Some Magical Light

This little tree resides in the community park near my house, where I walk most days near sunset after hard hours at the computer. Normally, this would be nothing to even turn my head for, but one day a few weeks ago, for a few fleeting moments as I was walking by, this beautiful light from the setting sun illuminated the tree against the colorful, wintery sky. This also was caught with my phone.. I truly regret I didn't have a "real" camera with me.. but hey, I think this is a lot better than nothing, even though it will be forever relegated to greeting card size prints.

Funny how it works.. sometimes you can travel a long distance, wait for hours for something to happen and then maybe it does, maybe it doesn't; other times you're just walking by and see something really incredible.. how often have YOU been in that situation and wanted to kick yourself for being unprepared?

Check out other beautiful skies from around the world or post your own at the SkyWatch home page.

Water Study (Part 2), and a New Series on Influential Artists

As promised in my previous Water Study post, here is another, completely different interpretation of the same subject, this time in color. Since it was a "local" subject and I was in no hurry, it was possible to spend more time than I normally might working a very limited area, trying to construct as many variations as possible from this little area of falls. It's not just one grand fall, but a series of cascades wandering all around the rocks and trees below a mountain lake, so there are certainly many different possibilities to be had. This type of "intimate landscape" leads me into a new subject I've been mulling over for a while: I would like to give mention to some of the greats of photography (and art) that have shaped my vision, as well as a few of the contemporary people whose work I admire. So I'm going to occasionally steer you to some different sites that I feel are worth visiting if you are at all interested in the masters that have paved the road to where we are today, or some current artists that are very worthy of attention.

Some of the people I have in mind are very well documented and represented on the web; at least one that I want to refer to is surprisingly hard to find, so I'll start with an easy one because I found an excellent website covering his work: Eliot Porter. Probably the first great color landscape photographer, his show,"Intimate Landscapes" in 1980 was the first one-man show ever of color photography at New York's Metropolitan Museum and he was one of the first masters to catch my imagination during my younger days in art school. I won't repeat a lot of info about him here, because this website is concise and full of samples.
I'll mention others as they come to mind, or seem to tie in with my own examples; probably mostly photographers, but some other types of artists too... as well as some fellow bloggers that I have found since I started doing this blog. I know that with photography in particular, lots of people have been taken up in a sudden fascination on the subject and haven't necessarily looked into the history of what got us here, so I hope I can turn a few of you on to some great work that might inspire you even further. And I would certainly love to hear back from anyone who has their own favorite masters or contemporaries that they would like to share.

Some Wine Country Colors

No special subject comes to mind today, so here is a simple scene I caught 5-6 years ago while on a morning walk in Napa Valley. I'm sure almost everyone in the world knows that this is California's premier wine growing region (if you throw in Sonoma and Mendocino, which are both adjoining counties) although there are many other smaller regions also making wine these days. Even here in southern California we have quite a few wineries. However, it's very tough to beat this area north of San Francisco for sheer beauty and rural atmosphere. Different than Europe, but very attractive in it's own way. Sonoma and Mendocino both run up along the rugged coastline and Napa is a bit more inland. There are many nice B&B's to stay in, excellent restaurants and great wine to sample everywhere you go. This shot, I believe, was taken in early December, after the harvest but before real "winter", if you want to call it winter at all around here. Not to be missed if you ever visit California.
Not really the best image quality here; I remember I shot it hand-held but don't recall what camera I had with me at the time... I've always liked this scene, though.

A Secret World

I was debating where to go this week (subject-wise) and finally decided that the canyon thing might be interesting to pursue further.  I usually prefer to discuss art rather than travel related stuff, but several people commented on my last post that they were unfamiliar with the subject of slot canyons and several others indicated their plans to seek out some themselves this year.  In light of that, I have to mention Antelope Canyon in Arizona, right near the border with Utah and at the base of Lake Powell, near the Glen Canyon dam.

Many serious nature photographers from all over the world know about this place and let me tell you, a whole lot of them make the pilgrimage to get here every year. It's the Mecca of slot canyons and unfortunately gets quite crowded most days.  It lies on Navajo Indian land, so you need to hire one of the several guide services that share rights to bring people in here. They will transport you from the little nearby town of Page, right up to the opening that you see here in the middle pic, then take you on through for a certain amount of time, depending on the tour you purchase. If you want to do any serious photography, you'll need to pay a little more for the 2 1/2 hour photo session that most of the guides offer. That will give you, besides enough time to work, a referee of sorts for your limited size group, and they will at least try to keep the other groups separated and out of your way in each of several good spots. The guide for my group even played an indian flute for us while inside to enhance the mood. Even so, you will need to be patient and a bit aggressive to get the good angles. Fortunately, the exposures in here are quite long, so even if someone walks through your shot while your shutter is open, (and they will) they'll show up little if at all. Sometimes the "ghost" effect is even kind of cool. Some of the more casual tourists are not too concerned about kicking up dust as they shuffle about, either. 

I believe they used to let people in here by themselves after paying a fee, but it got too crowded to manage that way and also there is the danger of flash flooding. Rain so far away that you don't even know it's falling can rush through here suddenly and it's all over if you happen to be inside, so they are careful about watching the weather.  In 1997, eleven tourists from France, Sweden and the U.K. were caught in the lower Antelope Canyon and drowned. One somehow managed to survive.

The upper, vertical shot is taken from outside, right at the entrance and you can see some people with their point and shoot cameras.. once again,  good for scale reference, although it gets much larger inside. Some spots are comfortably wide, others are very narrow, so hopefully you don't have claustrophobia! The larger, third image is actually far from one of my best from this shoot, but I think it is reasonably good at expressing what it's like inside this mysterious place. If you're lucky, you'll catch a sunbeam shining down from above onto the floor! 

A Change of Scene

After almost two weeks of concentrating on the ocean, feels like a good time to go in the opposite direction. I am fascinated with slot canyons; they are so awesome to hike through and make great photographic subjects at the same time. Can't ask for more than that. This one is known as Willis Creek and is somewhere out in the middle of nowhere in the Grand Staircase region of southern Utah, a bit east of Bryce Canyon. After 15 miles or so down a dirt road, you park by a little stream and actually follow the stream down into the canyon as the walls grow around you, like Alice down the rabbit hole. There are almost 2 miles of ever changing light and shapes as you follow on down; the stream eventually dies out, at least when I was there. These 2 backpackers are the only other people I saw during a whole afternoon of walking and shooting; they passed by as I was already set up, so I left them in the scene to give a sense of the scale.

A Nice Day by the Ocean (part five)

Sunset and beyond. Bringing this one day sequence to an end, I was debating if I should include this top one or not since it is pretty much the same time frame as the last post and fairly similar, but I guess it's different enough to be worth a look... and the sky is rather nice. The second shot was literally an afterthought; walking back to my car to head home, I still had my camera and tripod over my shoulder and for kicks decided to stop and shoot this last view which is well after sunset. Reviewing my "digital negatives", it was a really dark exposure and I had no intent to even process it, but with some spare time the other day I started to play with it and was fairly happy in the end, if only because it puts the whole setting for the previous shots in some perspective and adds just a touch of civilization at the end. Looking north toward the settled part of La Jolla Cove... you can see some high rise condos and the lifeguard station off there in the distance.
I was also able to work on some texture studies/abstracts of the rock patterns in between these other shots, but will save those for another day and end this series here... time to move on. All in all a very productive afternoon. Wish they were all so.

A Nice Day by the Ocean (part four)

Getting to the fun part now - almost sunset, but a little darker than it would normally be due to the heavy cloud cover.  No complaints though, since a dark, ominous sky is often the ideal for this kind of scene.  If any, my gripe would be that the weather is too nice around here most of the time. The slight crack right on the horizon allowing some color to come through really makes it for me, whereas if it was all dark gray it wouldn't have been nearly as interesting. I guess I could have chosen an even longer exposure and completely softened out the ocean, but kind of like seeing a little shape left in the waves.

I've shot this area late in the day many times, but there are so many possible variables with the tide, waves, weather, etc., that it always ends up looking completely different.

A Nice Day by the Ocean (part three)

Continuing on another 30 minutes or so, what I have here is essentially two versions of the same subject in two different kinds of light. The first is very soft and low contrast while the light was being filtered through the clouds, and the second has a lot more definition as the sun managed to peak out near the horizon and create a really nice side-lighting effect and also give that beautiful russet color typical of the late afternoon. The gulls were cooperative subjects, posing nicely while I was shooting away with the light changing almost moment by moment. Still haven't decided which of these I prefer; I'll be interested in which gets the better reaction. To me, the second, besides the nice light, has more depth although I like the atmosphere of the first also.
I actually have several more decent variations on this one which I won't bore you with; eventually I'll pick the one I feel works best overall.

A Nice Day by the Ocean (part two)

Just one for today, since this image kind of stands alone in my time sequence. About 45 minutes later in the day than the two in my previous post, the sun is low enough to give the sky a bit of color now, when not covered by the clouds. The soft light gives the blues and yellows a pleasing pastel-like look. You can see from the water action that the exposure is getting longer, too. When reviewing the thumbnail images right out of the camera, as shot, I almost passed on this one as it looked kind of flat and uninteresting due to the low contrast, but with just some quick correction to the levels and a touch of saturation, it became one of my favorites of the set.

A Nice Day by the Ocean (part one)

It came to me that even though I live just a few minutes from the coast, I haven't yet posted any seascapes here, mostly because I haven't done any recently and haven't been thinking about it much. So, a Sunday afternoon with nothing else to do was the excuse I needed to head down to my favorite spot south of La Jolla Cove, especially since we were between large storms here in southern California and I hoped that some good stuff might be happening with the waves and the sky (I used to fly sailplanes for fun and you get pretty good at judging the weather when you're into soaring). Turned out that I was right... some pretty impressive breakers were riding in and the clouds were doing nice things to the light. Also, it was low tide when I got there, so was able to get out on the rocks and use them for my foreground, which is essential if you can manage it without getting soaked.

Shooting here is a much more dynamic situation than the usual landscape where everything is more or less static. The waves are changing second by second, along with the light, there are gulls flying in and out of the frame and the water flowing over the rocks actually varies the composition constantly without even moving. You have to be careful not to get dumped on by the occasional larger-than-expected wave, also.

The whole afternoon, I don't think I wandered more than 200 yards in any direction but was able to come up with at least a dozen distinct and different images. I think it might be interesting to post a series of the best ones over the next week or two as a study in how much variation lighting and framing can produce without actually changing the subject very much at all. The progression from mid-day light to sunset and beyond is pretty striking.

A Bit Closer to Home

I often end up traveling quite a distance to find the spots where I am inspired to work seriously, but this is one of my favorites and just a few minutes from where I live. You wouldn't expect to find such a wild looking place literally in the middle of one of the country's largest cities, but we are blessed with some fine natural areas here in San Diego. This location can be found just a Tiger Woods drive or so beyond the North Torrey Pines golf course (on TV, Feb 2-9, Buick Invitational), in Torrey Pines State Park. I come here often to just to hike and enjoy the view out over the ocean and as you can see... it's a rich area for artists and photographers.
I've shot this particular spot a number of times, but on this day we had an incoming storm and I knew from experience that the sky and light were going to be ideal. I almost missed my opportunity due to a social obligation that ran longer than expected, but finally managed to race home, change, grab my gear and get up here for that last 2 hours of light, for the best session I've ever had here.

