F
or years I struggled with the vibrant mass that is Lake Michigan. I grew up near its shores, and it became my refuge and my solace. So when I started photography, the lake, in all its grandeur, should have made a perfect subject. However, try as I did, I failed for so long to create a portrait that successfully captured all that I felt. Photos were flat, stagnant, uninteresting, and uninspired. They were too busy, seeing everything while capturing nothing.
At first, I had tried to photograph the lake as landscapes. You can read all about those early photos here. But, as much as I liked those photos, they didn't capture the lake's character. They're stark and stoic photos, but they don't encapsulate the emotions that the lake brings out of me; they don't capture what the lake means to me.
I needed to distill the lake into its simplest form, make abstract what was too big to capture conventionally. Finally, in December of 2018, I cracked the code. By panning the camera while holding the shutter, I managed to create a blurred abstract of the lake's most distinctive qualities: its color and texture. I could strip away my landscapes' busy imperfections, their out-of-place waves and distracting clouds and un-curated flotsam. After the pan, only the essence of the subject is left.
This was my breakthrough photo. Here, the camera's horizontal motion enunciates the lake's tranquil blue while preserving its gentle swells.
Day after day I returned to the lake, hoping for better conditions than before. On the last day of 2018, the air was frigid but the lake was bright, and the pink eastern sky reflected the blazing sunset in the west. Where before I had relied on an overcast afternoon to create the soothing tones of the lake, here I used the reflection of the sinking sun to create a dramatic and contrasting frame.
Here, I used a tripod to create horizontal blur while preserving the horizon line.
Here, I panned vertically, drawing the sun's reflection down instead of right. The result is frantic but the colors are fantastic.
Faint pinks of the glowing sky highlight the tops of waves, while reflections of the rocks below me vignette the bottom of the frame.
From the shore, I managed to freeze this frothy wave while blurring the previous wave's undertow by panning with the breaking wave.
I made this photo a few minutes after the first sunrise of the year. Behind me, lunatics were getting ready for Milwaukee's annual Polar Bear Plunge.
I made this photo from atop a bluff; thus, the horizon is less layered and the strokes of the lake are broader and more gentle.
Aboard a passenger ferry, I captured the eternal crest of the wake behind me shining in the golden sun of evening. Read this story for more information.
Out of the thousands of abstracts I've made of the lake, only a select few stand out. I can use light, time of day, and perspective to alter my images, but ultimately I can't control whether a photo has that certain Lake Michigan feel, whether the photo captures that vastness I have grown up with.
Because while I edit for composition, light, and color, those technical aspects aren't what make these photos special. It all comes down to whether or not I've captured what I feel when I see the lake.