It so happened that our travel coincided with full moon. Every morning for a few days I was going to the same spot and watching moon setting below horizon right before sunrise. It was majestic.
These three very much different photos were taken at the same place. (Click on the images to see them in larger size.)
If you go over and over to the same place something interesting is bound to happen.
There is a well-known blowhole north of Napili on Maui. I’ve been to it and photographed way back on the first trip. The photos back then were just documenting an event of water blasting up from the blowhole. This time I went there at sunrise. I knew that it was not a great spot for sunset ahead of time from looking at a map. The location of it is such that sunset light is blocked by a mountain.
The wind was great. It was a soft breeze from the show to the ocean. It was blowing off water dust. I remembered last time I had been there there was a strong wind from the ocean and I could come anywhere close to the blowhole. It would quickly soak me with water.
This time I could come close to the blowhole. It turned out there was a nice niche by the blowhole where I could setup a tripod and stay out of the water’s way. It was also facing sunrise – a perfect spot.
The first time I went there the blowhole was putting out a great show but the sky was grey and uninspiring. The second time there was some color in the sky but the water from the blowhole was too dark in a shadow. My persistence paid off the third time. I waited a little bit longer and the sun broke thru the clouds and lit up the blowhole fountain. NOW everything was in place!
The first place to look for photo opportunities on a family trip is of cause right next to the hotel. There was quite large area of lava rock right next to the hotel with a sandy beach next to it. Last time I made this photo of that place (Sleepy Beach) my focus was on the beach. This time I focused my attention on the lava rock.
At sunset:
At sunrise:
I never get tired of the same place. I might think I got most of the place on a single trip but after a while I want to revisit the place, see it again with new eyes, experience it with me being different than last time.
About a month ago when the weather was absolutely dreadful in Seattle as it typically is at the end of November my wife, my son and I went to Hawaii. It was a family trip but as I always do I hauled all my photo gear with me.
My focus during a family trip is of cause on family activities such as building sand castles with my son (ironically, first time I misspelled it as ‘sun’, which is very much the case, he is our son and our sun). I take all the gear with me on a family trip nevertheless just for a chance. If the Nature gives me an opportunity I would be able to use it.
My wife understands my passion for photography (after all she is into photography herself). Thus she gave me most sunrises and sunsets and was rewarded with nice breakfast and romantic nights. I was limiting my range of subjects to the ones that are close by, so, I would be back in time of my wife and my son waking up in the morning or in time to kiss my son good night in the evening.
Having such limits is an interesting challenge. It makes me find something interesting in otherwise mundane landscape; pre-visualize what place might look like at sunrise or sunset; carefully plan where to go by looking at maps and areal photos ahead of time. The limited area of travel also meant that I would visit the same places multiple times, see them in different weather and in different light.
So, get ready for a series of photos from that trip, see how I dealt with the challenge, and experience the same places in different ways.
I’ll start with this one which I really like for how the waves of clouds in the sky repeat the waves of the ocean, the row of yachts resting on the water and great light breaking thru the the clouds.
Josh woke me up way before sunrise as I asked him last night. He was the only one with an alarm watch. I was hard to wake up. Morning sleep is the sweetest sleep of all! Especially after night with wind gusts waking me up every now and then.
Over night clouds moved in. This was great for photography. It was our last sunrise at Enchantments.
I tried to wake up John but he refused. He was tired and sick. It was still dark but I saw some color in the sky and took a few long exposures. I saw on the back of my camera that the sky was already red. I showed it to John and that woke him up. He went on with his plan to climb back up to Core Enchantments. And on the way there he made one of the best photos of the trip.
I went to the spot which I found the night before. The sunrise was blocked off by a small ridge on the right but I did not count on it. I was counting on Prusik Peak lighting up and photographing its reflection in Lake Viviane. Unfortunately the wind was still strong and the lake was unrestful. There was no reflection and the sky remained dark.
I lost hope to get good photo. Suddenly a cloud above the Prusik Peak lighted up with bright red. I started taking one panorama after another not sure if I got it. Only when I assembled panoramas back at home I found out that I got it in one of them! (click on the image to see it larger)
Morning at Lake Viviane
[Good] photographer is the one that does not show bad pictures.
Jay Maisel
There are days when I take photos that excite me, photos I love. And then there are other days when I get none. That’s ok. It is continuous learning experience, continuous self-development. The important thing is not to lie to myself and pretend that mediocre photos are good ones. Just because I put up a lot of effort in taking them does not make them good.
On my last trip to Rainier two weeks ago I had those two days. On the first day I was treated to a nice sunset with great color in the clouds and a pink tint on everything on the ground from the light reflected from the clouds. (That’s when I took the photo below.)
