Getting Back Into the Game

It has been a long while, nearly three years, since I shared any photographs I have taken. I have not been completely idle with my camera, although it has been far and few between.  But now I think I am ready to begin getting out a little more, sharing more of what I capture.

This is the beginning of that journey. Since 2014, the last time I shared anything here, this is compilation of photos I made up to now. Enjoy.

Although I didn't make this, this was a special trip I made with these two very special people in my life. I want to get back to do this with these two individuals. I miss them both terribly and look forward to engaging with them, frequently starting very soon.

As Summer Rolls Away

Haunted World

Oh.... Can you feel it in the air? The untimely of demise of summer? Could it be? Could fall be quickly approaching with all of its glorious colors and cooler weather?

While I am not ready for the sun to disappear behind the gray veil of nature's soft box, I am ready to embrace colors other than green and blue.

A couple of weeks ago I spent the morning with a local painter, James McDonald and his upcoming artistic daughter. I observed their techniques and styles as well as their approach to capturing a scene. It is refreshing to see how another not only interprets a scene, but also how they translate that interpretation to the canvas.

Swinging in the Past

 As my daughter swung on a swing at the park, I watched her and how her body interacted with the light. I have hundreds of photos of my kids in swings, so I wanted to look for something else.

What I found was her shadow on the ground. The curvature of her feet in relation to the relative symmetry of her hands, arms and torso. I found it intriguing.

I am often drawn to the shadows and usually love what I find there.

 The next two photos are fun additions to my world of abstracts.

In the right photograph I have captured the greens and yellows of the tree tops.

The bottom image is the vertical shift while focusing on the lush landscape. A slow shift of the lens allows some detail to remain throughout the shift.

Luck - The Good and the Bad

Sunset on the Water

Seneca, a first-century Roman philosopher, once said luck is when preparation meets opportunity. That is a great explanation of good luck. Bad luck on the other hand is the cause of one of two things; the lack of opportunity or the lack of preparation. 


I take ownership of my own luck, at least as much as I can. If I am not prepared it is my own fault. That's right, my fault.


If I know there is something that I want to photograph, I make sure sure to do what I can to make myself available to do it. 


Sometimes luck means I have to abandon something else that I want to do, like stay at home and have a quiet evening with my wife. But each and every time, luck requires me to say yes to opportunity when it comes knocking. 


And opportunity knocked on my door yesterday. And I said yes.

Faded Brillance

My friend, and fellow photographer, Liz Smith, called me up yesterday and asked me if I heard about the possible Aurora Borealis happening. I said, "No". 


She asked if I would be interested in going out and shooting it. I said definitely. It has been a goal of mine to just see an Aurora Borealis since I was a kid and learned about them. One of the biggest challenges has been my luck.


See I have spent my entire living at or below the 45th parallel, that is halfway between the North Pole and the Equator, in Oregon. As luck would have it, the Aurora Borealis don't dip down to the 45th parallel very often. 


Another bit of luck is the fact that I live in the state of Oregon. If you are not from around here, there tends to be considerably more overcast days than not here in Oregon. That is not a complaint, but simply an observation supporting my story of luck. I don't complain about the weather like so many others I know. I love cloudy skies during the day because cloudless skies are boring for a photographer.

Starry Sunset

To be an aspiring astrophotographer living in a perpetually overcast state like Oregon usually can be, is sort of bad luck. Being an aspiring astrophotographer looking to photograph the Aurora Borealis and living beneath the 45th parallel is a double tap to the bad side of luck. 


So when opportunity presents itself, even if it is only a thirty percent chance, I jump on it. Thirty percent was the chance that the  Aurora Borealis would be visible at the 45th parallel.


The skies were clear; opportunity. The sun had sent a sizable, M-Class, coronal mass ejection (CME) right at us; opportunity. I made myself available; prepared. I tracked the coming solar storm online; prepared. But alas the Aurora dream would remain such, a dream. 

The Aurora Borealis never made an appearance at the 45th parallel because the CME was not strong enough; no opportunity.


But I didn't let that take away from the beautiful evening and great company of my wife and Liz. 


We even had a surprise encounter with another photographer friend, Nathan Smith and his wife and son, Heather and Noah.


All of us made the best of the Aurora Borealis show, sans the Aurora Borealis, and had a great time and captured some amazing images of sky, both during and after sunset.

