I was out at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge in Cheney Washington this past weekend. I was just in time to see the swans who stop here on their return trip up to the artic.
I thought about that expression just in time as I looked at the pond that had been dry all summer and winter. A late winter combination of snow and rain had filled up the wetlands with water just in time.
As a photographer I am often making photos just in time before the light fades or the subject moves. So much of life operates just in time.
After making a few dozen exposures of the swans in Wheeler Pond I moved on to the main loop with my dog where I took a stroll and made various images along the way. As I returned to the parking lot I witnessed two swans flying away. By the time I returned to Wheeler Pond they were all gone. It seems I truly had photographed them just in time.
I decided to make this composite image from about 13 images from the day. I had only taken a single 500mm lens with the sole intention of photographing birds but the landscape was so interesting with the atmospheric fog that I pushed the boundaries by making a panorama of the largest ponds. From there I filled my frame with swans, ducks, mergansers, and geese. A lone singing blackbird anchors the lower right corner of the image.
While this image is photographic and truthful in terms of what I saw in this landscape on this day… it is not an objective photograph. For me it is a photographic painting of a place that is filled with the energy of spring.
Most of the time I make photographic images. Sometimes I strive to make art.
There is an old argument about whether photography can be considered art. The expression goes that, “you have to be able to tell a lie in order to tell a greater truth.” Early photographs were deemed only a transmission of facts. Irrefutable evidence that the subject existed in front of the lens. Facts by themselves are inert and lack meaning. It is only the interpretation of facts that gives us great meaning.
Painting has always offered a presentation of symbolic meaning. Photography gets there too with its iconic imagery and the surrealist ideal of juxtaposition. However sometimes the single frame cannot fully express the meaning of a place. In this case the extraordinary abundance of life that exists within a single wetland.
I think this composite image expresses that succinctly in a single canvas. Digital tools enable me to paint with photographs and share the totality of my experience of a single walk around a pond. It is a painting that is telling a lie in order to tell a greater truth of the importance of the complex system of weather that delivers water just in time to sustain life… and my spirit.
