Let’s face it – electricity together with wires and poles are here to stay for a while. 🙂 So, what do you do when you see great light, great color, but electric pole and wires get in your way? Well, the only things to do is to make them part of a composition.
One advantage of taking a road trip instead of flying is being able to see and photograph things along the way. At least that’s the theory. Once I’m in driving mode, I’m in driving mode, I want to zap as fast as possible to my destination. I still can see things around but I don’t stop to photograph.
That was the case up to my last trip to Palouse. I’ve made it rule to stop at any point I find interesting along the way. And I did, even if it meant turning around and driving back. It meant turning off my driving mode and being more aware of landscapes around.
It paid off with this photo.
Couple more images of the same place – horizontal:
And vertical:
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:
Last weekend I made a short two day trip to the Palouse – an area in Eastern Washington famous for its rolling hills covered with patches of fields. It is very beautiful and photogenic place. Some call it American Toscana.
My first day of the trip in the Palouse was dreadful. Grey solid sky, no light, little color. Just as if it could not get any more discouraging, suddenly the rain started. It was pouring down heavily. Most people would stay home in that weather. Not me. I went on scouting around.
The rain stopped just as suddenly as it started. Heavy clouds and soft light were majestic.
I even caught a glimpse of warm pink glow in the sky from a light of the Sun settling for the night.
Just one small piece of advice: don’t drive dirt roads there when it is wet. The dirt is a fine grain clay that becomes extremely slippery when wet. You’ll lose any control over your car. I am talking about it from experience.
California poppies can be found in Western Washington only along roads. I’ve spotted one of such places along one of freeways while driving my son to gymnastics. The hills was burning orange covered with poppies.
The next morning I woke up a little bit earlier to get to that hill and photograph poppies before work. I parked the car at the nearest parking lot next to a store and walked to that hill. The poppies were as good as the day before – an island of the Nature beauty in the middle of a city.
So, there I was, lying on a ground photographing poppies with cars passing by at a high speed. Here are a few photos I took:
Sometime I find a photograph just by accident. Like this one.
I was photographing flowers in a forest. The flowers were across a small creek that I could not cross. So, I was photographing with my hands stretched out, composing by looking at a live view on a screen on the back of my camera.
As my hands got tired I let my camera hang on a strap. That’s when I saw reflections down in the stream on the screen. I was immediately captivated by interweaving mesh of branches and interplay of continuously changing reflections in a moving water.
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.
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.
After taking panorama of cherry trees in blossom at University of Washington campus I started photographing individual trees. Always my favorite shorts of trees looking up into the sky with a wide angle lens. I love the mesh of branches:
And then I focused on individual flowers and brick pattern with a macro lens:
Day 5, Noon
What an amazing breathtaking view of Death Valley opens up from Dante’s Peak!
The elevation gain of Dante’s Peak is so high that the temperature drops 15C comparing to the the temperature at the bottom of the valley. I got there in t-shirt and shorts but quickly had to put on long-sleeved shirt, warm jacket and gloves to keep myself warm.
Here is a panorama with Badwater in the front (click on the image to see bigger size):
Here is horizontal photo of the part in the distance:
And here are is a vertical:
Day 3, Sunset
Back in Death Valley I went to Mesquite Dunes – my favorite place in Death Valley. The wind was strong I saw dust storms on the way to Death Valley and there was a dust storm in the valley too.
As sunrise was getting closer the wind was picking up more and more. Visibility dropped. The wind was continuously moving sand. Bare legs were getting a treatment with sand paper. Sand was getting everywhere.
The sand was getting into my eyes, my eyes were teary and I could not see anything. I had to retreat back to the car, wait for my eyes to clear out and then drive away to observe this from safe distance.
vitali prokopenko | fine art 