Category: color

Death Valley

Day 1, Afternoon

This is a beginning of a story about my photographic trip to Death Valley. One of the things that I did differently this time around was writing a journal of some thoughts about scenes I saw and events that happened.

Death Valley is an unique place. It is a place of extreme heat, lack of water and Nature’s way to show adaptation and survival of life. It is a place of extreme contrasts – from heat of the bottom of the valley to cold mountain tops, from dunes at the bottom to forests at the tops.

Every time I go to Death Valley I spent most time in dunes. I’m captivated by their perfect geometry of line, shape and texture. That’s where I stent most of my time on this trip too. But let’s not skip too far ahead and start at the beginning.

Upon arrival to Las Vegas airport I rented a car – a large SUV with foldable second row of seats, so there is a large enough flat area in the back. The reason was that the way I travelled was very minimalistic: I slept in the car. Before going to Death Valley I stopped at the closest grocery store and loaded up the car with water and food for the whole trip.

Once all preparation was done without much delay I took off to Death Valley. After about 3 hour drive I arrived there. The weather was great. The sky was filled with clouds. It was not typical for Death Valley but great for landscape photography.

Road in Death Valley
Road to Eureka Dunes

Black and White – Naturally

I love color photography. At the same time I have a great appreciation for good black and white photography. Once in a while I do black and white photos myself albeit not as often as color. To be more accurate I do monochromatic photos as I like to tone or colorize them.

And sometimes the nature presents a photo that is monochromatic even in color. Like this photo of fog over Port Angeles. This is an actual color photograph and as you can see it is almost monochromatic.

Fog over Port Angeles
Fog over Port Angeles

When Night Looks Like Day

When night looks like day? When it is full moon. And tonight is full moon. With a fellow photographer I went to photograph Aurora which was supposed to be very strong today but the full moon was stronger. Its light was so strong that we could walk on a trail and work with photographic equipment without flashlights.

And here is a proof that night can look like day – a couple of photos I took tonight. The only hint of it being night are star trails in the sky.

Rattlesnake Lake in Moonlight #1
Rattlesnake Lake in Moonlight #1

Rattlesnake Lake in Moonlight #2
Rattlesnake Lake in Moonlight #2

Beauty Is Next Door

Yesterday we had a beautiful white morning in Klahanie (where I live). Everything was covered in snow. While jogging I discovered a part of a trail with trees covered in snow. When I got back home I put my camera backpack on, got tripod and took off back to this place to take a photo.

Klahanie Trail after Snow Storm
Klahanie Trail after Snow Storm

Simplicity

… Still going thru my photo archives (posted about it before in The Art of… Clean up) cleaning up photos that I feel I would not be interested in looking at ever again, categorizing those I’d like to keep and assigning keywords to them. While doing this I find some little gems that I feel deserved sharing.

Here is one of such photos. This photos is about simplicity; simplicity of color and curve. I like pure yellow of the flower. I like light blue sitting in a shade between petals. The colors themselves bring me some joy but then there is also the perfect curve of the flower petal which is a pleasure to follow.

Color and Curve

Walk into Fall

This post was supposed to be about fall and beautiful foliage colors I captured last fall during my visit to my home town in Ukraine. But as I was preparing an image to include in this post the topic of the post changed because of my struggle to fit large image with lots of details in a small viewing area of a screen and make it as enjoyable as original.

Here is the image I’m talking about (you can click on the image to see it in a bigger size):

Walk into Fall
Walk into Fall

In full size it has every leaf with its unique color and details. The whole image is vibrant and lively. You practically want to follow the dirty trail covered with foliage and walk into fall. After reducing it to such small size all the colors blended together into something more or less average.

That’s just another reason I still enjoy more prints over images on a screen. Just to show what I’m talking about here are a couple of snippets at full resolution.

Foliage

Foliage

Change

"When you’re finished changing, you’re finished." – Ben Franklin

I’ve sent a photo that I posted in my previous post Stormy Sky to one photo community up for discussion. I’ve got a few interesting points that I need to think about. There was one common thread though all the feedback that it was not my style, that my style was more artsy images.

It was flattering that people saw style in my images. At the same time it showed that having style may box you in because people expect certain style of the images.

For me trying something new is what keeps me moving. And for those who like my artsy style here is a panorama that I made recently at Rialto beach in Olympic National Park:

Rialto. After Storm
Rialto. After Storm

Stormy Sky

Do you wait for sunny weather, clear skies? I’m waiting for a storm. Lately I’ve been fascinated with stormy skies. There is some wild unruly power in them, something that makes me appreciate the Nature and its rejection of a human will over it.

Rialto Beach, Olympic National Park
Rialto Beach, Olympic National Park

This photo was taken on a rainy, cold and windy day when most people stayed home warming up by a fireplace. Not me. I was out there, trying to capture a beauty of elements.

Do What You Like

Rialto

On one of my trips to the ocean shores of Olympic peninsula at Ruby beach I met an old man who was photographing too. He was very energetic and open. We started talking.

It turned out that he was a professional photographer for many year. His story was both bitter and inspiring. As a professional photographer he spent most of the time photographing things he was not interested in. He did not even mention over our whole conversation what it was.

It was a year since he retired and he finally could start photographing for himself, the things he loved the most – landscapes. He was already on a year long journey, traveling from place to place, capturing the beauty of the Nature. He was finally happy. He drew his energy from the times he was young amateur photographer, open to what the world presented to him.

While I have never been a professional photographer I think I understand him. Just probably as with any other profession once money gets into a picture we start making compromises, that may lead us to completely forgetting why we started doing what we liked in the first place. With my photography I’d prefer photographing what I like and be happy in the process. That’s the place I want to be true to myself.

The Art of… Clean up

Art is not about creativity only. Sometimes you need to do a lot of routine work just because it needs to be done. Such as doing a clean up. My photo archive grew to unmanageable proportions. And for the last two months I’ve been doing clean up: removing technically bad photos, photos about nothing, photos I will never care to do anything about. I’m close to be done, almost 30% of photos deleted in the process.

The positive side of this exercise is that I found some interesting photos that I have not processed before. Here is one of them which I thought is pretty good:

Barn in a Rye Field
Barn in a Rye Field