In the end the Aurora Borealis never made the opportunity available. But I made some beautiful photographs and shared a beautiful evening with some wonderful friends and my wife. It was a lucky day after all.


Are you prepared? If not; Why not?

Vacation for the Heart and Mind

Inland

Abstraction of Light

This is my 700th blog post. That is a lot of posting. I started my vacation inland taking in the natural beauty the Earth provides with a little help from the Light of Sun.

My goal with this vacation trip was to shoot everything with natural light and my new Vivitar 70-200mm lens. I accomplished those objectives for the most part, using my Tamron 17-50mm lens for only a few landscapes.

The image to the left is an abstraction of light illuminating the leaves of a tree through the forest canopy. This was done intentionally, using the natural light bouncing off the tree leaves and a naturally darker area that fell in the shadow and I moved my camera to create the movement.

Contrast of Light and Dark

Again, using the natural light falling through the forest canopy to allow the light to fall on the subject and leave the background in shadow I was able to capture and isolate the subject.

This is a technique I have been working to master for a couple of years now. Like all things in photography, this technique requires some compromise of others choices, such as composition as the shadowed area might not always be in line with how you may want to compose the image and depth of field with adjustments to the aperture. Another compromise is exposure, in which the subject might not be as brightly lit as you would like due to the low light; see the middle image below as an example.

Delicate Fern

Lightly Lit Leaves

Bloom in Contrast

Ocean Side

Patterns

Heading to the beach, I found natural patterns as well as man-made structures.

The patterns that can be found in the sand are as varied as the fingerprints on the people in the world. All you have to do is look around with an open mind.

 Observing the patterns is as simple as looking at the bigger picture and ignoring the smaller details from the onset. Once I have captured the patterns I then move in and look at the details.

Sand Patterns

The above photograph and the photograph to the right we both shot within ten feet of each other.

Again, just by looking, I was able to find both of these photos. It takes a shift, an intentional shift, in the way I see to be able to see the patterns. It can be difficult. It is a lot like trying to the forest for the trees or trying to see the sailboat in the middle of a poster of patterns of static (popular in the early 90s).

Once the shift happens I start seeing the patterns everywhere. I see the patterns in wood, sand, gravel, asphalt and even in crowds of people. After practicing for years, I can now switch from one mode to another and back again.

It just takes time to develop the ability to switch it over if it doesn't come to you naturally.

Fossil Love

Sandcastles in Triplicate

Metamorphosis

Aquatic Adventures

The sand of time lead to the sea

I have a huge fascination for waves. I will let those images speak for themselves.

Patterns in the Waves

Green Crush

Afternoon Light

Back to Back

 The best way to photograph waves for me is to shoot in the light of the afternoon sun, but that is because I am on the left coast. If I were to be standing at the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, I would shoot early morning, an hour after sunup. This is what helps makes the waves glow.

Aloft

Subjects in the sky are always of interest for me. But I typically don't shoot things that are directly overhead because the underside of a bird isn't as interesting to me as it flying at me.

Goodnight Moon

Burning Sky

Sun Sets on Another Day

And Finally, I love it when subjects in the sky make their way to the ground.

That's all for now. Do yourself a favor, take a few days and find your artist. It is an amazing journey.

Memorial Day Photo Adventure

Our friend and fellow photographer, Liz Smith, picked my wife and I up at 2:00 PM Memorial Day afternoon. We didn't stop moving until 8:00 that night. Exhausted, sick (still) and hungry enough to eat and horse and chase the rider, the photos were left unprocessed until now. 

Well, I am still sick, although after going to the doctors yesterday and this morning I am finally on Antibiotics and cough syrup with codiene so I can sleep at night. Today was my first and only down day this week and I plowed through the images both my wife and I captured.

First up is mine from the Iris Farm, which was our first stop.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Next up is a sample of my wife's photos from the Iris Farm.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Now some samples images from me on our stop in at Dayton. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

Here is the images from my wife from our stop in Dayton.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Now, I get really angry with my wife, because she has a natural gift for photography and doesn't do much with it and it frustrates the hell out of me because she has a natural eye for it, but not the passion that I do. But I love her. When she does grab the camera and use it BAM!!!. She can't tell you the difference between an ISO and an F-Stop (she tells everyone that), but she has no problem putting the camera in Aperture priority and finding some of the most beautiful subjects to photograph.

 

Thanks Liz for getting out there. If it wasn't for you, we would have stayed home all day.