Rock Formations, Salt Point State Park, California by John Littell

If I learned some of my aesthetics from the spare simplicity of sumi-e ink painting, I also learned some from the intricacies of rock assemblages. I studied geology in college, and I’ve always found stones and rocks to be fascinating. From the large – mountains scratching the roof of the sky to the iridescent colors of a rock slice thin section under microscope – the shapes and textures have always fascinated me. And sandstone, in particular, has a peculiar magic. It is soft, and it weathers in lumps and hollows and spires and arches that seem a cross between an imagined Martian landscape and a Seussian panorama played out in muted reds and greys.

Weathered Sandstone, Salt Point State Park, California by John Littell

Which brings me to Salt Point State Park – a point of land on the northern California coast. The wind and waves and fog play against the rocky coast there – rocks made of sandstone laid down as beaches once and now eaten at again by that same sea. It is not, truly told, a place where you’d often find an idle picnic. The weather is chilly and damp. The wind blows salt spray from the waves up over the bluffs and into the scrub and forest beyond. But that wind, and the waves and the salt spray work the sandstone into the most amazing shapes. They work at the stone, sculpting little holes, riddling the surface with cracks and hollows and knobs. It is, perhaps, an environment only a geologist could love being in – cold, wet, and hungry, in the name of … something.

Cobbles at Rest, Salt Point State Park, California by John Littell

For me, that something is the joy of spending hours with the rocks, finding their infinite variations. The complexity of their nature is played out in the endless ways they succumb to the elements. Some are egg cartons of cubbies on the rocks face, some little villages of caves. Some seem smoothed, almost as if polished by a river or a tumbling barrel. And some seem alien growths on a terrestrial surface. They speak to me in a language not just of geologic phrases, but also of time, weather, and solitude.

Rock Formations, Salt Point State Park, California by John Littell

Salt Point State Park: Gallery

The native format of my camera now is pretty much exactly the dimensions of 35mm film – about 1×1.5.  It’s a nice format – wide, but not so wide as to be good only for panoramas, and useful for catching vertical compositions as well, while still giving the scene some width for context.

Whitewater Creek, Gila National Forest, New Mexico, by John Littell

I often use the 1×1 crop in Lightroom as well, giving me the square format that I loved in the film days. It’s a pleasant format, even all around, but it actually takes some work to make it balance. Not all scenes work well with a square crop, and if I’m composing a picture with that in mind, I find it changes how I think about the scene. But when it works, there’s often a wonderful sense of geometry about the picture.

Rock Formations, Salt Point State Park, California, by John Littell

Perhaps my favorite crop, though, is the 6×7 manual preset that I made in Lightroom. There’s something about it – it’s got a touch more of the square format geometry than the standard format, but just a little freedom to let the scene lead you in the direction it wants to go. Where the square format is often fairly static, the 6×7 gives just a bit of a sense of movement – and at the same time avoids the possibly overused 1×1.5 format.

Oak Tree, Sunol Wilderness, California, by John Littell

For some reason I never quite latched on to either the 6×4.5 medium format or 4×5 (and 8×10) large format dimensions. Perhaps I’ll add those and play with some pictures and see where I get at some point.

Bamboo Series III, by John Littell

One of the first visual art forms I learned (outside of finger painting and drawing with crayons) was probably sumi-e – Japanese ink painting.  It is a rich and varied subject, but the core I learned was bamboo still life.  I was captivated by the visual simplicity of the medium that disguises a complex story in every picture.  Each cluster of stalks, each spray of leaves, has a little story to tell, and even the white spaces can say things profound.

Bamboo Series II, by John Littell

I think the meditations stayed with me, long after I put down the brush.  I still have the brushes, the ink stone, and probably even a little nubbin of an ink stick left somewhere in an art box.  But what really stayed with me was the black and white, the visual simplicity, the use of composition and saying something with empty space.  I don’t always photograph that way – I’ve learned the use of clutter since then as well – but I still find myself largely attracted to the simple composition.

Bamboo Series I, by John Littell

If I had to mark the points that have formed my photographic eye, that class in sumi-e, with its quiet afternoons of making stories with bamboo would be among them.  I also learned contemplation there, and the dance between the artist and the medium.  I cannot force my will upon the camera, any more than I can force the brush on the paper.  I can let it know what I’d like, and, If I listen, it can tell me where to find it.

Last night I dug back in to some of the 6×6 negatives that I have, dusted them, and put them in the scanner. I might wish for a nicer scanner, but this suffices reasonably well. I took the Century Graphic backpacking, carting it and film and tripod out to the Colorado wilderness a few times. This was one of those shots that was typical of my forming style:

Rawah Wilderness, Colorado, by John Littell, 2002, 2x3 Century Graphic

I came to digital photography from the medium format world. I wanted to be sure I was getting the same kind of quality, even if I was giving up some camera movements. In some ways, I can hardly imagine going back, now – the quality is there, and the ease of processing is nothing to dismiss. My style still remains, though, and the quiet contemplation of the scene before me.

Dead Tree, Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, by John Littell, 2009, Nikon D70s