P#38: The Icy Magnificence of the Kenai Fjords

Black and White or Color?

Stephen Johnson: Both the ice photograph from Kenai Fjords National Park and the travertine photograph of Mammoth at Yellowstone are good examples of the kind of simplicity of form that I've been talking about during the course of this interview -- of trying to distill the scene down to the essential qualities and trying to really concentrate on both sensuality and design.

Because both of these are color photographs, the color plays an important role in the appreciation of the work. We see in color and because we do, any color photograph automatically has to overcome a facade of the ordinary to rise out of normal human experience, out of being a mere snapshot into something a little bit more profound perhaps.

It's often true that people photograph in color when the color is playing no positive role for the photograph. If you ask yourself that question and you can't answer that the color is positively contributing to this photograph, it probably should be a black and white so that you take advantage of black and white's greater inherent abstract nature and you dispose of the color that isn't helping the photograph.

Admittedly, it takes it further away from your human experience to photograph in black and white, but it plays into photography's origins as well as one of its abstract strengths -- a monochromed rendition that we've all become quite fond of. (click the image for a larger version)

The Kenai Fjords photograph was taken the second day at the Exit Glacier. My assistant, Darin Steinberg, and I had tried climbing up to the top of the trail toward the Harding Icefield, but made it only about a quarter to a third of the way up and realized we couldn't go any further. We had a magnificent day.

This is just a simple little photograph walking along a paved trail, or at least a dirt trail, along this leading edge of the melting glacier. It was an extremely simple photograph to create.

In Summary

Sometimes the amount of effort you put into a photograph doesn't determine the amount of impact you get out of it. This picture of the Kenai Fjords is a perfect example of that fact.