Tag Archives: Janelle Pietrzak

The Bridgers

Concluding The Sacred Door Trail opening ceremony, a group of us headed to Weston Pew’s stunning family-ranch that nestles up against the Bridger mountain range just north of Bozeman, Montana.  The week spent there was a much-needed decompression after the spiritual intensity of the previous few days.  We spent our time resting, singing along with guitars on the porch, eating home cooked food and going on a bunch of outings.  One of these outings was on the fourth of July and included rafting down the Yellowstone River, eating a picnic lunch, and singing and dancing the night away at the Bank Bar (a local cowboy watering hole), in Wilsall, Montana.

During this time there was a full moon and though I was pretty spent from camping, I found time to take a few photos.  My previously mentioned partner in crime, Melanie Malia, helped me wander out into the moonlight to take some photos with the Pew’s lovely grey horse.  Just as we were starting to get our rhythm, “Bill” the notorious beast of a dog, came and did a fine job of chasing the horses away.  As everyone who was there can attest, the name “Bill” on the ranch is generally said at full volume and followed by some sort of accusation or negative…. “BILL… NOOOO BILL… NO BILL… BAD DOG BILL… STOP THAT BILL… BIIIIILLLLLL!!!!!!!!”

Once Bill was content with the horse situation, he lay down in the road and happily watched us finish the shoot.  As I have mentioned before, I have a very hard time working in full-moon light.  The conditions are very similar to working in daylight and present a huge challenge when working alone.  It’s a bit like being on a fully lit stage with no script, set, or props, and told to just do something cool. Inevitably, whatever you do ends up feelinging a bit contrived and awkward.  Personally, I feel this way about these images, but I have also had some good response to the work, so I feel like I am close to something new.  In the next post I will go into some of what I learned in my workshop with Arno Minkenen… as I try for a breakthrough.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

It has been a really long time since I have done any personal work. It feels so strange not to be working with Aloyse.  I really wish that she had been here tonight. There are just some things that work better when there are two people.  I had to resort to putting the camera remote trigger between my teeth, and well that really didn’t help, so I didn’t get some of the shots I had imagined.

This image is my homage, to not only the golden Buddhist temples I have been visiting here in Thailand, but also to the temple gong that wakes me up every morning at 5am.  I have never been able to sit still and meditate; I have no discipline in that area of my life whatsoever.  I often dream, even make resolutions to start meditating… but nope, it never happens.  So, when that gong starts going off, I snuggle deeper under the covers and smile to myself, thinking of all the wonderful monks on their way to enlightenment, and here I lie, completely content with my suffering, warm in bed.  It’s a silly, delicious moment that I have come to savor in the wee hours of my jet-lagged sleep.  This image is me and my monkey mind… never settling down.

Goblin Valley

Well hello there, long time no posting…

So, it has been a while since I got on here and posted some new work.  Between getting back from Burning Man, packing my whole house in storage, and moving to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, things have been a bit crazed.  Never fear though, I have been working a lot and have some exciting new work to put up over the next few days.  Aloyse came down for a week to visit during the full moon, even with the rainy hurricane Jova weather we still managed to get some terrific new images. First things first though, I still have one shoot I did on the way home from Burning Man that I never got around to posting.

One of my favorite places on the planet is this bizarre spot in the middle of the deserts of Utah.  Named Goblin Valley, for its unusual sandstone rock formations, I can truly say this place is one of the world’s most magical and psychedelic locations.  I have been coming to Goblin Valley since I was about sixteen, and my friends would be surprised to see the new pay station, on grounds ranger housing, and full campground.  The cat may be out of the bag.  Fortunately, we were still able to drive right into the park at night and “illegally” run around in the moonlight.

