The Remarkable Earth Newsletter
Vol. 2, No. 5
November 2007

Teton Range, Wyoming
September, 2007
©Matt Lancaster

on LOCATION
The online newsletter devoted to nature photography, the creative process and current events.

Published regularly without schedule by photographer Matt Lancaster.
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All images copyright Matt Lancaster. All images are low res to discourage pirating. Unauthorized use not allowed. Violators are subject to prosecution under US Copyright laws.

THIS ISSUE
»MINDS EYE: Inspiration
»Travelogue: Denver, Colorado to Portland, Oregon
»Vail Arts Festival Recap
»Credit Cards Now Accepted
»2008 Desktop Calendars
»First Impressions of the Portland Art Scene
»Subscriber Challenge
»Change of Address/Website Update

MINDS EYE A regular feature on the photographer’s creative process

Inspiration: A Brief Word
Last week I spent a couple of afternoons at the Portland Art Museum, acquainting myself with my local cultural facility. The work of American portrait artist Chuck Close was the central exhibit. Close has been portraying faces for decades in many media, always pushing the boundaries of how differing media express the human face. Never one to be satisfied with a process, Close was deliberate in looking for untried and unusual methods of creating an image and his mind was wide open to new processes. Some processes had previously been reserved for other forms of expression or subject matter, some had never been used, and some involved the help of many other people over long periods of time - in some cases, years.

Visits to major fine art exhibitions such as this always help to inspire me to continue to explore the limits of possibility of photography, which, like any art at its finest level, has the potential to connect us emotionally to something beyond our immediate experience. What was particularly significant about the Close exhibit is that it exemplifies the inverse relationship between the familiarity of a subject or medium and its process to create. In other words, fine art embodies a relationship of product to process that expands or stretches conventional understanding; it commonly challenges the comfort zone. In nature photography, my challenge is to create and present images which - through their unfamiliar subjects, unique presentation or both - question our relationship to nature or our understanding of it.

Travelogue: Denver, Colorado to Portland, Oregon

Montana: A risk-taker's theme park.

In the last issue of on LOCATION, I revealed that I was relocating to Portland, Oregon, in my quest for adventure and for a spark of creative stimulation. Over Labor Day weekend, my family and I made the move. Because our belongings would take a few days to reach Portland, we took the opportunity to visit. My wife and daughter visited family; I visited America.
My route took me through the Tetons and Yellowstone National Park of Wyoming, the Big (and smoky) Sky of Montana, Idaho’s dry pine forests, and the diverse landscapes and childhood haunts of Washington. Along the way, I shot a few rolls of film. Here are highlights of the trip.

Day One - Colorado to Central Wyoming
I wanted to reach the Tetons of northwest Wyoming by the end of the first day, but departure at 1pm after running errands meant the Tetons would have to wait until Day Two. With the low horizon and partly cloudy skies of central Wyoming I was optimistic about photo opportunities this evening.

I camped on a promontory amidst the light show. Sunset gave me pink clouds, a multi-colored sky and eventually stars. I settled into my tent to the far-off howls of coyote.

Near where I decided to camp for the night, US 26/287 passes by Split Rock, a natural landmark for Native Americans, trappers and travelers along the Oregon Trail. The irony was not lost on this modern day emigrant, although it is now just a footnote in this age of maps and highways.

Above, from my campsite the sky offered up its light to me. A range of lenses provides a range of options to capture the many views of the sky.

Day Two - Central Wyoming to Southwest Montana
This day held great portent for I was to pass through two of the nation’s most revered landscapes. As a nature photographer, I am in awe of the Tetons and of Yellowstone Basin for their geologic history, their dynamic qualities of form, and for their place in our mythology of the American West. I had hoped to confront them in favorable photographic conditions so as to express these qualities. I was not disappointed.

The morning brought more of the same type of puffy clouds with plenty of blue sky blank space around them. Shadows chased sideways and clouds morphed into funny shapes. The sense of depth was enormous.

Wyoming is, paradoxically, a land of skies. Often dynamic, never dull, and in full view. While the national parks may duly attract the crowds for their extreme and unique features, Wyoming achieves sublime drama and portrays its timeless Western heritage elsewhere.

After a morning shoot of clouds, light and low horizons, I approached the Teton Range in late morning - early enough for direct sunlight on the eastern face of the mountains yet not too early for storm clouds to form over the peaks. And to my luck, both were happening simultaneously. The opening shot of this newsletter captures the quintessential majestic quality of Grand Teton and its flanking peaks, in heroic American form defying Mother Nature’s imminent threat.

