you can go back into past posts on the wheat work here by clicking Wheat in the blog heading and you can see the actual pictures by clicking on the Gallery section of the site for Northwest.

In the 90's when I was out here I never saw other photographers making pictures along the side of the road. I don't know if I am partly responsible for the growth of popularity of the area for photography but now it is probably the largest tourist attraction for the Palouse. In fact, where I am staying at the Best Western Inn in Colfax, is ground central for the numerous trips, workshops and photo tours that take place here.

Let me give you an example. This morning, I got up early as usual and headed out to shoot. After a few hours on dirt farm roads making these:

I found myself near Pullman where I knew there was a Starbucks. I pulled in, ordered my coffee and turned around looking for a table to sit at. This is what confronted me:

A very large print of the same wheat fields, from the same area I made mine at about the same time of year, overprinted in size a little from a digital file so it wasn't that sharp, but not bad. I wouldn't have included the grain silos on the lower right and would have moved in more to abstract the image, but, not bad.

Pack my bags and head home? No, I will keep photographing. Why? Tough not to get cynical here but because I am doing it as well as or better than everybody, because I have different goals in mind, because my experience here is my strength, because I am working well, seeing possibilities inherent in these fields, because I am making a contribution in this trip to the work I've done here before.

Wheat Aerials 2014

After a one hour flight in this:

with its doors off:

where I was harnessed and tethered, I headed back to the motel in mid day heat to work the files, of which there were 437.

Here are a few from today's shoot in the Palouse in eastern Washington:

The yellow is Canola.

Chalking those up to being nice but a little insignificant? Think they don't hold up that well on your iPhone screen? Well, this is a crop of the barn in the lower right from a print size of 30 inches (at 245 pixels per inch):

meaning that these will be amazing. Can't wait to see them as prints. One of the all time best aerial shoots ever for me. Calm air, wonderful clarity, temp in the mid 60's, doors off the plane, no wing strut in the way. The 206 Cessna I used cost a little more but was really worth it.

Part of what's so wonderful about being a photographer is the opportunity it affords you to do things that are different than what most people do. You know I am all about the pictures, the results I get, but there is also the ability to have such wonderful experiences too.

This as I took a break from pointing down at 1000 feet above the Palouse: