Whom will take the challenge of photographing the effects of the Canadian fires like Turner painted?

eli griggs · Jun 9, 2023

A general pictorial challenge to analog photographers to use the current Canadian fires effects on the atmosphere in areas affected.

Can you make photographs that are in the vein of the English Master Painter, J. M. R. Turner, who also made the most of the bad air of England?

Post results and story behind the shot, here and remember, the famous sunsets of Turner were the direct result of an effect on light at the begining and end of the sunlight.

Sirius Glass · Jun 9, 2023

eli griggs · Jun 9, 2023

Sirius Glass said:
View attachment 340907

No Turner, that is!

Andrew O'Neill · Jun 9, 2023

mshchem · Jun 9, 2023

Andrew O'Neill said:

Very cute.

mshchem · Jun 9, 2023

It was barely sunny 11 down here a few days ago, nothing like the bad spots. I figured it's karma for all the acid rain the USA provided Canada in the high sulfur coal days.

Don_ih · Jun 10, 2023

eli griggs said:
A general pictorial challenge to analog photographers to use the current Canadian fires effects on the atmosphere in areas affected.

The quality of light was different here for a few days. But it rained yesterday and washed all the smoke out of the air. For the most part, there is no effect to photograph - it's not like there are black clouds floating around. No one is even wearing a mask.
The only impact I know of is kids have been kept in school for breaks instead of going outside.

Of course, if there was a fire visible from here, there'd be more to see. But no one seems concerned that stuff is actually burning, just that people in cities nowhere near any fire can smell smoke.

guangong · Jun 10, 2023

Painting and photography are completely different. Photography long ago went down the dead end of attempting to imitate painting.

Rick A · Jun 10, 2023

Meter set to iso 50 and reading between 30-60 @ f11, look above the bridge, you'll see the sun. Shot using an orange filter, I don't think a red would have penetrated the smoke any better.

GAP at Ohiopyle

Great Allegheny Passage crossing the Youghiogheny River. The smoke and haze didn't allow for a dramatic sky, look above the bridge, that's the sun.

www.photrio.com

Dan Daniel · Jun 10, 2023

Richard Misrach beat you to it long ago, with a uniquely USA addition.

MattKing · Jun 10, 2023

Don Heisz said:
There are 33 million acres of forest in California.
There are 894 million acres of forest in Canada.

California's gdp is 3 trillion dollars.
Canada's gdp is 2 trillion dollars.

You figure it out.

Just thought I'd post to indicate that I agree with Don

eli griggs · Jun 10, 2023

guangong said:
Painting and photography are completely different. Photography long ago went down the dead end of attempting to imitate painting.
What is of interest is that Canada apparently follows the same principles of forest non-management as its ideological bedfellow California. New Jersey forests are also a tinderbox waiting for a spark.

I am an artist, working in oils, acrylics and watercolours, easel painting and practice a number of other fine arts disciplines, with a long back ground of photography, since I was 14, am now 65, and I know the histories of these methods and methods well enough.

Abstraction, for example is currently being practiced in both easel painting and encaustics forms and, if you care to look, is widely popular in the photographic medium.

So is Serrealism, Pictorial Realism, Atmospheric Effects, etc are all art.

I admit I was unaware of the clearing air due to rain, but Turner's paintings of the effects of such heavy smoke and haze, lit with the Sun, was and is a very appropriate topic for photographic interpretation, in a similar vien, as the works of one of the greatest Atmospheric artists in any Medium, ever.

What this OP did no intend was a thread on the politics of America and Canadian mismanagement of forested lands, when I posted for a photographic challenge to our many members, caught out in the currents of bad airs, of the current fires and smoke.

If the fires again redden the skies, hopefully, interested members and non-members alike will make an effort to take advantage of the changes this natural event brings.

Godspeed and Good Health to all.

Sirius Glass · Jun 10, 2023

Don Heisz said:
There are 33 million acres of forest in California.
There are 894 million acres of forest in Canada.

California's gdp is 3 trillion dollars.
Canada's gdp is 2 trillion dollars.

You figure it out.

What about Australia's great fires in the last few years? In the 65,000 years of the earliest and longest continuous civilization in the world, the Australian Aborigines never had any great fires because they figured out how to do controlled burns. The European descendants in Australia could learn some things about working with nature from the Aborigines.

Alan Edward Klein · Jun 10, 2023

guangong said:
Painting and photography are completely different. Photography long ago went down the dead end of attempting to imitate painting.
What is of interest is that Canada apparently follows the same principles of forest non-management as its ideological bedfellow California. New Jersey forests are also a tinderbox waiting for a spark.

I live in NJ and find there seems to be enough rain often enough to preclude forest fires like that.

Alan Edward Klein · Jun 10, 2023

MattKing said:
Just thought I'd post to indicate that I agree with Don

I didn't think Canadians were the type to export their pollution. I'm surprised.

Alan Edward Klein · Jun 10, 2023

Cough. Cough.

guangong · Jun 10, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
I live in NJ and find there seems to be enough rain often enough to preclude forest fires like that.

Don’t kid yourself. We also have dry periods...and I live in the mountains.

guangong · Jun 10, 2023

Don Heisz said:
There are 33 million acres of forest in California.
There are 894 million acres of forest in Canada.

California's gdp is 3 trillion dollars.
Canada's gdp is 2 trillion dollars.

You figure it out.

I don’t see the point. Both practice poor forest mangement.

Andrew O'Neill · Jun 10, 2023

We have much to learn from our First Nations People.

Don_ih · Jun 10, 2023

guangong said:
I don’t see the point. Both practice poor forest mangement.

How about this, then. In order to manage the forests of Canada, every single person in this country, including infants and 100-year-old people, would need to "manage" 30 acres of forest. And do nothing else.

Sirius Glass said:
The European descendants in Australia could learn some things about working with nature from the Aborigines.

North American natives also did burning. But neither of those groups could actually manage the forests of their entire continents - there were not enough people to do it.

Sirius Glass · Jun 10, 2023

Don Heisz said:
How about this, then. In order to manage the forests of Canada, every single person in this country, including infants and 100-year-old people, would need to "manage" 30 acres of forest. And do nothing else.

North American natives also did burning. But neither of those groups could actually manage the forests of their entire continents - there were not enough people to do it.

Actually the Australian Aborigines managed to keep Australia from having mega fires or any large fires for 65,000 years. Left on their own, they took better care of their continent than the late comers who introduced cats to kill out indigenous animals and rabbits to destroy the fauna turning most of the continent into more barren soil and driving some native plants into extinction.

Alan Edward Klein · Jun 10, 2023

There are too many people today living in fire areas to manage it naturally. Who's going to agree to let fires burn to clear the brush naturally if it's also going to burn their houses down?

Don_ih · Jun 10, 2023

Sirius Glass said:
Actually the Australian Aborigines managed to keep Australia from having mega fires or any large fires for 65,000 years. Left on their own, they took better care of their continent than the late comers who introduced cats to kill out indigenous animals and rabbits to destroy the fauna turning most of the continent into more barren soil and driving some native plants into extinction.

That time period covers the last ice age, during which the Australian aborigines lost 60% of their population (according to the University of New South Wales) - I doubt they were concerned much about forests.

Since then, Australia has been an ever-expanding central desert. So ....

Alan Edward Klein · Jun 10, 2023

Sirius Glass said:
Actually the Australian Aborigines managed to keep Australia from having mega fires or any large fires for 65,000 years. Left on their own, they took better care of their continent than the late comers who introduced cats to kill out indigenous animals and rabbits to destroy the fauna turning most of the continent into more barren soil and driving some native plants into extinction.

How do you know they did it for 65,000 years. I want to see the photos.

Sirius Glass · Jun 10, 2023

Don Heisz said:
That time period covers the last ice age, during which the Australian aborigines lost 60% of their population (according to the University of New South Wales) - I doubt they were concerned much about forests.

Since then, Australia has been an ever-expanding central desert. So ....

But they did not cause the continent to burn down.

Whom will take the challenge of photographing the effects of the Canadian fires like Turner painted?

eli griggs

Sirius Glass

eli griggs

Andrew O'Neill

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mshchem

mshchem

Don_ih

guangong

Rick A

GAP at Ohiopyle

Dan Daniel

MattKing

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eli griggs

Sirius Glass

Alan Edward Klein

Alan Edward Klein

Alan Edward Klein

guangong

guangong

Andrew O'Neill

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Don_ih

Sirius Glass

Alan Edward Klein

Don_ih

Alan Edward Klein

Sirius Glass

Whom will take the challenge of photographing the effects of the Canadian fires like Turner painted?

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