image story – johnellsworth.com/imagetalk

“Heading Home” a sunset with foreground elements—visual balance and technique.

Onboard the Schooner Olad returning to Camden harbor.

Many photographers, new, amateurs, and some professionals, shoot sunrises and sunsets—nature at its most beautiful if you are facing east or west at the right hour. That includes me! Sun-up and sundown photos proliferate the social media. Why not? The photographer is sharing a special moment that he or she witnessed. It’s a grand feeling.

The reason I’m showing this photo is because it IS a sundown, but, there’s something going on in the foreground. I believe that is important, although not always necessary. Why? It adds to the storyline. It helps put the photo into a context.

To increase the contextual impact of a photo with the sun setting or rising, consider including a telling foreground. In this case, it is the bow of the schooner Olad, a 50-foot vessel out of Camden, ME.

I shot photos for an hour as the sun descended and infused the sky with beautiful colors. I tried from various parts of the vessel, all with the idea of capturing some aspect of the vessel in the foreground. This was it. When I clicked the shutter, my senses resonated as they often do when I get a good shot.

I believe this shot works because of the triangular balance of shapes in the left and middle. The two sails you see are headsails, one free flying, the other on a self-tending boom. Coupled with the boom, the three forms are triangular, which also repeats the theme of three, there being three forms (similar to a pin-wheel).

Without the bow and sails, this would be a nice sunset photo. If it existed, I’d probably crop half the water so the horizon was even lower. But having the three elements, proportionally balanced in the foreground, takes this mage up a few notches in terms of interest and engagement.

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Technical variables: There are at least two variables that challenge a photographer to attain well-exposed and sharp sunrise or sunset photos with foreground elements—low light conditions and distance between subjects (foreground to infinity). The sky usually requires a different exposure than the foreground unless you are happy with foreground silhouettes, which often work great. If you want everything in focus, you’ll need a small aperture to span the distance from near to far, thus allowing the greatest depth-of-field. Now you either have to use a tripod for a longer exposure or increase the ISO substantially. Increasing the ISO on some cameras creates visual noise in the image unless you have a camera with a relatively large sensor.

Technical details: This shot was taken using a Nikon D7100 at 1/25 sec and ƒ 1/16. ISO was set to 640. Focal length on my Nikon 24-120mm lens was set to 24mm which translated to 36mm being on a camera with an APS-C sensor (1.5x crop factor). Despite my care in balancing the settings, I still needed Adobe Lightroom to open up the shadows on the foredeck and sails and reduce some highlights in the sky.

“Pleasantly lost in a forest” —nature’s parallels and the magic of synchronicity

We know nature yields beautiful patterns, some of which have been an inspiration to artists for years, decades, and centuries.

Many patterns mimic themselves—for instance, wave patterns in wet sand, the ocean, and in cloud formations. Or branching patterns seen in trees or tributaries—whether in a river delta or in a tidal-pool run-off.

In early October, I visited the Firefly Artists Gallery (where I am now a member) and was smitten by a pendant crafted by Kate Sidney, a jeweler and one of the founders of the gallery.

j-ellsworth-labradorite-pendant — “Pleasantly Lost in a Forest” —a Labradorite pendant by Kate Sydney

I was intrigued by the deep blue color and the branching pattern. I told her when I saw the piece, I felt, “pleasantly lost in a forest.”

Two months went by and every time I entered the gallery, I was drawn to it. It did not occur to me to buy it. I simply wanted to appreciate it. Then on the evening we kicked off our “100 for $100” holiday promotion in early December, a woman in attendance, Caren Jacobs, suggested I try it on. I did—then I bought it!

Kate kept it for me until we could settle on a necklace chain. We decided on simple black leather.

Labradorite is considered a stone of magic and transformation. It’s a stone that brings you the gift of serendipity and synchronicity—being in the right place at the right time. Such coincidences supposedly occur more often if you wear this stone. It is also considered a crystal that will help provide clarity and insight into your destiny. The crystal commonly has a blue to green palette in values of dark and light, all of which varies by the ambient light.

During the course of the next two weeks, I was fortunate to sell a large photo on canvas, “Lone Visitor,” a single blue-morpho butterfly in a rain forest.

I showed it to Kate and she noted the wings look like my Labradorite pendant. Whoa! How amazing—such a coincidence!

Was the magic of the stone playing out? It certainly seems as if serendipity and synchronicity intercepted me the last month of 2014.

“Island Loo” at Frenchman’s Caye, Belize—the simple life

In 1972, I sailed with three friends to Belize and Guatemala from Florida on a 45-ft ketch, the Thai. It was owned and skippered by Ed Valier of Ft. Lauderdale. The vessel was a wooden Stonington.

After visiting Lago Izabal in Guatemala, we replenished in Livingston. Upon leaving Livingston, we visited an island called Frenchman’s Caye, just off the coast of Punta Gorda, Belize. It was owned by a former Navy underwater demolitions expert (frogman), Richard “Dick” Moore.

Dick was considered the first real underwater SCUBA diving pioneer in Belize. He settled on Frenchman’s Caye after living in the Yucatan and diving the shipwreck “Matanceros,” a Spanish galleon that was apparently bound for the New World from the Old World.

Dick ran a successful diving business from Fenchman’s Caye, throughout the Great Honduras Reef during the 1960s and 1970s.

He owned the entire island and enjoyed the luxury of “spreading out”—He scattered all of his living stations over the whole island.

This photo is of Dick Moore’s island washroom, thus “Island Loo.”

Thai was moored at Frenchman’s Caye for about three days before getting underway for Placencia Cove, Belize.