24 Oct The Meadow

We recently moved from Brooklyn, where I have been frantically photographing people for the last year, to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I have less opportunities to photograph people.  We moved to take a breather from the energy and intensity of the big city, and to focus on finishing some films.  However, even though we have moved to a secluded house I’ve not been able to stop my obsessive photo making.  Instead of training my phone on people I’ve become somewhat obsessed with the meadow behind our house.

meadow light

After taking our kids to school my wife and I have been walking most mornings in the meadow.  At the same time, I have also been making a major effort to slow down, become more mindful, and meditate.  As such, I have considered these walks part of that process and I have been making photos in that manner.  I don’t think of these images as nature photos but instead “noticing” photos.  I’m trying to notice things that I might have paid little attention to in the past.  When I photograph people in the street I rarely look directly through the camera to aim at points of interest and leave something to chance.  I do this less so in the meadow, as I compose the shots, but I leave a lot up to chance in terms of the light.

For the past year I have been mostly making pictures with my iphone.  My good friend Ruddy Roye (who was only an acquaintance at the time) showed me how to use instagram last September.  By the following day I had posted 200 images.  I was blown away by what I could do with the phone and over the last year my comfort level with it has grown.  There’s something about the ease of use and simplicity that’s attractive.  I’ve also found myself annoyed by how sharp and clear “perfect” the images that I get from my dslr are.  There’s something captivating about them, but also something that bores me.  In any case I have been shooting daily meadow images with the iphone over the last 3 months.  In that time I have seen the meadow go from summer to fall, and I’ve become aware of the way the light changes over the course of each week.  I’m aware now that I am doing a project about the meadow.

I am thinking of it as a book and a show that will include videos.  The videos I am making are also using the iphone and they too are mostly simple obervations like this short piece I shot today of some kind of insect that pulls apart the milkweed.

Milkweed bugs from rumur on Vimeo.

This one is a bit more intense.  It is yellow jackets and flies taking apart a mouse.  I think it’s pretty interesting but some people find it too intense.  I see the show as consisting of both the images and looped videos like this.  I want it to feel intimate and present.

yellow jackets and flies take apart a mouse from rumur on Vimeo.

First frost from rumur on Vimeo.