savannah photographic workshop

“No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.” Dr. David Livingston

The Falls are at least as spectacular as you may have heard. The Zambezi River is the dividing line between Zambia (on the right here) and Zimbabwe. About five miles above the Falls the river channel starts widening, a little like a river delta, and calmly (deceptively) winding around small islands until it finds the gorge and tumbles in thunderously, then to follow an eroded meandering channel, on through Mozambique, and into the Indian Ocean.

There is a walking path on the ridge line opposite the Falls, and the views are worth the continuous shower from the mists billowing up, but for a photographer it was a little frustrating. I could not find an angle that came close to showing the volume and power of the flowing water, and even when I did see a potential shot, the ebb and flow of the heavy mist-clouds always obscured some portion of the scene.

We took the boat ride on the river above the Falls, but, as pleasant as it was for a way to enjoy a sunny afternoon, obviously there is no Falls photo from above the gorge, unless you go too close to the edge. No thank you. I quit thinking that holding a camera made me invincible sometime in my 30’s, a very long time ago.

For getting something close to a comprehensive view, a helicopter did the trick, but with little feel for the thunder, the pounding reverberating through your body, in your bones, when facing the cataract, soaking wet; an aural battering negating any other sound or sensation.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

One of the great pleasures of photography for me is fleeting, found images. It’s the challenge of not only seeing possibilities converging, but reacting fast enough to catch the shot: getting the right camera position, lens, exposure settings, the peak moment; all done more with fluid muscle memory than conscious thought. It’s my version of sport hunting.

I had a free day before our workshop started and spent hours just walking the city, from breakfast until after midnight. Several times I stepped into a shop to ask for directions and was usually encouraged to catch a cab. Maybe Romans don’t walk, but it was easy, like Paris, and it was the best way to experience the place, even the hazardous pedestrian crossings on some of the busy roundabouts.

Going back to the same location several times during the day (Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, The Forum) offered different takes as the light moved and redrew the description of the spaces, plus, in the morning, local foot traffic; later in the day, tourist hordes multiplied by lots of tacky trinket street vendors; late at night, lovers. My favorites: The Forum for people watching, and Galleria Borghese. I could sit and study Bernini sculptures for hours. I am in awe of how he could create flesh and flexing muscle tone under clothing, from stone.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted….” Ecclesiastes 3, 1-2; King James version (or The Byrds if you prefer)

Savannah has an extensive urban forest, dominated by old oak trees. These trees have survived wars and hurricanes, the invention of the automobile and the airplane (and help protect us from some of the side effects of that). Many of them were planted when it would have taken less than 30 minutes to walk across the City, a city that is now over 100 square miles in area.

So, it is not frequent, but not surprising to spot the sad green tag, an obituary, posted on a tree, informing a neighborhood that damage, disease, or just age requires the City to safely remove it. I understand, I accept, but for a while, walking through that square, I will see the gap and have a visceral sense of something elemental missing.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” Greek proverb.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

Of all the hotel rooms, in so many places, over the years of traveling for work, this was the first time, only time, the room had a free-standing door. “Room” might be an inaccurate word here.

During those years of traveling, I had some very nice surprises in lodging, a place better than expected, or a serious upgrade. I was overnight in Las Vegas to meet some folks to head out to Death Valley and had a reservation at Caesar’s Palace for the gathering spot. The hotel was overbooked and offered me a very attractive package if they could just buy me a room somewhere else that evening, but it was our convening place so I had to decline. Then they gave me one of the suites (seriously, it had more square footage than my home) they reserve for the high-rollers, requiring me to agree that I would only stay one night. I can’t imagine they thought they would have any trouble dislodging me if I tried to stay, so it was easy to say yes.

Barbara and I had just finished leading a photo safari in Tanzania and were treating ourselves to a few days R & R on Zanzibar. I don’t remember how we came to reserve this place; all we knew was it was a little larger room, but not the biggest. We arrived at Emerson & Green’s and discovered a group of buildings with rambling, interweaving, connecting corridors and stairwells and, following our check-in host, came out on an open rooftop, with this free-standing door. He opened it and the bridge to the other rooftop was the entrance to our room–cross, turn right, three steps down.

