Looking at COVID-19 through a different lens
By Lila Cohen, Social Media Editor
In a year for the record books, many people have begun to rethink how they view the world. COVID-19 has shifted perspectives across the globe, including the perspective of local photographer and resident optimist, Ray Pfortner.
“There are so many downsides [with the pandemic], but there [are] many silver linings too, one of [which] is discovering the value of home,” Pfortner said. “[COVID-19 has] really confirmed what I’ve believed for a long time. It’s so important to be locally aware, locally connected, and locally involved.”
This value of home has reflected itself in Pfortner’s photography. In the past 247 days that he has been home, Pfortner has developed a deeper appreciation for the many photography subjects right on his property.
“I’ve discovered the views from our deck… I look right at Browns Point, Tacoma, … and the mountains. [I’ve taken] so many photographs right on the property. [I’ve taken more this past year] than I took in the previous 26 years,” he said.
This photograph is of one of my very favorite places on Vashon – the fishing pier in Tramp Harbor. As a photographer who loves working at sunrise, the pier is perfect pointing as it points due east. As someone who loves fishing, I also appreciate that the pier allows someone who is mobility-impaired to go fishing with ease.
This photograph is tied with my other favorite of Tramp Harbor -an orange salmon fishing image I made also at sunrise, but in 1994, the year my wife and I moved to Vashon. I prefer vertical images when given a choice – for their energy and the fact that horizontals so outnumber verticals in photographs made with other than smartphones. (Ironically verticals are much more common in smartphone photography.) This photograph was taken 14 years after the other image, and reflects three key things: 1} a great alignment of the sunrise; 2) clouds like I have never seen before or since – one of the amazing parts of photographing out in nature; and 3) a new way of looking at a pier I had already photographed so many times over so many years – there is always a new angle to be found by a photographer, and certainly by another photographer!
Caption by Ray Pforter (edited by The Riptide for brevity).
Over the course of the pandemic, Pfortner has captured many flower photographs. This might come as a surprise to his students, as Pfortner is well-known at local colleges for not being the biggest fan of flower pictures.
“I’m actually renowned [at Bellevue College] for not liking flower photographs,” he said. “…Photographs of flowers [often] coast on the beauty of the flower and not good photographs. [Usually they are] simply another photograph of a tulip, and it [will] be like the one I saw yesterday and the one [I’ll] see tomorrow.”
I am not much of a fan of flower photography – by me or most anyone. My students get an earful about this bias. Why? Too many flower photographs simply coast on the beauty of their subject. Sunflowers are no exception. Definitely over photographed; definitely photographed the same way over and over again.
This sunflower was a volunteer among our deck pots. A happy surprise since we have had almost no luck planting sunflowers in the face of our birds and our rodents. I ended up documenting this one flower with many photographs made each day as the flower opened, ripened and died. All made with my smartphone, a close favorite to my main dSLR camera.
Caption by Ray Pforter (edited by The Riptide for brevity).
However, his perspective has shifted. In the opinion of Pfortner, maybe the value in flower photography is that it captures the significance of simple mundane beauty. It takes record of a subject that history can easily forget and captures a sharable moment that many will normally overlook.
Whispering Firs Bog is another Vashon Island gem. One of the last glacial bogs in all of King County. In all honesty, bogs are not particularly photogenic . Stunted trees, little contrast, not much drama. I tried from the ground. I tried from the air, chartering a plane as I often do for a different, unexpected perspective.
Then I came up with the idea of telling the Bog’s story by styling what was in front of my lens rather than simply accepting what is already there. I gathered up the fallen flowers of the 2 plants that are found only in these bogs – pink Bay Laurel (Kalmia polifolia) and white Labrador Tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum) – plus other key ingredients like lichens, fern fronds, winter-weathered leaves and cedar twigs and then arranged them all on the bog’s ubiquitous sphagnum moss.
This photograph accomplished what I had hoped it would: it and my Mileta Creek Rookery photograph taken earlier the same year helped purchase the rest of the bog property, saving it in perpetuity.
Caption by Ray Pforter (edited by The Riptide for brevity).
“We did a show on Vashon in the summer, the first show I had done since [the] pandemic started. It was a photography show at the VCA Performing Arts Center, and the theme was hope. What did I put in? Flowers. [I got to watch] a sunflower open day by day because I wasn’t rushing away from home, I was here watching it unfold in the deck… I think the key is [to] never take anything for granted, no matter how close or ordinary,” Pfortner said.
My love of nature photography and my drive to explore and discover my new Island home through my viewfinder quickly connected me to Rayna Holtz of the Vashon Audubon Society and she tipped me off to a jewel just a few miles from my home on Maury, a huge great blue heron (Ardea herodias) rookery with over 125 nests. I lay on my back and shot up into the alder tops to simplify the view, incorporate dynamic distortion and make the view as unexpected and abstract as possible.
Caption by Ray Pforter (edited by The Riptide for brevity).
According to Pfortner, COVID-19 has taught our society many lessons. Lessons that can only be considered silver linings if they are remembered, learned, and readily applied to our present reality.
“Remember the good and the bad [of the COVID-19 pandemic]. Remember the value of science, and don’t drift too far from that. Remember your neighbors, your neighborhood, and your family. Many of us [can] even take our families for granted if we’re not careful,” Pfortner said, “I think people have come to appreciate the people they live with, how fabulous our homes are, how secure they are, how important they are, how nurturing they are. I just hope we don’t forget that… we just have to work hard to be sure we don’t let it happen again, in part for lack of facts and lack of action. Imagine letting this [happen] 100 years from now, again.”
Visit Ray Pfortner’s photography at http://www.raypfortner.com/site/Home.html