On the second day nothing worked out. The photos turned boring and did play any tune in my heart. And you know what? I’m not going to show any photos from the second day. I’m still going to look at them; see if there is anything that can be photographed differently; what and why did not work. I’m learning from bad photos and you’re enjoying good ones.
Sunset at Mt Rainier
The first week of this September this year my family and friends went to Pacific Coast of Olympic Peninsula. We went to First Beach, Second Beach and Rialto Beach. We had a lot of fun. My son as always was heading numerous construction projects on the beaches or maintaining fire. And I as always used any time available to do some photography.
This time there were no breathtaking sunsets, no amazing colors but there were spectacular clouds, textures, reflections. Sounds like a good opportunity for black-and-white photography.
I’m mostly doing color photography nowadays but whenever I try converting some of my photos to black-and-white they still look great. Which leads me to thinking that color can add something to a photo but it cannot make a photo. The photo should be strong even without color. Color is just an icing on a cake.
Other times the color is weak, or unpleasant, or destructive. Like on this trip the color was boring, it was not adding anything to photographs. And sometimes it was unpleasant yellowish color on the clouds that I did not like. Thus I was completely focused on making black-and-white photography.
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
Have I been to Mount Rainier National Park many times? Sure, I have. It is the closest national park to my home. Have I got a lot of photos from Mount Rainier National Park that I’m proud of? Nope. After all the trips I still did not have emotional connection with that place. The photos, while technically ok, were lacking emotions, strong graphics, or something interesting happening to me. As a result I thought Mount Rainier landscape was just not for me and have not visited it for a long time. Until recently.
Recently a group of three local photographers – Andrey Cherepakhin, John Song and Protik Hossain – lured me to go to Rainier again. They had specific places in mind which I have not visited before. I went along. And I’m glad I did.
Was the trick in having new eyes or was it in visiting places off a beaten path? I don’t know. One of those or both did the trick. Finally, I got photos that are beyond high quality snapshots and capture some emotional scenes of Mount Rainier.
PS At first I stopped typing here and just added photos below. Then I thought it would be worthwhile sharing what I liked about each of them.
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Summer Light and Pattern in a Chaos. I like summer feel of this photo. It was taken “into the sun”, bringing out a lot of green in the grass and lighting up the flowers. I like the contrast between light in the meadow and darkness in the trees. I like V-shape of two slopes. I like how seemingly random while flowers see to be in inverted V shape that draws you into the picture, gives it depth and perspective.
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Light and Shapes. Obviously the reflection is nice in absolutely still water. But what I really like in this photo is the light of the sun right before sunset caught in a sheet of ice floating in the water. The other thing that I like is that the shape of the highlighted piece of ice repeats the shape of Rainier in background.
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Light, Cloud and Frame. The cloud sitting on the top of Rainier, lit up by sunrise is an obvious thing that I like about this photo. The other two are how the mountain is framed by the tree on the left and the tree on the right and how flowers lead to the mountain.
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Shape and Curve. Rock formation on the right and the mountain make up one large curve.
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Leading line. The trail is strongly visible in the right bottom corner of the image continues later closer the center of the image, leading to Tatoosh Range in the distance.
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Layers. There are many layers in this photo on different levels. First, foreground – rock and flowers, middle ground – rocks, stream and snow, mountain and sky in background. Second, half in shadow, half in light. Third, interleaving layers of light snow and dark rocks.
And of cause the cloud lit up from inside is great!
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Mood. Reflection and Clouds. I like reflection of the mountain among the rocks. The cloud around the mountain grew in size to fill up the sky while still keeping the circles around the mountain.
And I like the tough mood of the high elevation landscape. The unrest in the sky. The anticipation of cold fall ahead. A reminder that the summer was almost over.
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Mood. This photo reminds me the kind of photos I see from Iceland. Dramatic heavy skies and flat light. Tough climate creates tough landscape be it Iceland or this small oasis at Mt Rainier.
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Emotions and Light. I like this photo for the same dramatic skies combined with a tenderness of flowers and a island of light breaking thru the clouds.
I love moving water for an infinite number of shapes it can take. I can spend minutes, hours in one place photographing moving water and getting a new image every time.
Consider the following photos as an example of what I’m talking about. All of them were taken at The Lost Coast at around the same time of day at the same place.
Here the water is in a shape of a bird:
The one in a shape of a vortex:
And the one in a shape of a mountain:
That’s interesting how sometimes we underestimate the changes that happen around us.
A while ago I took this photo near Reflection Lake at Mount Rainier. It is not as good technically as I’d like, or at least not up to my current more experienced standards of execution. But now nothing like this can be done.
This year I went to this spot again and found that the road near the lake has been widened and rocks have been places on a side of the road close to the lake and the place where this photo was taken was gone.
Suddenly not very original photo turned into the one that cannot be repeated again. Life is a curious thing.
By Reflection Lake
vitali prokopenko | fine art 