rainbow, tumbleweed by tom

Chasing tumbleweeds


Clearcut Rainbow Slash


Photographs: young tom

Published on March 18, 2009 by burn magazine. 143 Comments

143 Responses to “rainbow, tumbleweed by tom”

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  • wendy
    March 18, 2009 at 10:48 pm

    The fire burns hot..
    once again…
    I want to see these images BIG..
    want to feel the landscape..
    They almost make me dizzy,
    and I like it…
    I see them BIG, on a wall..
    maybe even printed on aluminum panels..
    I like landscapes,
    that go further than Ansel Adams…
    what would he think?
    doesn’t matter though..
    Love the contrast of landscape
    and
    interpretation….
    Seems like lots of talk about photoshop…
    I do agree with Jim and that many photographers need to clarify digital imagery vs photograph
    But that seems to be a blurry line these days..
    I personally respond to photos, digital imagery, paintings, sculpture the same way~
    how do they make me feel, what do they make me think….
    I don’t care how they were created,
    its the end result for me…
    And I like the tension in these landscapes….
    **

  • panos
    March 18, 2009 at 10:53 pm

    Jim…
    I’m not suppose to get involved…
    but regardless photography… i wanna say one thing…
    I met Young Tom… about a month ago…
    Tom is one of the most honest ( honest-est)
    people i know…Integrity, simplicity, wisdom…
    There is no way in this world i can see a guy like Tom..
    spending 3 hours in photoshop… blurring the foreground, freezing the bzckground..
    using cheap swirl filters or freaky “lensbabies”…
    The guy is Honest with capital H…period….
    I know the guy…His brain does not work like “that”…at all…!

    Haik, i totally second your admiration towards Tom…
    Not that u need me to tell u… but remember , i told u when we visited Seattle…?
    Tom is A REAL MAN…end of story!

  • panos skoulidas
    March 18, 2009 at 10:54 pm

    F**k panos…damn it..
    panos skoulidas , is the real name…
    sorry!
    ( bob messed me up)
    :)))))))))))))

  • young tom
    March 18, 2009 at 11:23 pm

    Hey JAMES :)))) Thanks man. Yeah, your not “supposed” to shoot digital like you do chromes at the top of the highlights and beyond. Rather, you want those little bars in the middle to give you the best options. Hate that. I’m always bunching way over, jamming the edges cause we all know the best photos are around the edges ;-))) Ironically, often “perfectly exposed” digital raw files take much more photoshopping since they are merely very poor negatives.

    James, Bangkok was cool wasn’t it. Worked my ass off. You’ve been busy since bro, loving it :)) Funny, I now remember what Nachtwey said at our workshop, a photographer Jim can love. He said he loved photos that took risks because most often he cannot. I think Jim Powers would like some of my “straighter” pj work as much as it has come to bore me. That workshop was where I really started to let go and experiment, thanks to DAH and Nachtwey. Still working on it. One of these days I may even have a website ;-))

    Hey HAIK, I saw your ride in Seattle. Can I drive? :))))

    BOB, your comments are greatly, greatly appreciated, especially given that you were BLACKlisted and posting by proxy. I hope there is some humor in that for you. Thanks Panos for posting! Bob, I understand what you are saying about the text but with that too, I was experimenting, taking some risks. And to be honest, I’m frustrated by the constraints of the web. It would be nice if you could click on these photos for a larger image (at one time you could here). I’m no poet, and as I mentioned, I thought of these more as creative cutlines or journal entries. But your point is very well taken about being too literal, and too “on the photo” itself. I wonder what would happen if I sent you some photos “way out there” and you wrote something to complement (with an “e”). But of course, you would have to love them, and everything is subjective without guilt, or should be. I wonder could you be that brief? ;-)))

    SIDNEY! Hoping to see you soon as well. Let me know if you need a lift, love to. Thanks for your thoughts. I think I covered your queries. Looking forward to a discussion in person. Finally! (my fault, hoping to rectify soon).

    David B, thank you for your comments as always.

    Hey Kathleen, your thoughts are always welcome.