Getting to Goblin Valley was the end of a great adventure. We had had a long few weeks of road tripping across the American west, and when all was said and done we had traveled over 4000 miles.  Accompanied by my great friend Angelo Valenzuela, we had driven from Colorado to Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Los Angeles, and Black Rock City, now were slowly retracing our steps towards home. As we crossed the desolate strip of highway between Salina and Green River, Utah, I watched the moon traversing the mackerel sky, illuminating the vast desert emptiness.  Slowing heading for the horizon, I was concerned we would not get there in time to use the moon’s natural light.  As we pulled in to the parking lot, the moon was low, but on an angle that was reminiscent of the “golden hour” just before sunset.

The night was cold, and I was afraid that shooting naked might be miserable, but once disrobed, I adapted quickly and felt comfortable enough.  I climbed up on to the rocks and went through the usual static poses.  Then something happened.  I became a four-legged alien monster creature. Always looking for new directions and growth, this seems like a very fun interesting avenue for exploration.

Goblin Valley is a truly bizarre and amazing place.  Wherever you look there are rocks and towers that resemble everything from falaces to faces.  In the second image, if you look at the rock, you can see the profile of a face, leering at me in the dark.  After shooting in the first three locations, the clouds began to move in and the light became obscure, so I pointed the camera directly at the moon.  At this time, Angleo decided to jump in to the photo and we got a wonderful backlit image.

On the way back to the car, the moon set, the clouds really came in and we didn’t have much of a flashlight.  Suddenly, we became wildly disoriented.  Goblins reared out of the darkness, and I was irrationally terrified.  Although Goblin Valley is not large enough to really get lost, that moment of panic was an amazing experience.  After a few frightening moments, we retraced our steps, and were able to find the truck.  The campsite was full, so we parked a few miles away, and fell asleep pretzeled together in the front seat.

Temple of Transition

I am going to acknowledge another less successful attempt in my photography.  At Burning Man this year, the most impressive art piece was certainly the “Temple of Transition.”  In years past, the Temple was this really spooky place you visited, left an offering, and got the hell outta there.  Even though previous temples had been incredibly beautiful, they were certainly not the hub of action that this year’s temple turned out to be.

My first close view of the temple happened from an art car manned by the Piñata’s Revenge Camp.  We cruised around the magnificent structure at sunset as the earth harp was being played for the masses gathered below.  The great sky changed color every few minutes from pinks to purples and finally blues.  It was really something, something sacred and special, and something I wanted to come back and photograph.  I kept putting off shoots for various reasons, eventually choosing the night of The Man burn.

I arrived early and sat around for a while as the sun dropped behind the horizon and it became dark enough to do long exposures.  The problem with sunsets and sunrises is that they happen so quickly and the light changes so fast that you are constantly readjusting your camera settings to keep the same basic exposure.  It is a real pain, and if you are me, you normally go out without a specific game plan, and things don’t always go so well.   I ended up standing with the backlit temple behind me, which was beautiful but left me a dark blackness in which to work.   Without a front light source I was too dark to see, so I tried to light myself with two very bright flashlights and that was pretty much a failure.  The composition is pretty awful as well, as I am standing central and static in front of the temple and not engaging with my surroundings, sort of an alien tourist at the temple image.

I was trying to achieve this “many armed goddess” thing by dragging the light over my arms in different places; it kind of worked, and might be great in the future but not here.  By the time I started to explore, the light was gone and we were going to be late for The Man burn.  We abandoned the shoot, and I came away from the burn without any new images.  Disappointing in retrospect, but sometimes that is just the way of things. These are the results: nothing special, but as this blog is not only about success but the learning process I feel the need to post what I captured.  (No worries though, the next shoot kicks ass!)  Click on the images for a larger view.


The Suspicious August Full Moon

So, I guess is deserve a spanking.  I have had three photo shoots since the last time I posted, but no blogging.  Sometimes life (Burning Man) gets in the way, but I am back and I will try to share some insights on each shoot.

The “Make Mistakes” crew held the August full moon party, up Left Hand Canyon, just above Boulder, CO.  The party was about an hour and a half drive from my house in Denver and turned out to be quite the debacle of a night.  I arrived to a dark disorienting scene of tents, people, bonfires, and loud house music scattered though a shadowy aspen grove.  Winding through the whole area was a small, shallow stream.  I had been really sick all week and was finally starting to feel better, so I thought going out for a few hours would be harmless.

I rolled my camera bag, the quarter mile from my car, down the pavement to the entrance and stashed it under a tree.  My initial explorations led me down a well-worn footpath that followed the edge of the stream away from the party.  Moonlight was filtering through the Aspens and pooling on the forest floor in a way that made my eyes jump and have a hard time adjusting to the darkness.  I felt dizzy and light headed.  Soon, I had wandered far enough to no longer hear the music, and was mostly alone except for the occasional explorative partier like myself.  The area was strangely un-deserted and had some ax murderer hunting cabins and a 60’s geodesic dome house, complete with barking dog.  I felt all the hairs on my neck stand on end as I passed.

Eventually, I heard the sound of a small waterfall, and knew I had found the place for which I was looking.  Earlier that week, I had seen the proof sheet of new work my collaborator Aloyse Blair had just created in the Adirondacks.  She was naked in a waterfall, and had done some long exposure stuff with her pinhole camera.  I returned to the party, retrieved my equipment, and quickly found myself laying naked in a freezing mountain stream on a cool summer night.  The spot was shaded from the moon so I had to use some alternative light sources.   The flashlights I had kept flickering and slowly fading, so it was hard to get an accurate light reading.  Some of the images were ruined because the light completely went out during the shot.  After a few tries, I decided to put an orange filter on one of the lights just to add softness to the image.

Once I was thoroughly freezing, and could not take the cold any longer, I dressed in green and headed off to do some pure moon light shots.  I found a small meadow further up and created the forest nymph series.  These images were pretty much exactly what I know how to do, so they were easy to create once I decided how I wanted them to look.

After I finished shooting, I felt clear and fresh.  All of the disorientation had vanished, and I was light and focused.  I found some friends and went to dance.  Soon I was hot enough to take off my jacket and boogie down.  A few minutes later I looked over to see that my jacket had vanished.  My car keys were in the pocket.  I spent the rest of the night futilely searching in the dark for a black jacket.  I was flashing everyone who walked by, hoping someone had accidentally borrowed my nice North Face.  My night of a few hours ended with the sunrise.  As it grew light, I sat down in a fancy camping chair at the entrance to scope out the patrons as they left, hoping for a glimpse of my coat.  After a little while, I started to fidget with stuff in the built in cup holders.  I looked down and there were my car keys and my glasses.  Only in Boulder can you go to a full moon party and get your jacket stolen, but the thief is kind enough to leave you your keys and glasses behind.  Needless to say, I got sick again.

Valdovino, Spain or Surfing with the Seekers

Back In Madrid, I think I could live here.  This is such a sweet city.  I have been out on the Celtic coast of Galicia for the past week, surfing with my old friend Marilyn Poon at the Seeker Surf Camp.  It felt so good to be in the water again (even if we did have to wear full wetsuits).  Getting into Madrid was such a temperature shock today.  Galicia is pretty cold and windy for the most part, and today it was really a gloomy drizzly Irish day.  By contrast, Madrid is hot, I mean really hot, I think it was around 35c today.  This temperature thing really played into how few images I made while I was at the coast, not to mention I was totally exhausted after surfing all day.  There was also the daylight factor, as Galicia really does not get dark in the summer until 11:30 at night.  By that time, we were eating dinner and falling into bed, dead to the world.

I was feeling pretty lousy about not making any images, so last night I grabbed Marilyn, just at twilight and went out to the beach right in front of the house.  This big sandy beach is in the tiny town of Valdovino, and although that is what most people call this beach, its official name is Praia de Frouxeira.  The tides were swinging really high and low, and we just happened to be out there during low tide, so we were able to get some really nice images with the reflections in the tide pools on the sand.  Not to mention that we were able to get really close to the tiny island of Percebelleira.  Known for this strange edible barnacle, the Percebes, or “pinky finger.”  I missed out on trying this delicacy, but maybe when we are back up north in the Basque country, I will run across a few.

