Tag: tree

Elhwa Valley

There is a viewpoint overlooking Elhwa Valley along Route 101 on Olympic Peninsula. I’ve passed that viewpoint many times on the way to the Olympic coast. I’ve stopped some of those times appreciating the vast expanse of the valley, and the mountain peaks, sometimes bear, other times covered in snow, and the fog sitting in the valley or clouds clinging to the mountains or leisurely travelling from one mountain to another. No matter the season there are always clouds there, and the view is never the same.

I have not been able to take a good photo of it for a quite simple reason. The viewpoint was likely done long ago. Since then, a fresh growth of young trees has obstructed the view.

Technology came to the rescue. The last time I went there I took a drone to fly over those annoying trees and get a clear picture of the valley. After that I spent time looking at the view, trying to memorize as much as I could the colors and the feeling of the place.

***

There are a couple challenges in painting using a photograph as a reference. First, photographs miss a lot of information that a human eye and mind can capture. I have not yet succeeded in painting from a photograph of a place I’ve never been to. It was not the challenge in this case.

The other challenge is that there are too many details in a photograph. I quickly get lost in the details and lose focus on larger shapes.

Recently, I’ve heard an interesting suggestion from another artist to paint upside down, it confuses the mind and instead of seeing trees, mountains, and rivers, it sees triangles, lines, and other shapes. And it helped.

The first layer of this painting was done upside down. It was very confusing and made no sense. But it was easy to follow: big triangle here, smaller triangle over there and a curvy line in between.

Then I turned it the right side up. My mind started putting things together. It did not happen immediately. A picture of a valley was appearing in front of me, almost like magic.

***

Then there was a fun part to this painting. I needed to blend the edges between the brush strokes to soften the sky. The easiest way was to use fingers for that. And so I did.

To avoid messing up the values and temperatures I used different fingers in different places. At the end I had a palette of 4 sky colors on my fingers from darker and cooler to lighter and warmer. The child in me said “let’s play”, and I started adding details in the sky using my finger palette.

Fingerpainting is not only for kids, adults can do it too.

My Oil Painting Journey: The Beginning

Covid was quite disruptive for our everyday lives. A lot changed at that point. We had to cope, to overcome, to adapt.

I won’t delve into all the emotions and challenges I had to deal with, except one: the extra free time I had to fill in. I did not have to go to the office and as it turned out commuting took up a significant part of my life. Working from home, I suddenly got all that time back. I did not want to spend all that time wallowing in misery about all the plans that were ruined by covid. So, I needed to find something to occupy myself with.

Let me step back a bit. Actually, let me step back a lot. When I was a kid one of the dreams I had was to paint. I don’t know how it happened, but I convinced myself that I don’t have an aptitude for painting. I did not even try. Instead, I turned to photography as my outlet for visual creativity. It was quite limited at that. I was always frustrated that image would not come out the way I saw the scene. The photograph was more exciting and captivating in my memory than in camera’s memory. Yet, I persevered and, hopefully, produced some interesting images, while dreaming about painting all that time.

Now let’s step forward again to the time when covid started. I had a lot of extra free time and a lot of uncertainty about the future. The uncertainty was causing a lot of anxiety and I wanted to anchor myself in some activity I would be passionate about.

That’s when I remembered about my childhood dream. I contacted an art teacher (and amazing artist) and started taking oil painting lessons. I had to buy a lot of supplies (funny enough at the beginning I told the teacher that at least painting was not as expensive as photography, and now I can say I was wrong).

I was deeply committed to learning the craft. I painted every day. I would do still-lives at home: I would pick some fruit I had in the kitchen or put some random stuff on the table and start painting it. Weather permitting, I would take out my easel somewhere close to home (since all parks were closed) and try to paint landscapes.

Learning was not easy. There was a lot of frustration at inability to layout on canvas what I had in my mind. In the worst fits of it I broke canvases and brushes. There was a lot of despair at the lack of progress with me sitting and crying. But I persevered through being tired, confused, exhausted.

At this point I am more comfortable with color; I can play and experiment with it without making my paintings look garish; a couple of my paintings are in a gallery. But as with anything else, the more I learn the more I know how little I know.

Looking back at the three years that passed I can see interesting patterns in my learning, and I’d like to share some tricks or key concepts I learned. (I won’t pretend that I have any authority or qualifications to teach, I simply have a few things to say.)

Restrictions Mean Creativity?

For almost two month now we’ve had Stay at Home order in Washington state. It ruined my travel plans and I was pretty disappointed with the loss of photographic opportunities. But I stayed at home and only walked close to it to keep myself and other people safe. As days passed and I kept walking the nature trails next to my home, I first came to terms with the restrictions, and then I started appreciate them because I was falling in love with the place I live in.

Day after day I was walking in the patch of wilderness near me. Little by little I studied it. Now I know every little stream, every little trail. I know many trees and rocks. I know how they look in sunny weather and in cloudy one. I know how they look in the morning and in the evening.

I spent hours sitting on a rock or log by a burbling stream in a cool shade of a tree while the sun was winking at me through the canopy. And I was winking back at the sun, listening to a story the stream was telling me. Or read a book myself. Every time I would make sure to leave no trace and take a good picture of the place.

The forest became my friend. I saw it waking up after winter, stretching its muscles with the cracking sound of its branches, dressing up in a green dress with flowery polka dots. Every day I had little discoveries waiting for me, brightening my day: a new flower blooming that was not there the day before, a tree having a shimmer of green where there were bare branches earlier, a deer walking among the trees.

The forest was never resting, always changing. And yet there was a sense of calm and peace in the forest. Nothing was rushed and everything got done. Slowly day-by-day it was coming to life.

By now I came to appreciate the restrictions for making me fall in love with the place I live in. I was challenged to find something interesting close to home. And I became more attuned to its beauty. And I became more creative.

I’m eager to see it living and changing through all the seasons.

Cold is a Good Motivator

I’ve just got back from a trip to Banff and Abraham lake in Canada. What an adventure! Not all of it was safe or easy. Winter roads can be quite challenging to drive.

My body was challenged too with the cold that I’ve never experienced before in my life. First day it was -31C. The day after it was -21C which seemed like an improvement but it was slightly windy which made it feel even colder.

On the third night I wake up earlier to photograph sunrise at Abraham lake. The place is popular for photography due to natural phenomenon. The lake freezes up deeply during winter and as freezes up methane bubbles rising from the lake bottom get captured any preserved in the ice creating fantastic three-dimensional structures.

As I got to the lake, to location I explored and decided on the day before. It was cold, very cold. The wind was howling outside rocking my car from side to side. Despite layers and layers of clothes I had on me, once I stepped outside I got cold within seconds.

I immediately got back in the car. I could not convince my body to go outside again. No matter how beautiful sunrise was going to be I could hike to the lake and back in such weather.

As I was faced with this challenged my first reaction was to just sit in the car and watch the sunrise. Then I thought that maybe I should get out of the box and photograph something else. I remembered the trees with a small frozen pond around them with ice shining like a mirror. I drove to that place. It was cold but it was quiet, still, no wind at all. I felt warm and cozy.

That ended up the place where I photographed the sunrise. There were no bubbles in the ice in my photos but the sky was nice and I liked the trees and the frozen pond around them.

In fact, I realized, I’m not that attached to the bubbles in the ice. I’m fascinated with the phenomenon and I like to look at them but I don’t feel emotional connection to the scenes involving them. Thanks to extreme cold and wind that drove me away from the lake I found something of my own, something that I enjoyed more photographically.

Experiencing a Place

Lately I started doing something different on my photographic road trips. Staying somewhere for a while. Somewhere quiet with only sounds of nature around.

I don’t mean like backpacking or camping which I like to do a lot. But sometime whether is not very enjoyable for those activities. Rain or snow makes backpacking rather a serious ordeal.

Instead I just drive into remote enough location, open the back of my SUV and sit in the back, looking outside, enjoying sounds of nature, reading a book or typing this blog.

Right now I’m in Steptoe Butte park in the Palouse. It is snowing lightly with sun breaking thru the snow. It is a beautiful winter day. I’m sitting in the back of the car and typing this blog.

I’ve tried to get to the top of the Steptoe Butte… unsuccessfully. The road is not maintainable in winter with lots of snow on it. The temperature is just right for packed slick snow under the tires. Even with all wheel drive I was sliding down instead of driving up.