    DAH, thank you for posting and Anton for all your hard work. Hmmm, by the way Anton, saw some photos of you after I left New York. You dog you :))]

    Crashing … long day …

  • Gordon Lafleur
    March 18, 2009 at 11:31 pm

    Young Tom, I’m still waiting for a link to your site . The suspense is killing me.

    Very cool stuff. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first. I especially love the rainbow shot. It’s like the rainbow is a laser bolt setting the earth on fire. Very cool, both very loose but beautifully composed at the same time.

    Hey Panos, Leave my lensbaby alone man. It’s tough to use, but when you get it right it sees more like your eye than any regular lens.

    Once again thanks to David Alan, for for bringing us along.

    cheers all
    Gordon L

  • young tom
    March 18, 2009 at 11:35 pm

    And by the way, when I took the clearcut photo I was thinking of Matt the Slasher down under in Tasmania who does the same from time to time. Another Bangkok alum. Good man, miss him here.

  • katharina
    March 18, 2009 at 11:59 pm

    Hi (Young) Tom,
    what a nice personal ” greeting card”… makes me want to see more . Hope you are doing well

  • marcin luczkowski
    March 19, 2009 at 12:41 am

    young tom

    I wish to see more pictures of this series, because i don’t know what is the reason of this very nice photographs. I mean why two not one, why two not fifteen.
    Right now I am big fan of prints and photo books. I am sure this photos will look awesome as a part of a book.

  • marcin luczkowski
    March 19, 2009 at 12:46 am

    I am not sure why my first comment to Panos I did a minute ago is somewhere in the middle of all comments.
    Panos, You have to find it.

  • ian aitken
    March 19, 2009 at 1:46 am

    Jim, look at any automotive campaign with motion in the image and you will see the foreground blurred and the background less blurred, thousands of hours and thousands of pounds are spent trying to replicate this effect using booms, comps, post production skills. It is a function of physics, veolcity and relative distance from camera. If you want to look at other examples look at the runaway train gallery on my website, these were all shot from a moving train no photoshopping just optimizing the raw file.

  • david b
    March 19, 2009 at 2:50 am

    kathleen f..
    did you mean my website that you looked at, or david mc, or david ah ?

    some of my photos online have been very heavily potshpt and do not look like it.. portraits particularly.. that’s the point for me – to make it subtle .. so it could be done in the darkroom.. or at least two colour enlargers set up for one print project.. everything i photoshop heavily could be darkroom produced..

    virtually all the documentary work has not been touched at all – just the scanning from neg at the lab.. no crop.. no adjustments..
    that is part of the photography game for me – i enjoy trying to get everything through the camera..
    as with tom i think :o)

    will happily share which have been potshpt if your interested.

    dx

  • david alan harvey
    March 19, 2009 at 3:25 am

    YOUNG TOM…

    the image i have in my mind of you chasing the tumbleweed is not better than the picture you actually took, but it is definitely indelible..

    cynicism is THE enemy……the tumbleweed is a pretty good symbol of something that looks dead and is blowing aimlessly in the wind, but is actually a seed for a new plant…all depends on how you look at it…

    cheers, david

  • jared iorio
    March 19, 2009 at 3:35 am

    Well-handled young tom.

    The shots, not really my cup of tea, I don’t dig the style so much. I dig the process though, and can respect these photos purity.

  • Mike R
    March 19, 2009 at 4:22 am

    Young Tom, thanks for the shooting information: it sounds like a blast! To use a musical analogy, these are Soul photographs. With handwritten text: Tom photographs.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Mike.

  • Jim Powers
    March 19, 2009 at 5:51 am

    ian says: “It is a function of physics, veolcity and relative distance from camera.”

    Sorry, I still don’t buy it. Could these be photos captured in a single exposure in the camera and not radically manipulated in photoshop? Perhaps. But that’s the legacy of Photoshop. I’ll always doubt they were.

  • ian aitken
    March 19, 2009 at 6:49 am

    Jim,
    sure they can Jim.
    It’s not only a legacy of photoshop that you are cynical, it is a legacy of photography itself. Photographs have been manipulated from the beginning of the medium, My great grandfather had a very successful studio in Exeter england (he was even commissioned to photograph the queen mother) He had a whole team of artisans working on prints, from darkroom operators to colourists.