"Broken Hill"-Torrey Pines, 2008

Duke, The Art Car

From my "Lost & Found" files: 

Walking down the road after breakfast with a new camera in hand (luckily) I happened upon this artistic oddity of a vehicle circa 2003 in the little mountain village of Idyllwild, CA where we have a home. It pretty much stopped me dead in my tracks because it's not what you would expect to see parked in a small rustic community high in the forest, under the pines and cedars.  "Duke" is basically a mobile, living sculpture created and owned by writer/artist Rick McKinney (you can see the whole car and more about him here). Every square inch is covered with various antiques, junk, jewelry, you name it. Don't know how he keeps it all together.. lots of glue, I guess. Anyway, I was delighted to have such a great subject right at hand to give my new camera a workout and ended up shooting a whole bunch of odd, interesting still life images. This is not my normal genre of work these days, but this one was so unique that I wanted to revive it. 

"The Art Car"-California, 2003

The landscape under your feet

It's always a problem for me.. what to do during the middle part of the day? The sky is blue, not a cloud in the sky.. most would say: "It's a beautiful day", but photographers say: "this sucks!" I often drive the better part of a day to get somewhere interesting to work and then have to deal with that mid part of the day when the light is harsh and the colors are all washed out, so I normally use that time to drive around and familiarize myself with the location and scout out where I want to be early and late in the day.
Sometimes you get lucky and there's some interesting weather, or some nice clouds to filter the light, but one other alternative is to concentrate on smaller subjects right under your feet. Not necessarily macro shots (which you can do anytime), but close-ups and abstracts where you can look for textures and colors that are less affected by the quality of light that might not work for a larger scenic.
In this case, I was at Point Lobos, a nature reserve just south of Carmel in central California, and facing the "mid-day dilemma", so I spent a few hours just shooting the many interesting rock formations at Weston Beach. The formations in this tidal area are so colorful and varied, that they are mini landscapes all by themselves. This kind of image is really fun to work with when you get back to the studio... you can experiment with cropping, burning, dodging and saturation; working it like a painting with no particular goal in mind other than to make it into a pleasing composition of shape and texture.

"Rock Flow"-Point Lobos

Goodbye, Mr. Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth passed away the other day. Although he was a painter, any photographer aspiring to improve could study Wyeth's work and learn everything they need to know. Anyone can operate a camera, that's the least of what it's about; if you can absorb some of his sense of space, composition and detail, you will make better photographs.
I know that some critics didn't care for his realism in this age of abstraction, but to me he was a profound influence and inspiration. His watercolor sketches are like Chinese brush drawings in their simplicity; with just a few strokes on an otherwise blank paper he could create a whole scene of hills, snow and woods and make you feel the cold. And his tempera paintings have a photographic sensibility and a feeling of story to them that I don't often see in paintings. A love of nature, an amazingly keen sense of observation and dedication to craft really set him apart, in my mind.

Fall in the Narrows

Utah is one my favorite photographic destinations, relatively "close" to home at only 500 miles or so, but always worth the trip. This was shot over 1 year ago, mid-October, on a trip up the Virgin River Narrows. I like this image, but to be honest I never print it bigger than greeting card size, because I managed to get some slight camera movement even though I was using a tripod... not too surprising since the tripod and I were both in moving water and on slippery rocks at the time. A whole day of cold wet feet doesn't help your concentration, either. The contrast of the delicate trees hanging on in the stream against the massive painted walls walls caught my eye, even though it was a rather inconvenient spot to stop and set up. I passed it by on the way upstream, but decided to try it on the return.
Relative to my previous post about B&W vs. Color, this is a case where I would say the color is indeed an important element of the image.

"Fall Saplings" - Utah, 2007

Decisions, decisions. Color or Black & White?