The Teton Range: The Grand Teton (13,770’) on the left above South Teton (12,514’) and Middle Teton (12,804’), Mts. St. John (11,430’) and Woodring (11,590’) in the middle, and massive Mt. Moran (12,605’) on the right.

A stop at Flagg Ranch yielded a photo op of some motorcyclists who kindly gave permission to shoot. Nice paint job.

After shooting the Tetons, the drive through Yellowstone National Park took several hours and forced a streamlined approach. Photography took a back seat to reaching my destination of Montana by darkness. Not unexpectedly, Labor Day weekend crowds stopped at every possible groundhog siting.

For someone for whom sights of big game wildlife is normal, I tended to grow impatient with the looky-loos stopping in the middle of the road yet I was envious of their leisure time. I had looked forward to seeing and photographing such wondrous features as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Old Faithful and the mudpots of Geyser Basin, the Grand Prismatic Spring, and Mammoth Hot Springs. They would have to wait till another day.

Day Three - Southwest Montana to Eastern Washington

I had not traveled through southwest Montana along Interstate 90 since I was a boy of 8 years old when my family moved from Washington, DC to the air force base outside Spokane. I was used to moving having grown up in the military, but my recollection of all the thousands of miles of road traveled was spotty. This stretch was like new.

The image above summarizes my experience: seemingly endless road and hours of mild concentration enlived by bouts of risky behavior. Photographing while driving was scary and fun and probably the only shooting I really cared to do at that point. Driving really, really fast helped to keep me awake. Still, I was passed by everyone used to going 85 or so on their long Montana journeys.

The landscape spanned the brown color range. Smoke of late summer forest fires made the air dense and glaring. Spokane was two states away and I needed to keep going.

When I finally arrived in Spokane, I was immediately drawn to the urban core. Remarkably preserved buildings of the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, street furnishings I had only previously seen depicted in college textbooks on landscape architectural design, pedestrian skywalks and other assorted details of 20th Century style evoked the sense of a city stopped in time. For a couple hours I walked, observed and photographed its living history. See the photos below. The downside to it all was an impression of a lost thriving heyday - that investments in this city had past and it was now sleeping.

Only when I saw this set of buildings, below, did I recall seeing them before as a 10 year old. As a boy, Spokane was a pleasant community cast into my mind as a series of snapshots: the large, green, crowded, central riverfront park with the white tensile tent pavilion, visible for miles; the wooded hilltop neighborhood overlooking the city; the low-profile minor-league baseball stadium. When I arrived, long-forgotten memories were reignited and the snapshots visible again. Only there were so many more than I knew of.

These period buildings are terrific, aren’t they? Below are some details of the city, both historic and contemporary.

Day Four - Spokane to Olympia
The final day of long-distance travel traversed Washington and it was not much of a day for photography because I had a long distance to travel. An attempt to enter the Fairchild Air Force Base where I lived as a kid for three years was thwarted at the front gate due to security - I had no sponsor to enter and was routinely turned away, so I moved on.

Eastern Washington is a landscape of slightly rolling terrain with some forest coverage spilling from the Northern Rockies of Idaho. The fertile agricultural land often compared to the Tuscany region of Italy which occupies the southeast quadrant of the state is called the Palouse and is a playground for photographers. I plan to visit. As I passed on along its north side on I-90, I found it to be a dormant and aesthetically bland area, but I know from seeing it in photos that it is sublimely beautiful in the spring and summer, much like Tuscany.

The photos shown here of central Washington where the road and the Columbia River converge illustrate a resemblance to southern Wyoming, western Colorado and other arid landscapes.

Fittingly, rain clouds greeted me at Snoqualmie Pass in western Washington. I left the interstate to drive into Seattle to visit college friends, John and Ester Fogarty and their kids. I had visited before and took the same route, somehow remembering each turn through the college district of UW. Seattle is a city of land masses connected by bridges, so traffic tends to clog predictably. It is a pretty city, however, so the sights help make up for the frustrations of traffic.

Ultimately, I made my way on to Olympia, where another college friend, Selma Bjarnardottir and her husband Markthor have lived for the past decade or so, raising a small group of livestock and some crops of grapes, hops and various other subsistence. They are of Icelandic origin and have been happily tending to a small farm operation they call Bone Dry Ridge, brewing their own beer and growing ever frustrated with US Immigration over the state of their work visa’s. We spent some time talking US immigration law and their frustrations with it, farming, old friends and the Pacific Northwest. They even persuaded me to help them with some heavy lifting; ok, perhaps it was my way of earning their hospitality.