It felt good to be on the beach, and it was actually the warmest night of all.  For which I was very thankful.  I think we got some really nice images, and I am happy with the outcome.  I even reverted back to what I have now deemed the “ghost dances.”  I have had some resistance to these images, but I am really drawn to them.  I like getting out there, dancing and moving, it feels so natural and yet ritualistic.  They are not nearly as static as some of my images, which have a different kind of rooted strength.

Tomorrow my sister comes, and I have no idea if I will be making many more images on this trip.  We shall see.  (P.S. If you don’t already know, just click on the images to get a full sized view)

The Episcopal Chapel at the General Theological Seminary

Well, It has been almost a week since we did this, and I now know why I always try to write these things the next day.  Alas, here I sit in a train station in Salamanca, Spain on my way to Madrid, I have a few hours to kill (I totally missed my train), and I need to get our final New York shoot on the web.

So, after the Times Square debacle, we shot on campus at the General Theological Seminary.  This was one of our favorite evenings, and we really wanted to come back and shoot in the chapel.  I was hesitant to just go in there and start shooting, because in general we make the places we use sacred by the act of being there.  This is a spot that is already sacred to many and I wanted to give it the respect it deserves.  So we had our good friend and student at the school, Mac Brown, send a note to the higher ups asking permission to use the chapel.  We were warmly welcomed.

The chapel is Episcopalian and was built in the late 1800’s.  It is warm, inviting, and smells of old books.  It is really wonderful place for contemplation and a very special place to make art.  Aloyse has been working for the Episcopal Church for a few years now, and has been following her own path with their guidance.  I think for her, getting the chance to make art in a personally sacred place was really important.  We had a lot of fun working with Mac Brown.  As I have almost never attended church services and did not know any of the traditions, he helped us with a lot of the staging.

We started buy creating several images of our own design, the most successful being the act of bowing to each other and ourselves with respect and devotion.   Next, we approached the altar as if receiving communion, and then did a version of the lector reading to the seminarians.  The final image was Mac’s idea and involves the Orante.  This is an ancient position of prayer, the Orante referring specifically to the female with her arms out stretched and palms raised to the heavens.

This was such a nice shoot to wrap up three weeks of hard work.  I am now on my own without a partner in crime.  I am planning on working a lot, but there is nothing like the act of collaboration to inspire great work.  If I am not traveled out, I might stop in NYC on my way home for another two weeks and a few more chances to make art with my bestie.  We shall see… “God willing,” as they say.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For some reason this project seems like an endless series of follies. Last time it was the tripod, this time I had to race across NYC in a pouring rainstorm because I forgot the extra battery, and in the next post I will forget part of our costumes, forcing us to be kind of naked in an Episcopal Chapel (more on that in the next post).  I wonder what that brings to the project?  Obviously it creates a bit of tension and forces us to have even greater time constraints.  Yet why are we always running into these kinds of issues?  Its not like we are rookies at this, and yet we never seem to have it completely together.

Somewhere deep inside, I know that this is who we are, Aloyse and I.  We are spontaneous, and creative, and always on the edge of not having it completely together.  This is not necessarily a negative trait, because it forces us to be resourceful.  In turn, I believe this allows us to create beautiful images in often less than optimal conditions, and gives the project a more human feel.  We are not setting out to create over perfect advertizing-esque images.  There is something so much more authentic about two friends coming together, night after night, to create art.  It is not a perfect process, but is an honest process.

On this day, we met at New York’s famous Metropolitan Museum of Art.  This museum is such a treasure.  Everything about it is just brilliant, from the staging to the actual works of art.  With a little help from our wonderful friend Jennette Mullaney, we were able to bring in a tripod and photograph at will around the museum.  What a treat!  Even with the battery shenanigans, we were able to get a lot of work done.

