Tag: light

Look Around

A few posts back I was writing about blowhole north of Napili at Maui. While I went there because there is blowhole there which I wanted to photograph, I also looked around for other opportunities as I always do. And as I always do I found several more interesting images to make. Here are a couple.

First one with cliffs going into the ocean in a warm light of an early morning:

_MG_5389

The second with a violent ocean crashing against the cliffs of lava rock:

_MG_5573

I think there are even more opportunities there – as always there is even something better ahead.

Lahaina Sunset

As I mentioned in my first post about my family’s recent trip to Hawaii I bring my photographic gear with me in case opportunity of a lifetime presents to me. I would not want to miss that. And there was such opportunity on this trip.

Most of the time I have my camera with me. Of cause I take memorable family photos with it. One afternoon we went to Lahaina for some late lunch and walk around the town. Lahaina is one of old towns on the west side of Maui with its heritage and famous Banyan tree that makes up the whole park that has become the center of the town.

We were strolling in the Banyan tree park in the warm Hawaiian evening. It was an overcast day. Our son was enjoying his Maui Rainbow shaved ice. Nothing promised a sunset. Then all of the sudden the whole sky lit up with bright red colors. It was amazing.

We rushed to the the boat harbor from the cover of trees and building to get a better look. I started taking photos along the way at least to be able to remember this sunset. Our son got onto excitement and was running ahead of us.

I did not have tripod and other stuff with me but that just made me to push myself and camera to get the best with what I had. I was using whatever I could find to steady the camera for longer exposure. I was taking panoramas handheld rotating it with my body. I was pushing ISO to get sharper images.

I’m proud of what I got. That’s one gift the Nature gave me that I did not miss.

Never Get Tired

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.

Enchantment Lakes [18]

Day 5. Wake up!

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

Enchantment Lakes [13]

Day 3. Afternoon light

One of the advantages about going backpacking and staying in one place is that you’re walking the same surroundings over and over and you can see landscape in different light. And you start appreciating light in a whole new way…

As I wrote earlier when we entered Core Enchantments on the second day of our trip we saw the area between Leprechaun Lake and Perfection Lake in the afternoon light and it look gorgeous. Unfortunately we have not captured much of it. So the next day in the afternoon I went back from our camp to Leprechaun Lake to photograph in the afternoon light.

The air was as still as possible. There were no ripples on the water. So reflections were perfect.

By the time I got to Leprechaun Lake it was late afternoon. The sun light was getting warmer turning golden larches into bright orange shifting further and further towards red. Leprechaun Lake was absolutely still and reflections were perfect. It was taking photo after photo but I felt they were falling short of the beauty around and the actual feeling of being there.

Enchantment Lakes [12]

Day 3. Wherever You Go

Enchantment Lakes is a place of incredible beauty. Wherever you go you see something pleasing your eye.

I want about 10 meters from the camp just to pee (pardon me) and I saw this scene: golden larches glowing in the sun on a deep blue background of the sky; playful light and dark spots on the ground. It was so beautiful I forgot about why I came there. I went back to the camp, grabbed camera and tripod to capture this:

_MG_0974

Or on my way to Prusik Peak I stopped by a small carving in the ground where larch needles formed geometrically perfect arcs:

_MG_1321

A little bit further the trail itself fascinated me as much. Spots of light and shade over the rocks:

_MG_1344

Enchantment Lakes [9]

Day 2. First Night at Lake Perfection Camp

As the sun dropped behind the mountains and it started getting darker, we headed back to setup our base camp.

I could not get much sleep again. I still was not very comfortable but that was not the only reason. At night I was woken up by wind gusts and what appeared to be rain. It was rain but it did not have water in it. It was rain of larch needles shaken off trees by wind gusts. I realized it once I got out of tent to get everything we had left outside into the tent.

I’ll Take It!

Couple weeks ago I went to Rainier again. You know I’m falling in love with it. (See my post New Eyes.) While there I met a couple of photographers. We got talking a little bit, all three excited about nice sunset.

On the way back we were passing a view of Paradise Lodge with a nice backdrop of after sunset sky with nice hues of orange, red and blue. Their reaction was “It is not worth taking.” Mine was “I’ll take anything that excites me.” I think it turned out pretty nice.

Paradise Lodge
Paradise Lodge

New eyes

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.

———-

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.

———-

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.

———-

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.

———-

Shape and Curve. Rock formation on the right and the mountain make up one large curve.

———-

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.

———-

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!

———-

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.

———-

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.

———-

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.

Path of Light

Photography has been and hopefully remain as much about playing and experimenting. One of such fun things is to introduce an artificial light sources in a landscape. The official term for it is “light painting” but for me it is just playing with flashlights, imagining what a landscape can be, and then getting a surprising result.

Like in this photo that I took at the Second Beach in Olympic National Park just after sunset, when it was dark enough for a long exposure and dark enough for a flash light (actually 3 flashlights) to make a difference.

Path of Light
Path of Light