A Wake on the Lake for Vincent! © (Five years ago!)

Look carefully at this photo, and then read the words below. There are a lot of them, but give them a chance. When you finish if you like, make a comment, good or bad. I'll appreciate it and so will Vincent.

Inspired by events in 2016 and 1890.

I left the house Saturday morning at 5:45 and made my usual stop for coffee and donuts at the Krispy Kreme. Sunrise was going to be at 6:28, so with some nice pastel clouds forming in the east I headed to Earl P. Powers Park at Newnan’s Lake aka Pithalachocco. By 6:15 I had my tripod setup on the end of the fishing pier and my 20mm lens mounted on my camera. In aperture priority mode my base exposure was 1/30' @ f8 ISO 200. I took out of my vest pocket the filters that I use for long exposure sunrise shots (2-gradients and a 10 stop ND filter) and attached the filter holder to my 20mm lens. I then switched the camera to manual mode with the exposure preset to 30-seconds at f8 ISO 200. I framed the shot with the sky filling the top two-thirds of the frame and the bottom third was the water. I then inserted my ND filter. Here's where it got interesting.

Maybe interesting is not the right word. Let’s go with unusual. OK, how about weird! Anyway, I’m about to make my first 30 second exposure when a resonant voice with a strange accent announces his presence. “Exquisite light” he said as he stealthy made his way to the end of the pier where I was set up. “That is a fine instrument,” he noted as he eyed my camera. “Thanks” I replied as his remark put me on edge. I have met some interesting characters on this pier at dawn, but this guy was an unknown quantity. He looked pretty down and out, maybe homeless. Gainesville is a town of artists, poets and musicians. It is also home to many homeless people and most of them seem OK. But there are exceptions; about 10 years ago one homeless man stabbed another in an argument over a candy bar. The victim died on the street in the shadow of the courthouse. Some of them are quite mad. “What do you envision?” he asked as he gestured out to the lake with hat in hand. I briefly told him that I was going to use a long exposure to smooth out the water to capture the pastel sunrise in the sky and it’s reflection in the water. He scratched his ear, then stroked his scruffy beard and gave me a blank stare.

It was now sunrise and a boater had put in at the ramp behind us, started a small outboard motor and began to idle down the canal to enter the lake. When the boat got past the ‘No Wake’ zone he opened up the throttle and took off to my left and then carved an arc to the right of my camera position. So now this guy says to me “Well I’m no photographer, but I would wait for the waves that the motorized boat will create. Light, water and motion, that’s where the magic lives!” he proclaimed as if stating a law of physics. I looked down at the dark, dull, motionless water in front of me and to the left I could see the waves approaching almost in slow motion. “Yes!” I said to myself, “the nutter is right!” I quickly pulled off the ND filter, reframed the shot to include more water than sky. Switching back to aperture priority mode, I now had my 1/30’ @ f8 exposure setting that would stop the motion of the waves, but just barely. Shooting waves in a lake is not unlike shooting fish in a barrel. You wait for the one you want and then you just take it.

“Good idea” I said as I glanced over my shoulder, but the scraggly guy was already walking away. “Hey wait, what’s your name?” I asked. He turned and looked back at me and said, “You can call me Vinnie.” “Are you sure you’re not a photographer Vinnie?” I asked. He tilted his head down and carefully placed his old gray hat on his head and gave it a tilt to the right. He slowly looked up and the now risen sun shone brightly upon him revealing a well-traveled face that bore a line for every mile ventured. Through sad eyes he almost looked right through me and said, “There was a time… when I fancied myself a painter”. He then took an old pipe out of his coat pocket, put it in his mouth, lit it and took several short puffs and then one long smoky exhale. “But that… was long ago.” he said. He then turned and walked back off the pier the way he came and into the deep shadows of the large Cypress trees that surround the lake. I turned back to my camera and fired off a few more frames as the waves slowly melted back into the dark water. The sun was rising past its point of interest for me so I packed up my gear. I made a stop at La Chua trail where I took some pictures of my favorite Spanish Cracker horse’s there. I particularly liked the one of Diablo and Cinco sharing a moment of affection (see next photo). I had never seen a stallion show so much concern for his young colt, a fitting Fathers Day photo.

I got home, ate, showered and then opened my morning’s images in the Adobe Bridge Photo viewer. Sorry, I don’t use Light Room! When I got to the sunrise shots I focused on several of the wave images. Looking into those dark shadows I couldn’t help but feel that there was something familiar in them. Kind of like Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where he pays way too much attention to his mashed potatoes at the dinner table. “This means something.“ OK it was probably more like de jevu than a close encounter. I settled on this one image and converted it from raw to jpeg and adjusted the color and contrast to my liking and viola, today’s picture. I liked it, but there was still that feeling tugging at my subconscious. I did not sleep well that night and was up several times and wrote much of what you are reading now. I had watched on TV the fifth installment of OJ: Made in America, so repeating that nightmare is what I thought had me agitated. So Sunday morning I slept in till 8:30 A.M. and got up to take a shower. I flipped on the light switch in the bathroom on the left wall and started towards the shower to turn on the water. I stopped and backtracked two steps and looked at a small piece of bathroom art hanging on the wall. The Starry Night by van Gogh. “Of course!” I say out loud. How could I not have figured this out sooner? I have passed by this unobtrusive little framed lithograph every day since my girlfriend and I moved in here almost two years ago. I barely noticed that she had hung it there, but there it was in all its starry grandeur. I spent much of the afternoon researching Van Gogh online. Here’s the short of it.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born in Holland in 1853 in the month of March, making him an Aires, that’s a fire sign. He was most productive when he lived in the town of Arles in the south of France. He seemed to have some kind of connection with the water. As a boy he was home, public and boarding school educated. As a man he tried his hand as an art dealer, teacher, and preacher. But it wasn’t till he tried his hand at painting that he found his gift. A lifelong sketcher, but an art school dropout, he started painting at age 27 and took his own life at the age of 37. He smoked, drank too much, and shared company with women of the night. He slept outside on straw to make a point, and cut off his left ear for no apparent reason at all. He was a troubled man. Much has been written about Vincent, but the words sung by Don McLean mean the most to me:

Now, I understand, what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left insight
On that starry, starry night

You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHnRfhDmrk

An artist for the ages, but for him no real place in time. So out there he wandered, between this life and the next, but never far from the water and the Cypress trees. It was time for Vincent’s final Wake. Rest now my friend; let your spirit be at peace. The sadness is finally over.

Fin

Notetable Van Gogh quotes:

"A good picture is equivalent to a good deed."

“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”

“To understand blue you must first understand yellow and orange.”

“I thought I would be understood without words.”

“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”

“The sadness will last forever.”

Taken on: June 18, 2016

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nikon 20mm 3.5 ai-s

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