We brought some white dresses and some draping fabric because our intension was to shoot with the marble sculptures.  We quickly found that the museum is very popular on a summer Friday and hard to shoot without getting other people in the images.  In fact, one of our biggest problems is drawing crowds.  In every public shoot, others have surrounded us, taking photos and asking quesions.  This unnerves me a bit, but Aloyse seems right at home.   This shoot was no exception.  I mean who can resist taking photos of girls doing fake ballet in the Met?

The Highline

I’m not really sure what my problem was last night.  Maybe it was the full moon, maybe it was the fact that I have not slept in my own bed in weeks, or maybe I was just being crabby.  Nonetheless, when we got to our shooting sight last night and I realized that Alyose’s tripod’s quick plate was practically welded onto my camera, and would not work with my new tripod, I started cursing like a sailor, and tried to give up on the shoot.  Aloyse would have none of it!  She made me rig up the camera with books, Luna bars, eyeglass cases, and we actually got a few really nice shots, despite my lack luster attitude.

Last night we shot out on the new Highline Park, an elevated abandoned train trestle, turned walking park, through the Chelsea neighborhood.  This beautiful new addition to the city makes for great views, and a lovely shooting backdrop.  The full moon behind herringbone clouds in the background was not too shabby either.  I really want to return to this space for a re-shoot, as I feel like we could greatly expand what we started (especially with a tripod). Unfortunately, I am leaving NYC in 4 days, to head to Spain for a month, and we have a pretty full schedule until then that does not include re-dos.  It is possible that I will be returning here for an extra two weeks when I get back from Spain, we shall see.

We ended the night with some white wine at the Drunken Horse and continued the theme of ‘drinking with friends is the greatest art of all.’  Taking over the back of the bar, and generally irritating our polish bartender, Aloyse, Mark and I did a bit of musical chairs for the camera. A special thanks goes out to all of our collaborators last night, Mark Schultze, JP Magenis, and Justine Evans.

The General Theological Seminary or the Times Square Debacle

We met at Times Square for the second time, to no avail.  That place is damn hard to shoot.  Noisy, crowded, bright lights and dark spots, enough neon to simulate true daylight at night, working there is an effort in futility.  We are tiny, just another attraction, as tourists take our photos we become part of the madness.  We walk away feeling defeated.  We got no good images from the shoot, nothing even worth putting up here.  It feels so depressing.  We insist that we will return, that we will get the shot, but I wonder.  Maybe sparkly dresses will help.

Then at 11:30pm we decide to head across the street to the campus of the General Theological Seminary.  We have the keys.  We let the dogs off their leashes to play on the lush green grass, a magical oasis on this gritty island.  The school once owned most of the area, I think 140 acres, or what is all of Chelsea.  Now it is just an enclosed city block, with dorms in the surrounding area.  We needed a re-do, a confidence builder, a reminder that yes we can make beautiful, meaningful images, that Times Square had not sucked out or souls.

We donned our new matching dresses, and carried candles on to the close.  This felt so safe, so natural, so relaxed, and so easy.  We effortlessly, began our process of creating, of using light and location.  Obviously, it is easier to create in such a beautiful quiet environment, but shooting there versus Times Square made us think about the nature of the work we were creating.  What we do has such an inherent spiritual quality, for us and for the resulting images.  I think shooting in Times Square, the epicenter of consumer culture, really drains that spirituality away from us.  Where as shooing on a theological campus inherently fills us up with that mysticism.

Does this mean we should abandon Times Square?  That we should shoot in only sacred spaces?  I am not sure, but I really don’t think so.  I think that Times Square, like any trial by fire, pushes us to our limits, to the nature of our faith.  It has not happened yet, but I think if we can make strong and meaningful images there, it will be a great accomplishment.  We must now think of the ritual, the dance that can protect us from the overwhelming nature of Times Square.

Meanwhile, we have this…which basically rocks: