Photo Remembrance

Consider this a photographic tip of the hat to a long time friend and business partner who passed away unexpectedly last year. Kevin Arner was a serial entrepreneur I had worked with for years. He had a gift for strategic thinking and business strategies, building several successful companies in the healthcare informatics space.

He had a lovely family and a big heart, working tirelessly to expand the reach of his church overseas. One such effort had him planning the expansion of an Eastern European church and then traveling there to help with the effort. Another took him to India where he subsisted on breakfast bars for weeks.

Photography was something we shared so it seems appropriate to remember him here by sharing a few images he had particularly liked. His big talent was photographing birds, so I was surprised when he first commented on the photo above of a young great blue heron.

The story behind the image was always a part of our discussions along with questions about lighting, exposure, lens, etc. This early morning image was taken from a kayak near a heron rookery on an island in a North Georgia lake. The young heron had dropped to a spot below it's nest, which sat atop a towering pine tree. Testing the waters, so to speak.

I was in a kayak with my camera. The approach was slow and deliberate, using the current to drift, not paddle, at an angle toward him.

What attracted Kevin to the image was the low, eye-level angle, the close proximity and the narrow field of focus. The heron's legs and the feet caught his eye as well. When I captured this image I was just a few feet away, so close that a 100 mm lens was all that was needed.

This second image was another that intrigued Kevin. It is a golden hour shot, taken just before sunset at a place called Zabriski Point in Death Valley. It was a clear fall day with just a few high altitude clouds.

The photograph is actually a composite of several images stitched together in post processing. Its a technique you can use to maintain a perspective that is otherwise lost with a wide angle lens. The appeal to Kevin was color toning, the composition, and how river- like the scene appears, notwithstanding it being all rock and sand.

This image from Utah was the inspiration for plans to photograph the night sky together last year. It was the only photographic skill I had that he didn't.

We didn't make it. First, I was sidelined by a with a bad surgical issue and, then, he passed from a first time heart attack. He would have been very good at this once he learned the tricks.

The appeal of the photo? I think it is the bright clarity of the Milky Way, the remoteness of the surroundings, and the hint of a photographer in the foreground with his equipment pointed at the galaxy. It was unseasonably cold that night with little breeze and crystal clear skies.

All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.