[Photography] with Jill Boyles

[KELP JOURNAL] Jill, you and I had a bit of a conversation about the theme of your photographs. Tell me why you choose to focus on water? What does it mean to you?

[JILL BOYLES] Water can be explosive. All that relentless kinetic energy hurtling itself against rocks and cliffs. It’s spellbinding to watch. Unless you’re a seagull. I imagine the seagull in one of my photos shown here playing a sort of rock, paper, scissors game with the wave. Who do you think won? While holding the idea it is explosive, water is sublime in its quietude. The dark, still water pooling around cypress knees under crowns of rich, green leaves. The silent, slight ripples – the only signal of an alligator coolly approaching. A mirror-like presence where one’s orientation is questioned. Am I looking at mountains or a reflection? At the end, water is a life source. Let’s value it, keep it clean, not waste it.

[KJ] Photographing water is so beautiful but also difficult. Do you have any tips or tricks that you use to capture the essence of water in still?

[JB] I play around with shutter speeds, focal lengths and positions, such as standing, crouching, lying on the ground, climbing up boulders, etc., but really, it’s about what attracts me. When I walk around with my camera, I pay attention to water but at the periphery. In other words, I don’t seek to take water photographs but rather tuck that thought in the back of my mind while I absorb my surroundings. When I do take a photo, my mind goes through different angled shots and how I will interpret what I see in them. Do I want a busy background? If so, what will this add to the subject? Are there leading lines or natural framing I can take advantage of? I then look at the photo I just took and the histogram so I can adjust for a better shot. If my camera is in burst mode, I look at the last shot. Photographing water is tricky at times because of how light bounces off the surface, leaving the photo to feel/look otherworldly or strange, but this can make for provocative imagery. Another tip is do as much in the field as possible. Some photographers think the magic happens in post processing, but for me, it’s in the field that has a felt experience I carry with me when I edit the photo later.

[KJ] I know that you are an avid nature photographer and that you often use black and white images versus color ones when shooting. Can you talk about your choice to use color vs. black and white?

[JB] I love black and white photography. How emotions intersect in shadow and light. How the objects arranged in space carry the emotional weight of a subject. How my emotions inform my reading of a photo. Black and white photography is striking and nuanced. It’s arresting in a way that color photography cannot bring to the table. With color photography, though, colors reach out to me, shake me to feel a certain way whether that’s using a color incongruent with the subject of the photo--for example, a calming green with a car accident--or using color to root the viewer in subtext that a black and white photo cannot do. Color not only foregrounds emotion but also the senses. I hear the slap of a wave against a boat. I smell the pungent, humid dampness of a bog. I feel the smoothness of rock polished by water’s patient and persistent shifting of motion over it. With both color and black and white photography, I’m navigating a story, and I absolutely love that.

[KJ] Every photographer’s origin story is unique. What drew you to photography and how did you get your start?

[JB] My father drew me to photography. As a girl, I watched him with his old Nikon camera line up a shot, press the shutter button, advance the film, line up another shot. He captured something situated between memory and fact and that intrigued me. It was mystical. My dad’s father was a photographer (Argus Cs) and, among other areas of photographic interest, would take occasions to line up his six kids from oldest to youngest to snap their photo – a tradition carried on many years later at family reunions long after he had died. My mother’s father, too, was a photographer. We still have my grandpa’s Kodak Folding Pocket Brownie. It would be too easy to say that photography is in the blood. It’s more like being exposed to photography at an early age and later, after my children were grown, I had the emotional and mental space to explore photography and build my skills. In those in-between years, I felt a twinge of envy when someone said they were a photographer because that was what I wanted to be. And now I’m doing it. It’s never too late until it is. So, get going!

[KJ] I am always curious what makes different photographers take a shot. What is it you see that makes you click the shutter?

[JB] Oh, good question! How to explain the ineffable? I could be shooting beautiful nature scenes all day and not feel positive about any of the shots. Then there are times when my family is doing something mundane like my kids clacking away on their laptops or my husband walking our dog or I see a scrap of paper on a dirty, gum-trodden sidewalk. In these moments, I think, If only I had my camera!

Jill Boyles' photography has appeared in such places as The AutoEthnographer, Cargo Literary, ArtHouston, and Cold Mountain Review. Her website is jillboylesphotographer.com.