Photography with artistic aspirations in Door County can be a hazardous undertaking. Pretty much every attractive scene has been photographed a dozen times, and that’s just this year.
So it was a pleasure to see that Rolf Olson’s show at Door Peninsula Winery in Carlsville had no lighthouses or images of Cave Point.
One path he has taken to beautiful images is to focus on close-ups, often with a great eye for delicate textures. “Waiting the Wind” is a closeup of an open milkweed pod whose threads are ready to catch the next breeze.
Direction of Spring is a very funny image that arose from great observation. It is of grasses and perhaps trees bending into a pond and a branch and shadow in the middle that forms a nearly perfect triangle pointing to the right, like the start button on an Internet or YouTube screen. Really good.
Other photographs show how a carefully edited approach can avoid the cliché which so often lies in wait for photographers. “Reefing the Royal” shows a crew member up on a spar taking in a sail, but shoots him in shadows against a darkening sky. Most photo manuals would say that is the wrong direction to shoot or at least requires flash, but the image is deeply mysterious. In another, The American Century, Olson has shot a laker, again from the shadowed side with the name clear but not highlighted, and the sun hitting the bow and lighting it up in a reddish profile that runs down the front of the ship.
Does he edit out the obvious before shooting, or does he cut it when selecting images to print? I have no idea, but the show is full of interesting subtle images like shadows cast onto the textured side of a barn by nearby trees, shades of soft red and light black. Another barn side is the setting for a long hand-made wooden ladder hanging and casting a shadow, the whole effect could be black and white except for the tell-tale strip of green grass along the bottom. In “Winter Harvest” an old tiller sits on white snow against a gray sky. Old farm machinery in empty fields is hardly a new subject for photographers or painters; this, however, captures the cold gray winter’s day well enough to invoke shivers.
“Evening Harvest” is is full of reds and blacks in a stunning abstraction that even after extension examination left me clueless about its location. Olson’s show is a great example of capturing Door County with fresh vision.
So it was a pleasure to see that Rolf Olson’s show at Door Peninsula Winery in Carlsville had no lighthouses or images of Cave Point.
One path he has taken to beautiful images is to focus on close-ups, often with a great eye for delicate textures. “Waiting the Wind” is a closeup of an open milkweed pod whose threads are ready to catch the next breeze.
Direction of Spring is a very funny image that arose from great observation. It is of grasses and perhaps trees bending into a pond and a branch and shadow in the middle that forms a nearly perfect triangle pointing to the right, like the start button on an Internet or YouTube screen. Really good.
Other photographs show how a carefully edited approach can avoid the cliché which so often lies in wait for photographers. “Reefing the Royal” shows a crew member up on a spar taking in a sail, but shoots him in shadows against a darkening sky. Most photo manuals would say that is the wrong direction to shoot or at least requires flash, but the image is deeply mysterious. In another, The American Century, Olson has shot a laker, again from the shadowed side with the name clear but not highlighted, and the sun hitting the bow and lighting it up in a reddish profile that runs down the front of the ship.
Does he edit out the obvious before shooting, or does he cut it when selecting images to print? I have no idea, but the show is full of interesting subtle images like shadows cast onto the textured side of a barn by nearby trees, shades of soft red and light black. Another barn side is the setting for a long hand-made wooden ladder hanging and casting a shadow, the whole effect could be black and white except for the tell-tale strip of green grass along the bottom. In “Winter Harvest” an old tiller sits on white snow against a gray sky. Old farm machinery in empty fields is hardly a new subject for photographers or painters; this, however, captures the cold gray winter’s day well enough to invoke shivers.
“Evening Harvest” is is full of reds and blacks in a stunning abstraction that even after extension examination left me clueless about its location. Olson’s show is a great example of capturing Door County with fresh vision.