Trying to Take Black and White Photographs of Dykes Marsh
On two separate evenings last week I raced and dodged through Washington DC traffic attempting to memorialize the next great black and white photograph of the setting sun over Dyke marsh. I wanted to shoot a few photographs with the low late day sun spotlighting the marsh with a few ducks in the foreground. In a rush, I jumped around the marsh shooting this and that. I shot nothing I liked.
Learning Not to Force Things
I have found that when I envision a photograph and attempt to make it happen fitting my schedule and parameters that it seldom works out. The more I try to force it, the less it happens.
The photographs I enjoy the most are the ones captured in a moment of time during my travels unexpectedly and unplanned. I have better luck when I happen along a scene and shoot as it happens in front of me, instead of me “making it happen”.
Case in point – Last Sunday morning while driving the back roads of Carroll County, MD this old farmstead caught my eye. I parked the truck, grabbed the camera and snapped a few photographs. I let my eyes take in the textures of the stone and rough cut timbers. I allowed my eye to roam, imagining the work, play, and life that once evolved on this farm. I found the black and white shots I wanted, but they were of a barn not the marsh.
Isn’t that the way with life sometimes, we want something so much that we try so hard to make it happen, when if we slowed down and looked, something grander is there waiting for us.
I will continue to walk the trail through Dykes Marsh. I enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of a tidal marsh. And as I take my hike, maybe, just maybe, a photograph will emerge from the marsh and I will capture it on film.
- Some photographs should stay in color