    I your raison d’etre is to simply record so be it, photography is also about art and interpretation using the tools you have to hand.

    I believe young tom when he tells us he has not added blur in post and the images above have predominantly been achieved in camera. I have proof in some of my own images, you can achieve extraordinary things with motion blur.

    Ian

  • Jim Powers
    March 19, 2009 at 7:18 am

    ian, I understand what you could do with a darkroom and retouchers. I think I’ve spent at least half my life in a darkroom. But there is no comparison between what you could achieve in a darkroom and with manual retouching tools, and what you can do with Photoshop. Photoshop allows you to reconstruct a photo seamlessly. Undetectably if you are good enough.

    I’m about as straight a shooter and printer as they get, and I’ve had people ask me if I’ve created some photos with Photoshop. It’s pervasive.

  • John Gladdy
    March 19, 2009 at 7:23 am

    Jim. I take it you like ansel adams right? If so, go check out his darkroom notebooks. Look at how complex the recipes are for making those ‘PURE’ images.
    Do you use wet rooms yourself? Test print after test print? Selective grading? lollypop sticks and cardboard masks? double dish development?
    Cos if you do all the above and yet have a problem with the digital equivalents then you may have a bit of a problem explaining that so that you dont seem a bit ’stuck’.
    You say you love natchwey. There is some great footage in his doco ‘war photographer’ of him in the wet room with his printer. Watch it. See how much ‘manipulation’ goes into getting the prints ready for gallery. But thats ‘pure’ manipulation right? Its ‘real’ photography. Doing it in potatoshop is somehow ‘cheating’ i guess. WRONG!
    Anyway im rambling a bit so..
    PEACE
    John

  • young tom
    March 19, 2009 at 7:33 am

    David, yes :)) Since a guy actually did stop his pickup to watch me chase the tumbleweed across the field, I suspect that if you find the right small cafe in the right small town in the Upper Crab Creek area of the Columbia plateau, there may be a Sunday morning story floating around of the crazy guy chasing tumbleweeds. :)) Funny, since I was in the area to plant the seeds for a “straight” story. Those are still growing.

  • ian aitken
    March 19, 2009 at 7:39 am

    Hi Jim,

    I can’t win against an engrained attitude towards photoshop.

    I know you are a straight shooter, why not try a bit of breaking the rules and see what you come up with it might be liberating.

    For years I endeavoured to get straight clinical shots, to get exposure right framing right, colour balance right, contrast ratios right and you know what after a while of achieving that goal, photography for me became a little stale, I then started to challenge those restraints and have found a new love of photography and a freedom to express what I feel. It is inspirational.
    This is the reason I have joined Burn, because it is a constant source of inspiration and challenge and is showing me I should believe in myself and what I want to say rather than just achieving a great straight job for the client.

    I have a couple of great documentary jobs in the pipeline and they will certainly have a loser and experimental feel to them.

    We could rattle on about this for days

    Ian

  • michael kircher
    March 19, 2009 at 8:00 am

    Tom,

    Great explanations of your images and how they were captured. Though, they really did not require explanation. Very sorry some demanded–still demand!–a “better” explanation. If the simple facts of simple physics is so lost on a person there really is no explaining that will satisfy. It’s like conspiracy theorists. They are not interested in answers, only more questions. You answer one question then they say, “Yeah, but what about…” Answer that and, “Yeah, but what about…” It never ends. At some point ignoring is the only option. Ah well.

    Regardless… I’d love to have been chasing that tumbleweed next to you! Sounds like a blast–exhausting, but a blast! Someday, maybe.

    Cheers brother.

    MK

  • young tom
    March 19, 2009 at 8:08 am

    Hi Kat. I was waiting for someone to say “greeting card” :)))
    Well, thanks.

    Mike and Gordon. I don’t have a website. Every time I put something up, I tear it down. I mean, I would have to settle down and define myself wouldn’t I? Develop coherence. More boxes ;-)) Perhaps I should create websites for all my personalities, sort of a Jekyll and Hyde thing. Just not ready to settle down, still having too much fun, and angst too, experimenting. There is an infrequent blog, mostly stream of consciousness from Greece a little while back. At least, a few straight photos Jim might like. Click on my name.