So, I backed down to the small parking at the bottom of the butte and decided to just enjoy this beautiful winter day.

As I sit and quiet down I start noticing signs of coming spring. The sun is warm and pleasant. Birds are chirping outside. Somewhere under the white cover small streams of melted snow can be heard running briskly and happily.

I’ll probably take a few pictures later but for now I’m just enjoying the place.

One Day in Kauai

The day started as any other Hawaiian day. The sky was cloudy at the northeast end of Kauai just as any other day of the last vacation. My first look out of the window at the clouds, palm trees, the ocean, beach, and mountains in the distance. Hey, there in the mountains something interesting was going on. The sun broke through the clouds and lit up one of the mountains in the ridge.

That was interesting. I setup my tripod in my hotel room, put my camera on, pointed it out of the window at the landscape outside and took a photo.

The fall weather in northeast Kauai is typically very unstable. In just a few minutes the light completely changed. I took another photo. The change itself had become interesting. Thus a day long project was born: the composition was framed and unchanged for the whole day but any time light changed I would take a photo.

Here is the final selection of the images from that day.

 

My Backyard

Life is full of experiences, exciting and mundane, surprising and routine, spending time with loved ones and grocery shopping and paying bills. It is not always that I can find time to go on a trip to some exciting location.

I dream. I dream a lot. I dream big. I dream of a life in a wilderness, photographing, painting, being creative all the time. But…

To be honest, as much as much as the dream of being in the wilderness all the time seems to be attractive it is not all that makes me happy. Having someone I love and who loves me back fulfills my life with happiness that I cannot draw from the wilderness. All the exciting and quiet moments shared together fill me with joy.

To be honest, as much as I want to photograph all the time, I have a limit to my creativity. After the first few active days on a trip I find myself exhausted and numb to everything around me.

To be honest, if I truly want to be creative, all I need is to take my camera and step out into my own backyard. Because that is all it takes to find this…

Time Changes Landscape

On my last trip I decided to revisit the place I took the following photo at way back in 2011 in Zion National Park.

I like the location. I like that I found it on my own. I like that it is just off the beaten path enough to be there by myself away from crowds of tourists and photographers.

I did suspect that there would be some changes. Sure I would not get so lucky with the clouds and the light. But I did not expect to find my beloved tree dead. Its time has come I guess. Everything that lives eventually dies.

The Light

I’ve probably written about importance of light, of an interesting, beautiful light in landscape photography. And I’ll probably write about it many more times because it is worth it. This is one of those stories.

One of the places that we visited on the recent trip was Canyon De Chelly. When we arrived there the sky was gloomy. The light was flat and uninteresting. The images were flat and uninteresting too.

We started with the furthest viewpoint. In just a few minutes the sky broke into a small rain that within seconds turned into downpour and then into hail. There is nothing to do but to leave.

We dutifully visited every viewpoint on the way back. Eventually, the rain was over. When I walked to the next viewpoint the sun broke thru the clouds and lit up the canyon in patches of soft glow that added volume and magic to the scene.

From there on there were a lot of images worth looking at.

The White House

Watching the light moving across the land – there is nothing more fascinated than that for me.

One of the destinations on my most recent trip was Canyon de Chelly. One of the most interesting places it has is a White House, which is a set of ruins from the times in the distant past.

When we arrived there we were met with pouring rain then hail. When it all stopped the sky was grey and the light was flat. While I found the White House be interesting compositionally, in flat light it was looking boring.

Then the sun started breaking thru the clouds. From a viewpoint that I was standing on I could see a spots of light moving across the planes on the other side of the canyon. As they reached the edge of the canyon they quickly dropped off the cliff down the sheer the canyon wall and landed with a splash into the valley below.

I was watching them doing it over and over. With time I started seeing the pattern to the movement: the direction they are moving in and which place on the canyon wall they will pick to take the fall.

Eventually, the spot that I’ve been waiting for came by. I knew it was coming to shine on the White House while it was still wandering the plains on the other side. I saw it highlight one tree after the other slowly crawling toward the edge of the canyon. When it reached the edge of the canyon I leaned to viewfinder anticipating its fall.

The light spot dropped down fast and I caught it just as it was crossing the White House. I was excited as if I caught a magical creature. Well, maybe I did. The light like that brings certain magic to the photo.

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