Tag: fence

My Backyard

Life is full of experiences, exciting and mundane, surprising and routine, spending time with loved ones and grocery shopping and paying bills. It is not always that I can find time to go on a trip to some exciting location.

I dream. I dream a lot. I dream big. I dream of a life in a wilderness, photographing, painting, being creative all the time. But…

To be honest, as much as much as the dream of being in the wilderness all the time seems to be attractive it is not all that makes me happy. Having someone I love and who loves me back fulfills my life with happiness that I cannot draw from the wilderness. All the exciting and quiet moments shared together fill me with joy.

To be honest, as much as I want to photograph all the time, I have a limit to my creativity. After the first few active days on a trip I find myself exhausted and numb to everything around me.

To be honest, if I truly want to be creative, all I need is to take my camera and step out into my own backyard. Because that is all it takes to find this…

Point of View

There are many infinite number of ways to see the same thing. There are many infinite number of angles to look at the same things.

One of the popular photographic spots to visit in the Palouse is a fence completely made out of rusty remains of wheels. There are all kind of wheels in it dating to who knows how old.

A few years ago I went to photograph the fence too. (Hey, after a few years I’ve finally got around to write about it). I’ve started with the classic shot of fence going into the distance.

Then I’ve started looking at all kind of shapes in the fence. It was fascinating. Hay here are only spikes left from the wheel. It looks like the Sun to me. So, I’ve looked at it from very low angle, because the Sun should be in the sky.

The I’ve started looking at what can be seen thru the fence. Here is only rim left from the wheel (it might even matched the spikes above). It frames very nicely the nice white building behind the fence.

The point is: look at any scene and find as many images as possible in it.

Fascination with Lofoten

I’ve spent 3 amazing days in Lofoten and I fell in love with it. It is a chain of islands in Norway above arctic circle connected by bridges and tunnels.

I had such a misconception from my childhood about life above arctic circle. I imagined Lofoten to be ice and snow, and rock not covered by ice and snow, devoid of life.

It turned to be something completely different. Lofoten was vibrant and lively with green grass, blue sky, sunshine, white sand beaches, emerald ocean and mild temperatures. It was not even nearly as cold as I imagined it. I found it hard to believe I was above arctic circle.

I wanted to stop and touch every tree, touch the grass, the sand and water. It was so far from what I expected that it felt surreal, science fiction. I had to touch it all to check that it was real and not a figment of my imagination.

Sitting in the car watching ripples of water run up and down while sandy beach made me feel like I’m in Hawaii. It was a bit colder than Hawaii when I was getting out of the car. 🙂

You know what was even more surreal? Having no night. It was a beginning of arctic summer, when the sun shines round the clock. It was surreal to hike at midnight and have daylight.

Driving thru the small towns at “night” felt eerie. It was bright as day but there were no people, no movement. It was like in science fiction or horror movies when you wake up one day and all the humanity is gone.

There is so much to photograph there: snow capped mountains, waterfalls, ocean, sandy beaches, rocky beaches, mountain rivers, green meadow, lakes, tiny islands. And best of all I could hike pretty much everywhere. There is very little private land. I spotted a waterfall up the mountain while driving, I just stopped where I could and went up. This was such an enjoyment to roam the land, to wonder around.

There was a payback for all that “night” travel as I was red eyed from lack of sleep but it was totally worth it. If you’ve never been above arctic circle in summer, make sure it is on your “bucket list”.

Backroads of Alberta

One of the reasons I travel a lot by car rather than plane is to see places around on the road to the destination. Unfortunately, in most cases once I’m behind the wheel I get a tunnel effect when I see nothing but the road with its final destination ahead. For some reason getting to the destination as fast as possible becomes the only goal.

On the trip to Alberta I actively fought an urge to drive from point A directly to point B. Instead I was taking some backroads, sometimes unpaved, moving slowly looking at things around. It was taking me much longer but it was a more satisfying study of Alberta outside its famous national parks and big cities. Here is a small selection of photographs of rural Alberta.

Tulip Fatigue?

Every year there is a tulip festival in Skygit Valley. It is probably one of the best events in the northwest. It attracts a lot of people and that includes photographic crowd. I’ve photographed there many times of the years.

This year I went to photograph there too. Strangely enough I ended up with no photographs of tulips. I photographed workers picking up bunches of tulips for sale. I photographed dirt roads, fences, trees, and everything else around except tulips. Do I have tulip fatigue and don’t respond visually to fields of tulips anymore?

Workers Picking Tulips
Workers Picking Tulips

Bus at the End of the Road
Bus at the End of the Road

Close to Home

Lots of things are waiting to be discovered right around the corner. You just need to make the first step toward them.

I adore photograph made in fog. At the same time there have not been much fog where I live. At some point I share my fog obsession with another local photographer and she suggested me to go to Carnation Valley in fall.

It is only about 10 minutes drive from where I live. To my surprise even when it is clear sky and sunshine outside the valley, the valley itself is filled with thick thick fog. This is likely because there are a lot of marshes there. Driving downhill into the valley is like diving into the fog.

From that point on I always go to Carnation in fall. Here are some photos I’ve made this year:

_MG_9152

_MG_9306

_MG_9438

_MG_9398

%d bloggers like this: