Tag: rock

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

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.

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.

Spring Is In The Air

Spring… What do you do to us. Emotions over the top. Creativity spruces.

After dreadful winter rains nice spring weather came to Pacific Northwest. And I cannot stop photographing. I have not sorted thru all the photos from Death Valley trip yet and I already took photos of cherry blossom, that I have not even looked thru, tulip festival, that I only quickly looked thru.

Today I wanted to hike up to some waterfalls, stopped on the way there to check out a creek running over the rocks and got stuck there for hours photographing the creek, rocks, flowers, reflections. I have not even made to the trailhead to the waterfalls that I was originally planning to go to.

Here is one of the photos from today’s trip:

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I really need to step up processing of all my photos.

PS And today while reviewing photos in camera I accidently navigated to the first photos on the card a discovered interesting images of plum blossom that I have not even download off the card yet.

Death Valley

Day 1, Afternoon

This is a beginning of a story about my photographic trip to Death Valley. One of the things that I did differently this time around was writing a journal of some thoughts about scenes I saw and events that happened.

Death Valley is an unique place. It is a place of extreme heat, lack of water and Nature’s way to show adaptation and survival of life. It is a place of extreme contrasts – from heat of the bottom of the valley to cold mountain tops, from dunes at the bottom to forests at the tops.

Every time I go to Death Valley I spent most time in dunes. I’m captivated by their perfect geometry of line, shape and texture. That’s where I stent most of my time on this trip too. But let’s not skip too far ahead and start at the beginning.

Upon arrival to Las Vegas airport I rented a car – a large SUV with foldable second row of seats, so there is a large enough flat area in the back. The reason was that the way I travelled was very minimalistic: I slept in the car. Before going to Death Valley I stopped at the closest grocery store and loaded up the car with water and food for the whole trip.

Once all preparation was done without much delay I took off to Death Valley. After about 3 hour drive I arrived there. The weather was great. The sky was filled with clouds. It was not typical for Death Valley but great for landscape photography.

Road in Death Valley
Road to Eureka Dunes

When Night Looks Like Day

When night looks like day? When it is full moon. And tonight is full moon. With a fellow photographer I went to photograph Aurora which was supposed to be very strong today but the full moon was stronger. Its light was so strong that we could walk on a trail and work with photographic equipment without flashlights.

And here is a proof that night can look like day – a couple of photos I took tonight. The only hint of it being night are star trails in the sky.

Rattlesnake Lake in Moonlight #1
Rattlesnake Lake in Moonlight #1

Rattlesnake Lake in Moonlight #2
Rattlesnake Lake in Moonlight #2

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