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You are here: Home / Photography / American West Landscape Photography / Western Landscape Photography Portfolio

Western Landscape Photography Portfolio

December 15, 2020 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Gate to the West Photography by Iskra
Gate to the West,©Iskra Fine Art

 

New Directions: Photographs of the Western Landscape

Are there affirmable days or places in our deteriorating world? Are there scenes in life, right now, for which we might conceivably be thankful? Is there a basis for joy or serenity, even if felt only occasionally? Are there grounds now and then for an unironic smile?

– Robert Adams

In October I found myself in the middle of an ocean of grass almost swallowed by basalt. I looked up at the black palisade of stone stacked against sky, a magpie’s wing shadowing the trail ahead, and asked out loud: “Is this a photograph? Should I follow this impulse? Landscape photography isn’t what I really do…..”

There was long pause as my walking companion vanished around a bend. The field caught the slant of afternoon sun like knife blades, each edge of grass etched against stone. The moment seemed to command me to see and record in a way I was not accustomed to – not with the collage artist’s eye for disassemblage, but as a witness to the exact 1/60th of a second in front of me. I raised my camera and started shooting, unsure of why, but thinking maybe I’d figure it out before the sun set.

Although I have been obsessed with cameras and photography for much of my life, I have never considered myself a traditional “photographer.” Rather, I have seen the camera as way to inquire and to be present in place. The images made have always been secondary to the experience that looking through a lens affords. The technology of f-stops and aperture and ASA, the confounding dials with microscopic lines between here and my destination, and the chance, in analog days, of a precious 36 exposures tripping on a sprocket, all seemed to require a full time German in residence, and I am much more Irish. I have always been immune to systems, and I suffer from profound dyslexia when it comes to math. Someone asked me recently if this new series of landscape photographs was made using the “zone system” and I had to check my voluminous and completely disorganized notes – oh yes, that.  My process is intuitive, and overlays multiple systems based on the aesthetics of printmaking and drawing.­

In making photographic prints I am looking for luminance and iconic form, and a sense in the body of being there. Are there ten shades of gray from white to black – who cares? Does it feel and look like memory and the way the air moved? Can I smell the smoke in the air, or the sage, or hear the sound basalt makes as it cools down between late afternoon and evening?

Canyon Creek Tree Photo by Iskra
Canyon Creek Tree,©Iskra Fine Art

I’ve got history with the West. I spent half my childhood on a ranch in the shadow of Mt. Rainier. The sprawling plateau marked a gathering place before the mountains, and the long ascent across the pass. Although the ranch was technically “Western Washington,” culturally it was of the East. I went to bible school, baked pies for 4H, diagrammed the parts of horses and got the green and purple ribbons for my riding skills that confirmed that I did not really belong there: I was just a city kid listening in. I was usually, literally, on the fence, sitting and looking at the fields and seeing if I could spot a 4 leaf clover hidden in the mustard. One day when I was about 8 we hauled a trailer with some Welsh ponies over the pass to the Yakima River. As the adults did their horse trading I found my split rail and sat on it and fell into a reverie at my first sight of cottonwoods: silver leaves?! How could the wind turn leaves silver? Much later I fell in love again, in Taos, where the phrase “sense of place” first revealed itself to be a true thing. For many summers I traveled the backroads of the Southwest camping in a truck, immersed in the essays of Barry Lopez, Gretel Ehrlich, and Terry Tempest Williams. I took almost no pictures. It all seemed like it had been done before by famous masters of the Zone System, and the Ansel Adams postcard would be in better focus.

What I found myself unable to resist during my time in Tieton was the quietness of the spectacular. The scenes were iconic, but they had no famous names, and were not on postcards. I had the sense of seeing the land for the first time, with all the stammering of first romance. I had no intention of taking serious pictures, but once I started I couldn’t stop, and every turn of the road had the excitement of an assignation.

I used two cameras, my iphone 11 and a Sony Alpha a7R ll. The cellphone photographs have their own unique luminance and grain, and work best at 12 x 16 or smaller. The other camera allows images to go in some cases as large as 22 x 30 while still maintaining quality, and for canvas or wall art that will be viewed at a distance they can go larger. It is a complex process to go from a glowing hologram backlit on an LCD to an equally compelling “work on paper.” In the modern digital darkroom the number of ways to develop a print are endless, and of course I had to try them all. I spent weeks looking at how filters create their effects, experimenting with custom duotones, testing and testing. In the end I chose to limit the series to a range of black and white and custom-built duotones. I wanted the work to have a sense of history and discovery: an echo of Lewis and Clark, sending back notes from the trail.

Most of the prints in this series are now in my shop, and with a few exceptions, are available in both custom duotone or black and white. They are mean to live on the wall as salon style framed pieces, or as single larger focal points. They are printed, as my other work is, as limited editions. Due to the current WordPress settings for retina display this blog or the shop are the best ways to view the series. Right click to see images larger. To purchase, visit Western Landscape.

*Until January 2nd all shop items are 20% off.

