Good images like good wine need time to age. This images have been parked parked on my hard drive for two months. I’ve been coming back to them slowly processing and reprocessing them. They were taken along highway 2 in Washington state near small town Leavenworth.
The fall foliage is beautiful there. This is probably the most beautiful and most popular place in Washington for fall foliage.
In my experience photos with amazing light such as sunsets and sunrises are most popular among viewers. Yet I have a lot of photos that don’t have grand scenery or amazing sunset but tell a quiet story about the place. Such as this one of a seaweed left on the rocks of Rialto Beach as the water recessed during low tide.
I’m not sure what to do about them. They fill small gaps in the story about Olympic National Park, making it more complete. At the same time I feel like the story becomes too long, especially a story about such diverse place as Olympic National Park.
I went to Olympic National Park again, just 3 weeks after last time. The last time it was all about visiting old friends. This time it was about making new.
I like the saying “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” by Marcel Proust. It has been my guide in photography for long time. But… sometimes we can let our mind rest and let legs do the work.
I did visit a place I had been to many times – Rialto Beach – but this time I walk past Hole in the Wall, further than I’ve ever been before. I was enjoying excitement of exploration, walking the ground I’ve never been to before, soaking in new landscapes.
That’s where I made this photo at twilight. It has some mysterious feel too it, strangely attracting the eye. I’m wondering if its mystery has anything to do with a you-know-which movie.
There was something new in the way I photographed Second Beach this last time which was different fro previous times. Many photographs are very minimalistic with vast open spaces of sky and ocean. I’m wondering if that an influence of Michael Kenna’s and John Paul Caponigro’s work.
It is amazing how many different photos can be made in the same spot and of the same subject. Look at this photos for example. The same sea stack at Second Beach, just different atmospheric conditions, different light and different exposure.
And here is a couple of photos with a different angle:
Yet one more angle:
More photos of this place from my earlier trips can be found on my website: http:///www.vitphoto.com/?folio=Olympic.
Patience is a virtue for landscape photographer. Waiting for the right weather, for the right light takes indefinite amount of time.
In Olympics when it rains it pours. But it can stop as suddenly as it starts. This is my favorite time to photograph as I get great cloudy sky. All I need is a bit of patience.
On my second day of the last trip to Olympic Peninsula I woke up to a pouring rain. Well, what could I do about that? Nothing, really nothing. What I can do is to read a book or a magazine. And that’s what I did. I was sitting in a car in a pouring rain reading thru a recent issue of Lenswork. Once I was done with it I moved onto a photography book.
By the noon the rain stopped. I got out of the car put on my backpack and headed to Second Beach. I was rewarded with great skies. Just the kind I like.
Photographing the same place again and again is like visiting an old friend.
A couple of weekends ago I went to Olympic Coast for 3 day photographic trip. I decided to start this year with visiting my old friend: Second Beach. By far it is my favorite beach for photography. There are so many different opportunities there.
While driving there I noticed something else that caught my eye: an amazingly saturated greenery of fresh spring leaves. It was amazing. The result was that I spent most of the day time during those three days in a forest.
Now let me welcome you to Olympic Peninsular forest in spring.
One interesting thing about nature photography is visiting the same place at different times of a year. Last spring I took a photo of one of the waterfalls on Change creek. Back then the trees were covered with fresh green leaves. Green moss was covering rocks.
I went to the same place about a month ago and it looked recognizable but at the same time very much different: bare trees and snow covered rocks.
A while back I wrote that I tend to fall in kind of artistic hibernation in winter. It is hard to push yourself out of warm cozy home into bitterly cold of winter wind.
This year I did it! I pushed myself out. I started going into the mountains and taking photos. I bought enough clothe to keep myself relatively warm even in wind at temperatures well below freezing.
So, this year I can show a few winter photos starting with a few simple ones.
I’m not sure whether it is a period in my life or my art but I’m more and more drawn to pastel colors. I remember seeking the brightest most vivid colors possible. I remember pushing colors as much as they’d go. Don’t get me wrong. If a photo has bright colors and it works I’ll keep it that way. But I see more and more photos in my collection with muted soft pastel colors.
Such as this photo. The is no awe inspiring sunrise or sunset on it but there is soft pink glow in the clouds that make my crazy about this photo.
The challenge with sharing such photos digitally is that subtle variations of color in most cases are lost when viewing them on non-calibrated monitors which is vast majority of monitors. Well, not much I can do about that.
vitali prokopenko | fine art 