    Marcin, I have just started doing a number of these panels. It is new, an experiment. Some serious, some funny, simply personal journal entries really. I believe I submitted six or seven to Burn, including one very tongue in cheek silly one about white rabbits. Hope it made Harvey laugh. Just fun. The rest were in black and white. I’m encouraged and I’ll continue. These keep me going until more subject-specific projects start coming together. It’s been a bloody long winter here.

    Charles and Katia. Thanks Seattle friends :)) Looking forward to seeing you soon.

    I think I will really go round the bend on my next submissions. Hmmm, “impossible” photos of twisted forms, surely PS filtered, but not, where my integrity will be put on the block and my head in the guillotine. I can see Jim throwing things, sputtering. :)) What fun.

  • Gracie
    March 19, 2009 at 8:25 am

    young tom
    march 18, 9:51 pm

    your pictures were hmmm… daunting or haunting… kinda sorta both. all this talk of photoshop i read through quickly but your recount of how you did the picture i read about 5 times, your recount of cynicism i read about 10 times. i had to laugh. the arrangements, the little boxes, perfect order, perfect pictures. each day or at least once a week, i try to find me own tumbleweed.

    you were there. you saw what you saw and you made your camera your eye and now we can see what you saw. photoshop or not, these pictures make me wonder… how you did it on photoshop or how you got there to take the picture first of all…

    my take: at the end of the day, it is about one thing: LOVE PEACE PHOTOGRAPHY

    (space cowboy, civilian, kat – i miss them sooooo much. i guess i also should go back to work)

  • young tom
    March 19, 2009 at 8:28 am

    Ian, me too. Right on.

    Michel K. – We will meet one of these days. Congrats on National Parks magazine btw. A very tough nut. I once had a photo in there years ago, an oil spill in Olympic National Park (one of two I’ve been to there). Someone asked me for a negative the other day, out of the blue, for that and damned if I can find it! Another beautiful photo of an awful mess. That experience led me to work on protections for that coastline and creation of a National Marine Sanctuary. Seems another lifetime ago, like those trips I made to Great Falls with my father to watch the kayakers, and all those white water canoe trips on the Shenandoah. I wonder if the Carter gauges are still used. All things circle around it seems. See you in D.C., or in Eastern WA, but hope to meet you someday.

    John Gladdy, damn I love your work. Have for some time. Thanks for looking and commenting.

  • young tom
    March 19, 2009 at 8:33 am

    Gracie, who are you? Like a dream. I have to get to work too. Building permit revision, with drawings. Uggh. Keep on keeping on cause a rolling tumbleweed gathers no moss.

  • katharina
    March 19, 2009 at 8:36 am

    (Young) Tom,
    in fact, I meant this as a compliment …. your 2 pictures are not to be confused with some anonymous stuff on a postcard that you buy in a store and send off……but more like something that you receive from someone/somewhere and certainly give it a special place :)

  • Gracie
    March 19, 2009 at 8:37 am

    young tom,

    i am first of all a poet like you. i want to make pictures my pieces… my frustration. i do not know how to take pictures … yet.

    i am glad you went through the technical part of your pictures. most here wont. or will maybe as an offsite email. but i like these… very much.

  • young tom
    March 19, 2009 at 9:49 am

    Kat, I know :)) We always seem to get just a little sideways without really meaning to don’t we? All good.

    Thanks Gracie. Goodnight Gracie. :))

  • Sidney Atkins
    March 19, 2009 at 9:59 am

    Tom wrote:
    “…if you find the right small cafe in the right small town in the Upper Crab Creek area of the Columbia plateau…”
    That is not quite the “needle in a haystack” challenge it would have been 30 years ago when there were little redneck cafes all over the Columbia Plateau in tiny little towns (fewer than a dozen houses, and a wide spot in the road). Criscrossing the area in the late 90s I found far fewer of the old cafes than I remembered, it seemed like a culture was on the wane. I’d be glad to know it still lives on.