Reading another photo blog yesterday inspired this post.  Back in the film days, I used to shoot only black and white because I have always liked to do my own printing and I just didn't have the equipment or knowhow in those days to print color.  These days, of course, that's all changed and it's just as easy to print in color as in B&W.  In fact, you could make the argument that printing nice B&Ws digitally is actually more tricky than color; getting nice deep blacks and neutral grays requires some real care and an intimate knowledge of your printing process. I replied to that other person's entry that if I am going to present an image in color, it is because the color is truly adding something important, not just because I happened to capture it in color. Many times taking the color out is actually a huge improvement. I think most would agree that the original image seen here (pretty much untouched, right out of the camera) is nothing special, but I liked the pose of the egret and the reflections in the water; so I decided to work it up as a monochrome, getting rid of the awful green water and the drab colors and turning it into a pretty effective image by concentrating on the mirrored reflections, then playing with the curves and contrast adjustments until I got the desired effect.

My first influences in photography were some of the greats who never touched color, so I still have a strong attraction for beautiful monochrome even though I have kind of moved away from it in my own work. Check out Lenswork Magazine to see some really nice contemporary B&W work.   

Warning: Not a Spectator Sport

Some fellow photographers may know what this is about. Usually, I take a few days around New Year's to go somewhere alone, do some shooting and enjoy the solitude. Due to other obligations this year I was limited to one day, so my wife wanted to come along and not let me have all the fun. We drove out to the Imperial Dunes near the Arizona border and I had (brilliantly, I thought) brought along a beach towel to set my equipment on in order to keep it off the sand while working, but she found it convenient to use for a nap after I had been working in one spot for a bit too long. I used her little pocket point-and-shoot to take this.

I wonder how many photographers prefer working alone as opposed to those who prefer having some company? It's definitely nice to have someone on the long drives (I like to work in some pretty remote places) or in the evening, but it's always in the back of my mind that someone's waiting for me if they're along while I'm shooting. Maybe it's just the type of place I like to work that makes it difficult. My wife keeps her own blog (in Japanese) about life in California and she's always looking for interesting new material, so she appreciates this process more than some would, I guess.

By the way, these dunes are a great photo destination in the winter when the temperature is very pleasant and the sun goes down early.

Henry's Kitchen

If you've been following "The Tudors" on Showtime cable, you may be familiar with Hampton Court, Henry VIII's country estate, just southwest of London. It originally belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, The Archbishop of York, but he later gave it to Henry, who developed it further and it has been added to and renovated over the ages. It's truly spooky to walk through the rooms here on a dark November afternoon thinking back on all the historical figures that occupied the exact same space hundreds of years ago. You can walk the halls and look out the windows to the same courtyards as Henry VIII, Ann Boleyn and Jane Seymour.
In most of the interior spaces photography is not allowed, but the kitchen areas are an exception. This huge fireplace is still working and served as one of the cooking areas for hundreds of people on a daily basis. One lucky gentleman(at least in the winter)gets to tend this baby as tourists wander through the otherwise cold rooms of the traditional kitchens. The old utensils, ovens, walls and doors make a fantastic photographic subject. I love the color, texture and atmosphere of this kind of place.

"Henry's Kitchen"-U.K., 2008

"Reflection" on a New Year

Nothing special... just a peaceful scene to contemplate for a minute or two as we flip the calendar on another year. Thanks for stopping by here to look and a Happy New Year to all.

"Dawn Light at Convict Lake"-California, 2008

The Whole... or a Part of the Whole?

Back in a "travel" mode for a few days...
It's tempting when you're dealing with a large subject or a big scene, to try to get it all in the frame at once. Nothing wrong with that if you just want to record the view in a very casual way, or if you're doing classic scenics, as long as you make the effort to consider all the compositional elements of the scene. When done well, it looks easy, which is why most people try it almost by default. If you want to go beyond snapshots, to create an image that someone who wasn't actually there can appreciate, you'll often get a better photograph and be able to capture what it is about the subject that caught your interest in the first place by concentrating on just a certain part of the scene. As an example, here is a night shot of the inner workings of the Eiffel Tower utilizing the iconic structural elements, multicolored lighting and the motion of some giant elevator pulleys, turning the whole shot into a colorful abstract, yet still keeping a sense of the original subject.

"Eiffel Elements"-Paris, 2008