Before The Storm

This photo is a little white lie. You know the kind where you stretch the truth to make the story more interesting. While in a remote part of Cape Breton, which is an island that occupies the north east corner of Nova Scotia, a large fog bank started rolling in from the sea. Before it actually engulfed the bay a small lobster boat came racing by just a head of the weather. For hundreds of years fishermen in areas like Eastern Canada have struggled with potentially hostile seas and a culture with many tales and tragedies that have resulted.

I photographed the boat as it passed by and keeping the camera in the same position photographed the same scene about 20 minutes later when the fog bank was making its way into the bay. Later the two images were merged into this one. The bright light that was still in the bay when the lobster boat came by gives a nice sense of drama and storm light.

Maybe as a record of this particular event the photograph is not quite honest, but the elements in this scene have been blended to give respect and homage to those generations of fishermen who work in an environment that can just as easily take their lives as well as provide them a living.

Enjoy

Rich Lewis | www.impressionisticlens.com

Mullica River

When you live in South Jersey and crave hiking and open spaces your only local choice is the New Jersey Pinelands or the Pines as they are locally referred to. The Pines are flat with few vistas and nothing that looks remotely like a mountain. Although it biologically diverse the trees that dominate the area are the scrub and pigmy pines which look rough and scraggly. The area is also crisscrossed by sand roads that don’t usually go anywhere because they are part of some ancient road network to towns that no longer exist. The place has its own charm but I never really had a desire to photograph here until I saw the work of another local photographer named Albert D. Horner.

Albert’s images are beautiful. He creates well-crafted photographs that romanticize the Pines. He inspired me to look again at my local wilderness area and I now carry a camera whenever I hike there. The thing I find interesting is that while we photograph a lot of the same places, I see them totally differently. The environment here can be pretty harsh. What I see in the Pines is this rough, kind of scraggly beauty.

This image is of one of the 4 rivers in the Pines called the Mullica. These rivers are more like narrow creeks but occasionally open up into vast swamps that offer the few expansive vistas out here. This is another photograph assembled from 5 images taken with the Lumix LX5 camera.

Enjoy,

Rich Lewis | www.impressionisticlens.com

Water Flow, Nova Scotia

I love water and rocks. It is my favorite combination of things in nature. Hiking by a fast flowing stream is a very calming and settling place to be. Add a camera and a steady tripod and you can extend time and create a blur effect in the flow of water that has an indescribable effect on the viewer. This image was made diring a hike in Nova Scotia, Canada. The thing that keeps drawing me to this image is the how the water flows through the image space, and how the movement of the water contrasts with the stationary rocks and colorful pebbles. You will probably see other images like this from me over the life of this blog. I hope you are as charmed by them as I am. Enjoy

Rich Lewis | www.impressionisticlens.com

Old Fishing Pier

This photo was taken a few years ago and I think of it as one of my best. It came from one of those times where I was able to scout the location beforehand. When I went back early the next day, before sunrise,, there was a magic time of about 15 to 20 minutes where the sky burst with color. Knowing the area, I was able to set up and work  quickly enough to create 3 nice images. This one was the struggle. Because the sky was full of beautiful red light, it distracted me from what the true image was. It wasn’t until 6 months later that I made it black and white and realized that the subject was not the sunrise, but the textures of this amazing ruin and its relation to the environment that is reclaiming it. This old pier is one of the icons of the Ocean City area. When this image has been shown, older people often share their happy memories of time spent on the pier. This has taught me that as fine art photographers we are not just creating attractive and interesting art, but we are preserving places others may have a deeper and different connection to. Enjoy

Rich Lewis | www.impressionisticlens.com

Stormlight, Medford, New Jersey

This image is titled Stormlight. It was actually taken in 2007. When I looked at the original photo in its raw state I knew there was something there. It took me 5 years to realize what it was. I needed to grow more as an artist Another  significant thing that helped was my discovery of a painter named John Folinsbee. He was an American Impressionistic artist who painted the Bucks County, Pennsylvania landscape in the 1930′s and 1940′s. He had a way with light and in many of his landscapes light is synonymous with mood. Here I wanted to take inspiration from Folinsbee and capture the feeling of that time when a storm is arriving or leaving. During that time period there is a lot of drama as the sun fights with the clouds and the light displays some magnificent contrasts. My goal here was not to imitate Folinsbee’s work but to use it to create my own vision of light and mood. Enjoy

Rich Lewis | www.impressionisticlens.com

Early Spring on the Pinnacle

This is a popular hiking location near Allentown, Pennsylvania where the Appalachian Trail wanders past a vast rock outcropping. Because this is the very edge of the mountain, it is referred to as the Pinnacle. I’ve hiked here dozens of times and it is rare to find it so unpopulated with other hikers. It is also rare to find this kind of light. This is one of the first images I have made with the Lumix LX-5 which is a high end pocket camera. It has a great lens and renders colors in a very pastel way. Because it is a  small camera, I experimented here with shooting several shots of the environment and then hand “stitched” them together on the computer. It is a common “rule” of photography that the middle of the day is a bad time to photograph. The sun is high in the sky and can be very harsh. But on days with partly cloudy skies the light can be beautiful. I was particularly attracted to the patches of sunlight in the fields below and the showers in the far distance.

Rich Lewis | www.impressionisticlens.com

Photo Impressionism

Hi, My name is Rich Lewis and I am a photographer. Visit my website for more info about me and my photography to get a perspective on where this blog will be going. www.impressionisticlens.com