    As a geographic footnote, it’s interesting to me that Tom calls it the ‘Columbia Plateau’ and I tend to call it the ‘Columbia Basin’… same place, but he has a more Western Washington perspective, from which it certainly looks like a plateau, and even though I live in Western Washington now, right down near sea level, I still see the area through the lens of my youth when I lived in Northern Idaho at 3,000 ft. and above, from which we looked ‘down’ on the Basin. Both terms are in common use. (Hey Civilian Mass Audience, am I living up to my ‘Athenaeus’ persona?).

  • chris bickford
    March 19, 2009 at 10:11 am

    Young Tom—

    LOVE these!! Late to the party and haven’t looked over the discussion, but these rock, my friend. They have all the brilliance and color of good landscape photography with the extra “wow” factor of movement. I am always drawn to still photographs that “move”. And here I’m not just talking about “motion blur”, though you execute that very well here; I mean it in the broader sense of a feeling of kinetic energy in the composition and moment.

    These are strange and beautiful photos; on the one hand they have a classic rural Americana feeling, but on the other hand, they have a modern sensibility and an “edge” you don’t see in this kind of work very often.

    I want to see more. More, more…

    chris

  • James Chance
    March 19, 2009 at 11:20 am

    Hey Tom,

    I thought you did have a website?.. Or at least you used too? I used to visit, I remember your stuff from the ferry and the floods. Just like you I am so pleased you have stepped away from your straight PJ work. You really have a style, which I notice as “you’ straight away, and more impressively you tapped into it sooo quickly!

    Obviously our exchange got set back when I left the country and right now things are pretty tight as I pay for that trip and set-up all over again. But i’m still up for it if you are, esp. seeing this new contender!! Be good my friend. I hope we can catch up in person soon.

  • James Chance
    March 19, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    IAN (Aitken):

    Totally off topic here (sorry folks) but had been meaning to drop you a line as this is all a little weird… We share the same names: Ian (my fathers name) is my first middle name (I have two). Aitken is the second as it is my Mothers maiden name. James Ian Aitken Chance. Then I went to your site and saw that you are also from England, But not only that… Your phone code is for the Norwich area! I grew up on the Norfolk/Suffolk border near Diss!

    Now that’s a lot of coincidences!! I feel Like I have to look you up next time i’m back as you must have an important message for me or something!! ;)) Weird…

    Enjoyed your work. Esp, the portraits. I’m wondering if some of the train shot were shot on the London > Norwich mainline, perhaps near dear old Diss!??

  • Tim Ripley
    March 19, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    Hey Tom,

    That familiar raincloud came over Bow-Edison the other day. Or.. one just like it unleashed a torrent outside the Longhorn.
    Tried to chime in yesterday from Bow but my connection wasn’t having it.

    Cheers

    Tim

  • Sidney Atkins
    March 19, 2009 at 6:25 pm

    Hey Tim Ripley,

    I live in Fairhaven…spitting distance. Do you ever come up here? We could meet for a coffee at Village Books or some other appropriate venue sometime for a chat… email whenever you like.

    Cheers,

  • Haik
    March 20, 2009 at 2:04 am

    Hey HAIK, I saw your ride in Seattle. Can I drive? :))))
    I am drinking then.

  • young tom
    March 20, 2009 at 5:52 pm

    SIDNEY, it’s still an amazing Basin but not as many roadside cafes, true, though lots of good taverns still. And then, there is the skeet range and shooting club, with beer on tap, and the Hutterite colony just down the road. No beer there but many beards. The Columbia itself with all its dams and irrigation is now a massive machine, an organic machine (title of a book on the Columbia by the way) and all the people of the basin are part of it, feeding it and living off it, whether they realize it or not. The concrete is still curing inside the Hoover dam, the plume of plutonium is seeping and creeping though the aquifer toward the river, Native Americans still dipnet fish off rickety platforms where they have for thousands of years, now in the shadow of powerhouses. She Who Watches still surveys the Gorge and the water flows on. Of course you know this but I’m not sure many people outside the Northwest grasp its power and breadth. It’s indescribable. I have explored only small sections of the Columbia, from its source in Canada to the massive waves on the bar in the surfboat, and the immensity and power of it all never ceases to instill a sense of wonder, awe and mystery. And I guess that is as good a reason as any to be a photographer, the only reason for me really, even as one of tumbleweeds ;-))

    Einstein said: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

    Which speaks to the danger of cynicism well, as well. I am just flowing lost in all the ideas and stories of the Columbia, such an amazing tapestry of lives woven through a river like few others. A massive Greek tragedy in many ways.

