Snow Melt: The Merced River in Spring

Posted By John Chabalko on May 20th, 2008

Late last year I decided that i was going to participate in National Solo Photo Book Month an excellent project organized by Paul Butzi.

I spent a good deal of time over the coming months brainstorming on topics and coming up with several ideas that i thought could be successful. What once had been a quite erratic work schedule has settled down lately allowing me a little more freedom with this project. Of course I decided to do it in May (there was an open 2 month period to complete the project starting April 1 and ending May 31 during which you could choose your own 3[0,1] day period to create the book). Of course during the month of May my work schedule became more erratic, and a couple of previously scheduled trips occupied a couple of prime shooting weekends.

Fortunately I get bored quickly when i have bits of free time and have been working on a different (unrelated) photography project. As the timing around my book projects sort of fell through I’m going to use the images for my other project for this book. I still have a bunch of work to do on my book but the images are shot and the film developed and scanned so i can start to share them with you. This project is an ongoing effort I started a few years ago and have no plans on formally ending anytime soon. As such bits of it can (hopefully) stand on their own.

There is no concise story that this photo book intends to tell but rather it will serve as a short portfolio of (at times abstract) interpretation of the springtime in Yosemite. Over the course of the next several posts I’ll try to describe the situation around these images and the 2 short but relatively productive sessions that produced them.

One theme of spring I’ve been working on for a while is flowing water. The Merced River is nearly a perfect subject and the way the water surges through the boulders creates some spectacular textures whether exposed for an instant or over the course of several minute; this first image is an example of the latter.