Colby Lysne's Blog

Jul 27, 2012

Friday Afternoon Drill...

Inspired by one of my favorites...

Jul 19, 2012

Personal Work - Winter Depression...

If you have been on my site lately you may have recognized a couple new galleries of personal work. One of these bodies of work I call Winter Depression.

Winter Depression is a project I started back in 2001 in a very indirect but inspired way.

The image above was the first image ever produced for this project. At that time there actually was no project to speak of.

One particularly nondescript winter evening I had the urge to photograph this location I had passed many times on my way to playing in the Ozarks. There was a fog advisory and I felt that this was the time to finally photograph this landscape.

I had exposed 19 frames (2x rolls of 120 on Mamiya RZ) and wasn't really feeling it. When I moved the camera to compose the shot above I realized it became much less interesting when I brought it into focus. I racked it out of focus and fired one last frame.

The processed film and contact sheet sat on (or near) my desk for 4 years.

I was asked to enter a small body of work for a joint show and decided to use this as one of the images.

I liked it but wasn't sure why.

Over the course of the next few years I created other images in this vein and kept to the aesthetic. I had compiled a handful of images that were definitely of the same spirit but I struggled to find what that was.

Finally, after making a few images for the series a couple years ago, I realized what that spirit was; they were all made within a certain time of year.

I am, and have always been, an avid outdoorsman. As any outdoor type would know there is a short period (at least in the midwest) where hunting season has mostly passed, fishing season has not begun and the weather is too cold for a casual hike. This is the time Winter Depression sets in.

Making images outside at this time was my therapy, my excuse.