    CHRIS, thanks, you’re on brother :))

    JAMES, ah well, I put things up and rip them down because they are never good enough, or at least very soon are not, which is actually a good thing. I’ll settle into something more cohesive one of these days and put up something more permanent. Have you settled back into the states? Cool. Most likely heading east late summer/early fall for Virginia and OBX. Maybe I’ll make a cross country road trip out of it and stop by your neck of the woods … Ohio? Would be good to hang out, and make that exchange! :)))

    TIM, hey there, good to know there’s other NW representation here.

    HAIK, good, good, me too. It’s a cab then!

  • James Chance
    March 20, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    TOM:
    Yes, yes, getting settled, but in Denver… So don’t make a wasted trip to Ohio this Summer! (what’s OBX?) Its a struggle setting up here as there are a shit load of photographers, but I love the area so i’m sure it will pay off in the long run! Closer to WA too! ;) I have a good friend who has moved back to Bainbridge Island. Once things have settled It would be nice to get up and visit you guys.

  • young tom
    March 20, 2009 at 6:41 pm

    James, absolutely! Denver is not so far. Have an old friend in Durango I plan to visit and four corners is always a favorite. And Bainbridge is even closer :)) Always welcome here James!

    OBX = Outer Banks of North Carolina. It’s been more than 20 years since I’ve been there but I spent many summers of my young days on the coasts of North and South Carolina. Miss it much, although almost afraid to see them now.

  • david b
    March 20, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    Einstein said: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

    oh man..
    one day i want to start a sentence with, “he to whom..”, which ends with “rapt in awe”…

  • Gracie
    March 21, 2009 at 12:13 am

    everdearest david b,

    HE TO WHOM such selflessness is firsthanded
    shall find himself generously blessed
    with such great stature and unending respect
    from his own disciples
    who will forever be RAPT IN AWE…

    (i will never forget your generous offer,
    i shall if i may keep in touch…)

  • Herve
    March 21, 2009 at 12:38 am

    PANOS

    Would you like the photo “more”… if it was no photoshop?
    ————————

    (back in town). Can’t care less, Panos. He could have used pencils, and not a camera, or a media mix. The means are never a problem with me, it is just that I wondered about the appearnce of things in the photos rather than being struck by the poetry of it all. I could be dishonest and go straight to simple praise, but then that wouldn’t be me, would it be. I just write down exactlt what strikes me, and here, it was about how things appeared on the photograph.

    I think it would be great to see Tom’s pictures in a gallery setting, with a size equivalent to the awe of nature he has mentionned, I mean 20feetx15ft. Computer screens can do a disfavor to such type of imagery (and I am starting to think to a good lot of photography as well).

  • young tom
    March 21, 2009 at 1:08 am

    Herve, btw, the difference in densities on either side of the rainbow is how it actually appears. I can’t explain refractory atmospheric dynamics but you could google it. I believe you’ve seen the previous posts on processing. The essence with these is that they were greatly underexposed, and incredible late afternoon lighting with storm clouds didn’t hurt either. I’m always trying to get back to chrome it seems (or tri-x pushed) and high contrast, and these certainly look like cibrachromes to me. Certainly, tastes have moved on but it is always fun to push buttons, is it not? :)))

    I too look forward to seeing these large.

  • young tom
    March 22, 2009 at 7:36 pm

    Gracie writes: “i want to make pictures my pieces… my frustration. i do not know how to take pictures … yet.”

    Then Gracie, my friend, you may just be ahead of the rest of us. “Knowing how” can get in the way of the best poetry. Just flow.

    peace, tom

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