PDN - September 2012

Light Once. Shoot Twice.

Jokers deliver ;icker-free daylight to capture both stills and video on the same set, at the same time. They work just like a ;ash head. Their light shapers are incredible, and Jokers adapt to most of the re;ectors you’ve been using. Jokers are in rental across North America:

Calgary –– The Camera Store

Chicago –– Dodd Camera – ProGear

Cleveland –– Dodd Camera

Dallas –– Bolt Productions

Los Angeles –– Castex – Jaman – Milk Pier 59 – PIX – Siren – Samy’s

Miami –– OneSource – Splashlight

Minneapolis –– Flashlight Photorental

New York –– ARC – CSi – Drive In – Headlight Jack – K&M – Milk – Pier 59 – Root Brooklyn Scheimp;ug – TREC

Orlando –– Central Florida Strobe Rental

Phoenix –– Loft 19

San Francisco –– DTC Berkeley

Toronto –– S1 Group

Vancouver –– Beau Photo – Flashpoint

The newest of the Joker generation of daylight ;xtures, the 1600 is comparable to over 6000W of quartz output. All that power, and it still operates on a 15 amp 120v line!

The NEW Joker 1600

Add our Crossover Adapters to mount your favorite ;ash re;ectors.

See the full listing at K5600.com/crossover –– “Where to Rent” –– or call 540.937.2291

PDN Classified 20c.indd 1

EXPOSURES

question: Does the prairie long to be an inland sea again?

pdn: How did you determine where to go?

RN W: I would tend to start and end in my hometown in the southern Black Hills, Hot Springs, where I’d walk and wander and photograph some of my old haunts while visiting my parents. From there, I’d then drive to places in the state I’d never visited—such as the entire length of the Missouri River Valley and the Glacial Lakes region. In these unfamiliar landscapes, I’d often drive rather aimlessly along the back roads and stop only when I came across an image that intrigued me for some reason.

A few months after my brother died, one of the first images that spoke to me when I was most grief struck was a flock of some thousand blackbirds that moved like a single, dark, undulating, ravenous creature as it flew through the stormy, unsettled Western sky, picking clean the remains of the corn and sunflower fields in the last days of autumn.

pdn: In many of the images we are looking through something, or there is a reflection or a unique or confounding or even disorienting perspective. What roles do perspective and layering play in your images?

RNW: I photograph very intuitively. Looking at some of these disorienting photographs now—where it’s difficult to distinguish the background from the foreground, for instance—I realize that kind of confusion was very much a part of my grief, especially when I was most grief struck.

Those first months after my brother died, my dreams of him seemed more real than when I awoke to a world without him. Added to that, I wasn’t sleeping well and I was traveling alone in parts of South Dakota that I’d never visited. So that difficult time in my life was a blur of motel rooms, back roads and dreams of my brother.

During that time, I not only felt confused while photographing in South Dakota, but I also felt confused when I returned to Brooklyn [New York] to edit the film and to try to make sense of what I’d been doing. I remember showing the work to my friend [photographer] Eugene Richards, who at that time was traveling back and forth from Brooklyn to the Great Plains to work on his book The Blue Room. When he asked me how things were coming along with My Dakota, I told him I wasn’t sure what I was doing. He said to me in his soft, gentle voice, “Becky, sometimes confusion is good.”