Photo Safaris - Looking For Summer



		Like many photographers, I became a big Jim Brandenburg fan when the images that were to become his hugely successful book, Chased by the Light, were first published in the November 1997 issue of National Geographic. I was so blown away by the impact of those images I still have my copy of that issue of National Geographic today. I would have bought his follow-up book, Looking for the Summer, sight unseen, but it was again previewed in National Geographic and I was again smitten with his new images. The differences between the two books are innumerable, but the Brandenburg style is very much still in evidence. His previous book, Chased by the Light, was initially a self-assigned exercise not meant for publication. The photographs were taken at a time when Brandenburg was taking a break from National Geographic assignments and was burned out from photographing National Geographic style—shooting hundreds of rolls of film only to have all but a select few discarded at the whim of an editor. He retreated to Ravenwood, his home in the Boundary Waters area of northern Minnesota and shot in his own back yard. He was in a dark mood and states that he believes that mood influenced the feel of Chased by the Light. He wanted to work on his artistry so he allowed himself to expose only one frame of film per day from September 23^rd to December 21^st, between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. All of those exposures were published and the results were stunning. Imagine having every one of the next ninety exposures you make published! In his new book, Looking for the Summer, Brandenburg has seemingly changed everything, from his perspective—now joyful and optimistic—to his equipment—now digital. He states that he wanted to avoid repeating himself. This book is intended to be a celebration of nature photography during a period of time when he felt renewed, and the woods and the prairie he explored with his camera were exploding with life. The same woods he had photographed for Chased by the Light were now greatly altered by a catastrophic wind storm. He was at first grieved by the loss of the familiar but, at the time these photographs were taken, he was beginning to appreciate that change is inevitable. He was learning to embrace the new things the now open forest had brought to him, such as snowshoe hares, lynxes and wildflowers. The images were taken from June 21^st to September 22^nd, between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. He included not only the north woods of Minnesota, but also photographs from his annual summer pilgrimages to his prairie home, where he is now involved in a prairie restoration and preservation project, the 800-acre Touch the Sky Prairie National Wildlife Refuge. This time he selected one photograph per day from the multiple digital images he made each day and now he was the editor making the painful decision of what was chosen for publication. The feature in National Geographic on his new project made history as the first all digital photo essay ever published in that magazine. He repeats himself in this new book only with a photograph of a fallen, moss-covered tree (Day sixty-three) taken from the same perspective as in Chased by the Light, only this time he made a ten second exposure—allowing time for him to enter the field of view and sit on the log, becoming an apparition. He wished to illustrate that this log, in this grove, is where he comes to ponder. The images speak for themselves. This book is more of an artistic endeavor than the previous book and that may be off-putting for a nature photography purist who prefers grainless, well-focused nature photographs. A couple of angry letters were written to National Geographic complaining that the images they published were too artistic in style and not befitting the photojournalistic intent of the magazine. There are a few images that have some rather creative color correction, and he let his artistic juices flow a bit more in this book, using handheld long exposures, blurred pans, and ISO 3200 for some photographs that are a step apart from what one is accustomed to seeing in a nature photography book. Whether that is a step too far depends on ones opinion about art. My artist friend was haunted by his panned silver fox photograph with only the foxs eyes in focus. She also loved his overexposed cedar forest photograph. I personally feel the strongest images in the book are the traditional images that are allowed to speak for themselves. I loved the wildflower photographs, but not the slightly out of focus ladys slipper. I loved the pair of loons, but not the blurred pan of a heron in flight or the goose shot in heavy dusk at ISO 3200. I was awestruck by the tight shot of the bison, but not by the impressionistic grainy blur of the caribou. I did always, however, keep in mind that he had a limited number of images to select from on any given day, and with that consideration in mind the results are again very impressive. I will always wonder what we missed on the day he states he just could not decide between four real zingers and finally settled on the loon pair because they symbolized the area of the Boundary Waters and because he already had included a couple of photographs of wolf pups. The author has an incredible eye for composition and truly understands interpretation of light. The only major complaint I have about the book is the decision to place the authors explanations of each photo separately in the back of the book, requiring constant flipping back and forth from the photo to the written text. The photos are all in a horizontal format (with the exception of the "bear cubs in a tree" photograph) and take an entire page, with two panoramics covering two pages. To the publishers credit, putting the authors comments on the facing page would have made the book much thicker, I suppose, using twice as much of the expensive photo stock, so convenience was sacrificed for cost reduction and to make the book less wieldy and intimidating. Chased by the Light was successful because I think it captured the imagination of the readers of National Geographic, with its gimmickry of one exposure per day and the obvious artistry attained within that constraint. Time will tell if Looking for the Summer can repeat that success with its more traditional approach in obtaining multiple images per day and culling them, and its apparent reader backlash concerning the artistic style of the images presented in National Geographic. I liked the book overall, though not as much as I loved Chased by the Light. I personally found the more artistic images to be the weakest, but there is always risk involved with creativity. There are relatively few of them included and I applaud his boldness in choosing them for publication. Perhaps it is a shame they were presented in the first all-digital article in National Geographic magazine, perhaps creating some negative bias against digital photography among those readers who are less open to artistic expression. I am looking forward to the planned winter and spring books. Personally, I am hoping he will keep the digital experimentation to a minimum in future books, this book contained about all I was willing to tolerate. But then I never know what to expect next from Jim Brandenburg, and that is part of what I like about him. To see more of Jim Brandenburg's work, you can visit his website at www.jimbrandenburg.com. Thomas Chamberlin is an outdoor and nature photographer and writer who currently lives in Salem, Oregon. He enjoys photographing and writing about photography, natural history, history and pets and his articles and photos have appeared in several publications including Northwest Travel Magazine, Birds & Blooms, and Bugle Magazine.



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