At this point in the trip, I felt home already. The rolling, fertile, wooded, wet landscape of the Pacific Northwest that I had grown fond of during my college days in Eugene, Oregon, had beckoned me for a long time. It was hard to believe I was here but here I was, ready to reacquaint myself with an entire region of beauty and adventure.

Above, the view from my friends’ farm in Western Washington near Olympia; hops.

Day Five - Olympia to Portland, Oregon
Day Five was a day of great portent. I drove with a great sense of anticipation to what was to become my new hometown. I knew enough about Portland to choose it from all other cities for its progressive western lifestyle, its deeply embedded sense of place and culture, its sustainable building practices and seamless integration of the built environment with the natural one, and its central location within a vast, diverse region of ocean and coastlines, beaches, forests, mountain ranges, volcanic peaks, high deserts and major river systems. To a person like me, it seems perfectly suited.

Today, I took no photographs; it was a day of business - to arrive, pick up my family from the airport and start the next chapter of our lives. Now I look forward to getting to know this new area - just like when I was a kid, moving from place to place, starting from scratch, making new friends, exploring and experiencing new and unfamiliar things and calling them home. Some people never venture far from home; even fewer never change their home. I chose change because I needed to. It was a personal quest.

Fine Arts: Vail Arts Festival Recap
In August, I showed new work at the Vail Arts Festival in Colorado. It was my first showing of my Photography Boxes - laminated photos mounted onto wooden boxes. I received generous compliments on them, though sales did not meet my expectations. Still, I enjoyed myself tremendously, made some new friends and plan to apply to more shows. Additionally, it was a step in the right direction, as I had been wanting to produce new work in greater volume for some time. The images below show the work.

Above, my booth shot and a detail showing the depth of the pieces.

Credit Cards Now Accepted
I am pleased to announce that I now am able to accept VISA, Mastercard and Discover credit cards for payment of any products or services. Now, along with unique images and the highest quality, I can deliver payment convenience to my clients.

The Art of Nature 2008 Desktop Calendars
Last year’s desktop calendars were a big success. This year I am again offering two styles for $14.95 plus $2.00 each for shipping. The calendars are the size of a typical cd and the case flips open and folds back for a free-standing calendar. The calendars are full color with captions for each photo and are part of an on-going series called The Art of Nature, showcasing some of my finest images. This year’s themes are Colorado Landscapes and Abstractions.

Since I now accept VISA, Mastercard and Discover you may charge your purchase if you wish. Please contact me by phone at 503.235.8360 to order. For your own security, please do not send your credit card number by email. Of course you may send cash or check made out to Matt Lancaster if that is your preference. I will process all orders to deliver the calendars in December or earlier, depending on the date of ordering.

Fine Arts: First Impressions of the Portland Arts Scene
I’ve had a chance to visit some fine art galleries here in Portland and I’m somewhat impressed. The arts are thriving in Portland because the creative class here is strong. Some of the established owners of galleries wish that opportunities for local artists would increase in both numbers and sophistication, with some recent movements towards that end. I see plenty of opportunity here for me to continue my own upward path in exposure and sales.

Of particular note, contemporary portrait artist Chuck Close is currently showing work at both the Portland Art Museum (as discussed above in Minds Eye) and a local gallery, Augen Gallery. I had never seen his work in person and was given pause due to its size, its innovation and technique. It is certainly nothing new to do portraits but his methods - using fingerprints, painting in a grid of swirls, pointillism, a method called spitbite - certify him as extraordinary. If you ever get the chance to see his work in person, take it.

Subscriber Challenge
With this issue of on LOCATION, I would like to challenge my subscribers to respond to the question of what inspires you. Is it an experience that inspires you? Do certain people inspire you? Times of the day? Music? Places?

Send me a brief response and let me know why you feel inspired by it, and I will discuss the responses to my challenge in the next issue (your anonymity is guaranteed).

Change of Address & Website Update
By the next issue of on LOCATION, I will update my website with my current contact information, reorganize the galleries of images and refresh the galleries with more current work. Please stay tuned. In the meantime, here is my contact information: 307 SE 32nd Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97214. My phone is 503.235.8360.

I hope you have enjoyed this issue of on LOCATION. If you think it is of value to someone not yet receiving it, please feel free to pass it on. May your location give you inspiration!!!