The green roof on the right was the large bedroom, with fourposter bed (and mosquito netting that worked), all in lush, dark wood, and cool shadows. There was an open courtyard sitting area and the green roof on the left was “the facilities,” which included a large stone tub that extended partially into the bougainvillea-roofed space. There was even a mosque nearby, and the tinny loudspeaker’s call to prayer several times a day became part of the sensory experience.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

A friend asked if I would photograph her destination wedding, in Jamaica. Yes. Barbara and I stayed in the resort facility with the couple’s friends and family and photographed the various activities, formal and incidental.

After the last of the goodbyes, and all departed, Barbara and I headed to the other side of the island for a few extra days, to what sounded like a fun, quiet getaway place, next to the beach. This was December, and being able to bask on the sand for a little while felt great. I really liked the place. Interesting island architecture, vibrant colors, vegetation on the verge of taking over, giving everything a “back to the garden” feeling. I could have wandered around the place photographing it for days, as the light continuously changed the landscape.

The problem was that an opening in the mosquito netting allowed a swarm of very small biting critters into the bed overnight; bugs with the discriminating taste to only bite Barbara, and not me, for whatever reason. Based on her misery the next day, they must have been ferocious in their attack. I don’t think I will ever get her to go back to Jamaica.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

The shape of military grave markers will vary from culture to culture, but the common denominator in each military cemetery is the endless, numbing repetition of those markers, receding to a vanishing point at the horizon.

I have heard several variations on the story, but broadly, in 1868, a group of Southern women laying flowers on Confederate graves decided to also honor the Union dead, left so far from home. Word of this got around and the conciliatory nature of the act led to a poem by Frances Miles French, “The Blue and the Gray,” the last stanza of which is:

“No more shall the war cry sever,
    Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
    When they laurel the graves of our dead!
        Under the sod and the dew,
            Waiting the judgment-day,
        Love and tears for the Blue,
            Tears and love for the Gray.“

Memorial Day became a national remembrance for all those who made the ultimate sacrifice. That story reminded me of seeing this military cemetery near Ho Chi Minh City, for thousands of Viet Cong dead, with a bench for resting, placed by American soldiers who fought them there.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

Growing up in the exurban Savannah area, I lived in a world of green–lots of trees large and small, forests and tree farms–and blue–skies, and water from rivers to marsh to ocean. In the 1950s, my formative years, the morality tales of the day were disguised as western motif books, movies, and TV shows, most often scripted with a White Hat/Black Hat ethical simplicity. Maybe some of our complications today derive from a failure to teach ambiguity.

That sort of philosophizing, though, is from later in life, looking back. At the time, the lens of that genre was showing me something else, an alien landscape that was often red or purple or brown, with vast expanses of open space, and great variations in elevation, with supernatural flora. I was fascinated by the western landscape. I longed to see it, be in it.

Now, all these years later, I have had many opportunities to see much of it, in its many forms–deserts to buttes, canyons to mountains, Death Valley to Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon to the Tetons, Devil’s Tower to Custer’s last stand–and I am still fascinated by it, but the real experiences of it have taught me something the passive viewing could never have driven home. It can be a long way between water, even with a motorized vehicle and a multitude of gas station/convenience stores, and how dangerous and unforgiving a place it can be. Also, growing up in the high humidity of the southeast, I sometimes feel I must have grown hidden gills to adapt to breathing moisture. The result is that, in the arid air of the southwest, I can do about a week before my dry, cracking skin becomes rough and sometimes painful.

We all live with a point of view, and having that flipped upside down can be good for the soul, but a little bruising to the ego.

I was leading a small group photography workshop in Monument Valley, with a Navajo guide. As we chatted we discovered we had served in the military about the same time, me in the Army, he in the Marine Corps, based at Camp Lejuene, NC. He said he was glad to get out and get back home; I understand the draw of “home” no matter what or where, but I also heard some dislike of North Carolina in his comments, and asked why. He said, “Too many trees. Out here, I can see what’s coming from a long way off.”

I get that.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

She would have been 17 or 18 when she made this photograph, a “pin up” for her soldier, so far away in India. At 16 she had met and married a soldier from Buckingham Field, an Army Air Corps airfield just outside Fort Myers. He was 26. I’m sure some eyebrows were raised, but, true to their vows, only death parted them, and, by their beliefs, reunited them.

When Dad got his orders for India he was first sent to Maine, then NYC, and then Miami Beach, after starting in Fort Myers. Mom immediately made plans to get there and stay until he left, taking the Greyhound (or it might have been Trailways) to Miami. But she missed the last shuttle to the beach for the evening.

(In hindsight it doesn’t seem like it was that long of a list, but Mom had a few “absolutely not, under any circumstances” scenarios set down for me. Hitchhiking was high up the list.)

So, stuck in Miami in the early evening, in a town full of servicemen heading off to war, she stuck out her thumb. A 2nd Lt. driving a convertible stopped and picked her up, drove her to where she knew Dad was hanging out, went inside, and said, “Sgt. Durrence I have something for you outside.”

They got a room, and wound up having a few more weeks together; he would report for duty every morning. She knew he was shipping out the night he didn’t come home, but they managed to say goodbye through the post fence, and then didn’t see each other again for almost a year and a half, until the war was over.

Happy Mothers’ Day Mom.

For some of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

One of the various newsletters and digests I read most days is “The Free Press” on Substack. I like it well enough to pay a voluntary subscription fee. Articles most days are from a variety of individuals and viewpoints, usually informative even when I don’t agree, but my favorite two days are regular features–on Friday Nellie Bowles does a recap of the week’s articles, with just the right (to me) balance between humor, snark, and just flat out calling BS sometimes, and on Sunday Douglas Murray does “Things Worth Remembering,” about poetry.

Today’s (Sunday 5/7/2023) poem “The Truly Great” was from Stephen Spender, about whom Murray says, “If his own poetry has any life after him, it will probably be this single poem. Which is fine. One poem is more than most people will leave behind. Perhaps it is appropriate that a poem about great poets should come from someone who must have known he was not among their number.”

It reminds me of my admiration for artists of all media who resist the efforts the world throws at them to make them normal, whatever that means to them, whatever it costs them.

“I think continually of those who were truly great.

Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history

Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,

Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition

Was that their lips, still touched with fire,

Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.

And who hoarded from the Spring branches

The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget

The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs

Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.

Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light

Nor its grave evening demand for love.

Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother

With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,

See how these names are fêted by the waving grass

And by the streamers of white cloud

And whispers of wind in the listening sky.

The names of those who in their lives fought for life,

Who wore at their hearts the fire’s center.

Born of the sun, they traveled a short while toward the sun

And left the vivid air signed with their honor.“

For more photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

“Sunshine on My Shoulders”

“Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high

If I had a day that I could give you
I’d give to you a day just like today
If I had a song that I could sing for you
I’d sing a song to make you feel this way” John Denver

The location for this photograph is Morrell Park, near the Waving Girl statue, along the riverfront in downtown Savannah. It’s about three blocks from my home, which means if I want to schedule a sunrise photo expedition for a group, that’s the place which will offer me the shortest travel time, and the most sleep before I have to head out into the dark.

Around the turn of the century I taught a number of small group photography workshops in Savannah. With a little driving time, there are lots of sunrise options–beach, marsh views–but if staying downtown, where our workshop hotels were usually, the riverfront is the handiest clear sight line to a visible horizon. So it was really for the convenience of my clients. Yes, that too, but there was a more important, and more subtle, reason.

The park is (or was; lots of new construction in the area these days, and a shrinking public view of the river) pretty simple: a grassy area, a few trees, the Waving Girl, the Weston Hotel reflection, the river, and the sun rising downriver. I scheduled the groups to shoot sunrise at this location at least twice, to experience how the same place could look very different with a little change in the light and atmospherics. I photographed sunrise from that spot dozens of times and it never felt repetitive. Having the same ostensible subject matter each visit made it easier to notice how the light changed it. What most often makes a photograph interesting is not the subject, but the way the light is describing it. A corollary to that is, never put off making the photograph. If it looks good to you now, you cannot do “this” photograph later. If it looks better later, shoot that, then.

For more photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index