Tag: ocean

Black and White World

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.

Rialto

Waterfalls is just one kind of moving water. Another one is ocean waves breaking on the coast.

Here are two photos at the same location – Rialto Beach in Olympic National Park. I like both of them. Each in its own way.

I like the first one for the wave breaking on the rock:

The second one for the nice S-curve that curves around the rock and leads to sea-stacks:

Which one do you like better?

Shapes of Water

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:

Lonely Boat

Do you ever feel lost in space?

There seems to be a pattern of photos throughout the years I photograph, kind of lost in space photos with a subject lost in a lot of blank space around it. Like Stillness. Lost in Fog or Lighthouse.

On a trip to The Lost Coast (no punt intended) last May I took another lost in space photo. This time a lonely boat in the ocean.

Lonely Boat
Lonely Boat

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

Sunsets over The Lost Coast

Only the first morning at Shelter Cover had clouds. All the days after that the skies were incredibly clear. The only thing that was left to photograph at dusk was gradients in the sky:

Combining with long exposures of moving water which I love to photograph:

And sun rays:

Misty Morning

The first morning in Shelter Cove was filled with fog. And it was the kind of morning fog when the air is still and quiet. It was moving, swirling, raising and falling back to Earth breaking into myriad of due drops.

We chased the fog around but it was tough to find a good view point to get a good photos of Shelter Cove in fog. Eventually we found one:

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After that we dived into the fog and went to Black Beach:

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The Lost Coast

Back in May my family and friends took a trip to Shelter Cove. It is a very small town located in the area with an intriguing name The Lost Coast. It is the only section of Pacific US coast that does not have Highway 1 following the coast. Once you get there you’ll understand why. Mountains with steep drop-offs come directly to the ocean. There is a small piece of flatland squeezed in between the mountains and the ocean. And that’s where Shelter Cove is located.

The road there is hard: long, narrow, windy and slow. That kept the place remote and less developed than the rest of the Pacific coast. There was no cell phone coverage, no Internet access, which made it into a nice experience. Suddenly there was so much time for family fun and games once those distractions were removed.

While this was a family vacation there was still a little bit of opportunity for photography. With the next few posts I’ll share the images and experiences I captures during the trip.

San Francisco Post Card

My family and I have just returned from a week long vacation in a small ocean shore town in an area with intriguing name "The Lost Coast". This is the only section of US Pacific coast that does not have highway 1 following the coast line.

This is probably the only remote place left on the west coast. No cell coverage, no internet for 5 days. And we’ve survived! More than that it was pretty enjoyable. Lots of fun for kids and parents. And a lot of photographic opportunities.

On the way back we stopped in San Francisco for a couple of days where I had fun photographing Golden Gate and Presidio in fog.

I’m just starting to dig thru all the photos I took on the trip. Meanwhile here is an image I made a year ago. A photograph of iconic Golden Gate bridge overlaid with a texture of a rock that I found just about where I took this photo of the bridge.

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Golden Gate Post Card

PS I’ll keep posting to my blog from my backlog of photos while I’m digging thru the images from a trip to The Lost Coast.

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