Western Landscapes Salon style 3

Pine Ridge Black and White Photography Iskra
Pine Ridge, After the Fire, ©Iskra Fine Art
Pine Ridge Duotone Photo by iskra
Pine Ridge, After the Fire, Duotone ©Iskra Fine Art
River Grass photography by Iskra
River Grass, ©Iskra Fine Art
The Bent Tree Iskra Landscape Photograph
The Bent Tree Iskra, ©Iskra Fine Art
Stillpoint Photograph Iskra
Stillpoint, ©Iskra Fine Art
Interregnum photo by Iskra
Interregnum, ©IskraFineArt (see the backstory on photographing a forest fire here.)
The White Grove Iskra Landscape Photo
The White Grove, ©Iskra Fine Art
One Tree Portrait Iskra
One Tree, ©IskraFineArt
Canyon Creek Sky Iskra Landscape
Canyon Creek Sky, ©Iskra Fine Art
The White Barn Landscape by Iskra
The White Barn, ©Iskra Fine Art
Canyon Drive Sepia Photo
Canyon Drive, ©Iskra Fine Art
Tieton Apple Crates Iskra
Apple Country, ©IskraFineArt
Apple Crates Duotone Photo Iskra
Clouds and Crates, ©Iskra Fine Art
Western Gate, Iskra Landscape Photography
Western Gate 2, ©Iskra Fine Art

The gate has become an emblematic image for me during the pandemic. I don’t know about you, but I need to focus on the horizon. I keep returning to this archetype, and when I look at this scene it makes me feel a sense of possibility: entries to the beyond, protection for where you are. The horizontal version of this scene is available in Duotone or Black and white in sizes up to 24 x 33.

The last print in this series may actually carry some irony. “Nonverbal Verbal Communication,” is the title for this precisely observed sign outside a repurposed western wear store in Yakima. As a child on the ranch, this is the kind of place where I got the pastel pearl-button shirts and red cowboy boots that marked me as someone with a refined fashion sense. Dream on, cowgirls.

Western signage
Non Verbal Verbal Communication, ©Iskra Fine Art

A note to designers: This work is meant to be lived with. Feel free to contact me for custom sizes and substrates.

Iskra Photography for Interiors

Filed Under: American West Landscape Photography, Photography, Road Trips Tagged With: big sky landscape photography, Duotone Photography, forest fire landscape photography, Modern Landscape Photography, Tieton landscape, Washington State Apple Industry, Western Landscape Photography

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Morning pages. Reading Wallace Stevens’ ‘13 wa Morning pages. Reading Wallace Stevens’ ‘13 ways of looking at a blackbird’ for the thousandth time and finding it completely new.
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I love company, don’t get me wrong. I have traveled with, and without. Evenings are not always at ease. In 1990 I went to a Typography Conference in Oxford. Dropped my luggage a week ahead and took a train to the Lakes. Me and every honeymooning couple of the year, in 19th century bed and breakfasts (all booked by pre-internet postal and phone call.) Horsehair mattresses, pineapple-carved bedposts. Two other non-honeymooning people were allowed into the 40-mile square Lakes that month. They did not make eye contact. 

So it was me and Beatrix Potter, and the “jacket potato”, an unfortunate menu staple that involved baked beans + baked potatoes (in far too close proximity) alone with our observations writing letters home to whichever boyfriend it was left behind. (Here I gracefully omit the grand ball under the tent on the Thames back at the conference and everything that happened after. . .) The Thames is why the British invented elipses. 

I had told myself on some errant Tuesday that England was the size of Whidbey Island. It was a rare lapse, in which I completely forgot: world history? Oh, wait, the Beatles. + King Arthur. Stones and tables and swords. Forgive me while I go re-watch the intro to #Outlander….

Daunting to study the guidebook and realize I should have started this project when I was 11. I have been to England three times. I cannot fathom how I thought I could go again and not want to see everything: every cathedral, flea market, moody moor, outsider mural and Arabic bakery, cinematically filtered through a modern mashup of Virginia Woolf and Peaky Blinders.
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I live in a city that has decided resolutely that Zoom is the same as actual conversation. The model embraced here is “if it looks good, as a facsimile, it’s probably good enough.” What a loss for all of those who have spent a lifetime in a craft perfecting real things. Serif, proportion, texture, text— all made visible through touch. One tug of a rope, one breath of wind, and this whole image redesigns itself. With photographic art I can make images without ever smearing paint or lifting out. I touch with my eyes and mind. What makes it human is metaphor. What keeps you tethered to this world, and to others?
Work in progress: Seattle icons of place and archi Work in progress: Seattle icons of place and architecture. This piece harkens to another time. Old world rotogravure, lithography, the specimen studies of explorers first seeing the tropics, or the to-them “new world.” Also to the early psychedelic history of Seattle, where if your UW professor was missing in class he might be sitting in one of the mythic cedars at Volunteer Park, or cactus gazing in the steamy other-world of the conservatory. It was a magical time, and the park was the incandescent center. 

The way I work is by deconstructing the real into many subtle layers of color and tint and tone, and then recomposing as though each piece of photographic information was a plate. In my architectural images and botanical work a piece like this can go back-and-forth for a long time between realism and atmosphere and I never know until the very last step exactly where it will land.
Best way to contemplate landscape and travel is by Best way to contemplate landscape and travel is by candlelight.
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What is a dream? Is a glass house safe or waiting to be broken? What is the effect of layering and repetition, a note repeated more and more softly without elaboration?

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