Tag: light

Fog over Golden Bridge

I always wanted to photograph Golden Bridge and Presidio in fog but in many times I had been to San Francisco I had never seen fog over Golden Bridge. Other photographers seemed to get it every time. Not me.

This May on the way back from The Lost Coast we spent a couple of days in San Francisco. One morning Very early before sunrise I went to photograph hoping to get lucky and see that mythical fog. And lucky I was. The was fog. And not just in the morning. It was there whole day. In fact it caused our flight to be delayed in the evening.

The fog was different from the one I used to. I’m used to fog in still windless weather. Golden Bridge fog was combined with strong winds. It was constantly on the move, thickening and lightening, lifting off and dropping back to the ground, letting sun in or blocking it off all together, constantly reshaping landscape.

It presented me with new and constantly changing photo opportunities. I could not get enough of it. I was running from one place to another and then back. The only limit was time.

Over the Wing

As I wrote a while back Photography Starts on a Plane. My photographic journey to Shelter Cove starts on an airplane too. This time our seats were over an airplane wing, which limited a view out of our cabin window to pretty much the wing only. That did not stop me from photographing. I just focused on lines and graphics of the airplane wing and specular lights created by the Sun.

Flying thru a cloud:

Waiting for the Light

Sometimes you chase the light and sometimes you need to wait for it.

By the afternoon of the second day the sky started to clear and I started heading back home. I still wanted to stop by a few places on my way home. One of those places was a large canola field that I saw on my way to Colfax.

In the first day with no sunlight in the first day the canola field looked dull and uninspiring. But with the light and shadow spots moving across it I thought it could be interesting. With a sunlight on it the canola field was bright yellow. The kind of color my son loves because it is warm and happy.

I drove around the field looking for a composition. I could not quite anchor the composition around anything, because there was not anything in the field. And just as I almost gave up I saw and intricate play between light and shadow which shaped up the field into something that was interesting to photograph by itself.

Clouds were moving very fast. By the time I stopped the car, got out of the car, setup tripod, put a camera on tripod the cloud moved on and shadow that was shaping the field was gone.

Sometimes you chase the light and sometimes you need to wait for it (or, to be more accurate, in this case wait for a shadow). The next two hours I’ve spend waiting for another cloud to come in… and here is the photo I was waiting for:

_MG_4437

Chasing the Light

After dreadful first day in Palouse the second day everything a landscape photographer could have dreamed of. The sky was filled with puffy clouds moving fast across the sky dragging spots of light across the land. All I had to do was watching those light spots highlight something interesting in the landscape.

I enjoy chasing light and shadow moving across the landscapes, its continuous change of scenery. It is like looking in kaleidoscope. There is an infinite amount of beauty in it and all you need to do is watch.

Here are two photos of the same place and same composition but different light. The first one is about the barn, since the light is on it:

And the second one is about fields behind the barn, since they have light on them:

Which one is better? Not sure. They are just different and I like them both.

Here is one more example. The white silo stands out of landscape with the light on it and a cloud shadow behind it:

And here it blends with the landscape:

Rhododendrons or Not?

Recently I went with a fellow photographers to photograph rhododendrons which are common on eastern hills of Olympic mountains. We were hoping for fog to have a good separation of rhododendron bushes from trees in background.

There was fog but not where we needed it. The only option left was to use shallow depth of field. My fixed 50mm lens got second life. I had not used it for a while but it was most appropriate in that case since it had the widest aperture of all my lenses.

Rhododendron
Rhododendron

The other options was to let it blend with with forest, make it part of it.

Spring Green
Spring Green

Did I mention there was fog but not where we needed it? Well, we ended up spending most of the time photographing that fog that was somewhere else:

Fog Over Lowlands
Fog Over Lowlands

Fog Over Puget Sound
Fog Over Puget Sound

Soft Light

There is no such thing as bad light.

When I just started photographing the only good light I knew was a sunset or sunrise. Then I added daylight with sunlight breaking thru the clouds which was creating an interplay of shadow and light on the ground. But for longest time I thought grey overcast day is bad light that is not suitable for photographing anything.

Well, I was wrong. I just did not develop my eye enough to see what a beautiful soft light an overcast day can give. That’s the best light for photographing deep in the forest where direct sunlight falling down thru a thick canopy of leaves and branches create extreme contrast.

Overcast day on the other hand creates nice soft light that is smoothly descending thru every opening and canvasing the ground with soft highlights.

What a perfect opportunity to photograph this flower that is blooming deep in Pacific Northwest forests whole spring and summer. I love its perfect triangle of three petals and three leaves.

Cherry Blossom

There are so many great photographers around that we don’t know about. Recently I’ve discovered John Song (http://www.johnsongphoto.com/). He considers himself a beginner photographer but he does this amazing work that captivates my imagination. What’s most interesting for me is that he lives in Seattle area too and captures his amazing landscapes of places that I’m very familiar with. It makes me ask myself how I did not see that and inspires on photographing even more.

Inspired by his photograph of cherry blossom at University of Washington campus (http://www.johnsongphoto.com/?p=1876 last photo with a brick walk going into the distance) I went there for several morning trying to do something similar, but as it often happens ended up with a different interpretation of the same subject.

Cherry Blossom at UW
Cherry Blossom at UW

PS Click on the image to see a large version.

Photographing Light

What this photograph is about? It is about light. Sometimes the light is so visible and interesting that this is all what we see and photograph.

Sunlight Breaking thru the Clouds Sunlight Breaking thru the Clouds