The Creative Process Pt. 2

Back to the swamp, and the smells, and the humidity, and black water, and the pin prick of mosquitoes I thank God no longer carry malaria around these parts (they did until the 1950s).

Knowing that I wanted to approach these wood ducks by starting with portraits of the birds, I initially began working this assignment from the confines of a blind I had to wade through waist deep water for a hundred yards in the dark in a swamp to get to. Never mind that this wasn’t winter anymore and so all of the reptilian world was about. Never mind that the occasional unseen large thing would bump into me as I tried to quietly trudge through the swamp by headlamp. Never mind that the first time I climbed into the mostly submerged blind, something frantically fought to get out just as I found myself getting settled in. Espresso, by the way, has nothing on that experience for waking you up in the morning.

And here is the thing: that whole experience, all of that stuff that happened, all of the predawn creepiness, and foreboding of the swamp in the dark, all of that becomes part of the story I found myself wanting to tell.

You see, the creative processes is not a mathematical equation. It’s not some sort of artistic 1 plus 1 equals two. It is a process, but it’s a messy one. The way it all comes about is like some sort swirling vortex of entropy. Creativity is uniquely personal because it is the culmination of personal experiences that have shaped and sculpted the way in which we perceive things. My creative vision is different from yours because our experiences have shaped our perceptions slightly different.

For me, on this assignment, it’s the experience of finding myself sitting chest deep in water, in the dark, in a blind, and feeling something large desperately trying to claw its way out of the bottom of that blind 45 minutes before sunrise. It’s the deep and guttural bellows of the alligators I could hear in the distance – essentially their matting calls. It’s the serine beauty of the cypress swamp at sunrise as the days first shafts of light come filtering in through the feather like needles of the trees. It’s the hues of color. It’s the pungent smell of tannin rich waters and thousands of years of humus (the organic component of soil formed by the decomposition of leaves and other plant matter by microorganisms).

But maybe most of all, in all of this darkness and shadow and mystery, it is the experience of seeing little flecks of bright and cheerful colors streak by in the form of prothonotary warblers like so many little specks of yellow and blue paint that dripped from the brush of an artist working on a far grander scale than I against this black canvas. Life is never so vibrant as when held up to the calm inevitable shadows of death.

Or so I assume.

And in this moment, it was if I saw the swamp for what it was the for first time. And I knew instantly how I wanted to create a photograph of a wood duck.

I wanted darkness. I wanted the mystery that I felt and experienced, that was so palpable in this landscape. But this is where photography differs from all other forms of art. Whereas a painter may set down before a canvas and pull their creative vision out of the aether and into reality, for us writers of light, we have nothing more than an idea swirling around in our heads. The challenge is to let it all brew, steep, ferment, ruminate or whatever metaphor you so choose. And then, and only then, to go find that image.

Sometimes it’s all concrete in your head. Sometimes the vision is solid and complete and as tangible as the intangible can be. Other times, more often than not, it’s nothing more than an abstract idea, a concept, a notion, a feeling and you are on the hunt for where all of those feelings somehow come together.

And so, with my wood ducks, I spent nearly a week photographing these birds before it all came together. I abandoned the blind and changed locations for better backgrounds. The blind was located on private property and the whole thing was unquestionably a swamp but remember that not all swamps live up to the swamp of our imagination or mind’s eye. I wanted quintessence. I wanted bigger trees, darker shadows, an altogether more primeval landscape. Though the blind would work fine for videography, for a still photographs I needed the total package.

The swamp I ended up shooting in, proved to hold everything I had been looking for. Big old cypress trees and black water and deep shadows and loads of wood ducks. And day by day, the visual story unfolded.

One morning, while laying belly down in the mud with my 600mm inches above the surface of the water before sunrise, I watched as the sun began to reflect off the trunk of a cypress tree and into the water below. Given that the sun was at this point just cresting the eastern horizon behind me, and this was the only real light to be found in the forest, I wagered that the dynamic range between those highlights of the tree and the shadows on the water would be greater than what my camera could capture. A quick test shot revealed this to be the case. And in this moment, the idea of the photograph I wanted to create began to take shape and form in my mind.

The only problem here, is that I was working with wildlife. In landscape photography, you may need only wait for the right light or weather. With wildlife, you need both of those things to happen, but then also the wildlife to just so happen to be in the right place and the right time when the light and weather and all the other little details align.

For this image, it took three days.

It’s probably not fair to say that it took three days given that I only had a window of MAYBE thirty mins to capture this image each morning. So, it took three mornings of being back in the same spot at this same time with my exposure manually dialed in for the sun reflecting off the tree and water before a drake wood duck happened into the right spot. Wood ducks were everywhere in this little swamp. Each morning had ducks swimming to and fro. But none happened into the right spot – until they did.

Sometimes art happens in the moment. Sometimes we get lucky and creative vision solidifies real time as events unfold. But more often than not, we need patience. We need perseverance to make things come together.

Regardless of how it all happens, it’s important to understand that it first happens in your mind’s eye. Creative vision. If you are not working from creative vision, then you are doing nothing more than reacting to the situation.

Though three days may seem like a long time to stay focused and work on a single image, this is nothing compared to another photograph of mine of another species from another place.