Sep 26
I have three photos in the IR Dreaming exhibit at Watson Studio Gallery in Johnson City. The exhibit features 53 infrared images from 34 different artists. It runs September 26th through October 24th, 2009. I hope you can drop by the gallery. Here I am with Carol Watson, Gallery Director. We’re standing next to my photo of clouds and tufas from Mono Lake, California, which won honorable mention!
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I’ve just returned from a week in Colorado.
I enjoyed…
A mountainside of beautiful fall color is a wonderful thing, but my “traditional portraits” of the aspens just weren’t exciting me.
So my friend Micaela and I walked into the forest a few yards. I aimed the camera up. And down. I slowed the shutter speed. I overexposed. I underexposed. I twisted the camera during the exposures.
I was having fun with my camera. And I finally felt creative. Let me know what you think.
I almost didn’t take any photos today.
I went for a hike at a state park near Goldendale. (It was raining in the mountains, and Goldendale is far enough west that it’s in the rain shadow of Mount Hood. Lots of sunny days.)
I didn’t see anything that inspired me, so I left the cameras in the backpack.
It was a nice walk in the woods, which let me do some thinking and clear my head.
When I came back to White Salmon, I remembered that I wanted to try some infrared shots of the old buildings on my friend Trish’s property. So yes, I did take some photos today.
Tomorrow I head home. In the next few days, I’ll have another blog post summarizing my thoughts about this trip.
Jul 7
Monday afternoon and evening, I did a one-day photo workshop with Michael Frye on night photography, through the Ansel Adams Gallery. Assisting with this workshop was another great photographer, Mike Osborne.
I learned a lot, including how to do light painting with flashlights, as shown above.
I also played around with infrared night photography. The image below shows a car driving by near Olmstead Point. I kind of like the sweeping curve of the headlights through this image.
This image of Half Dome from Olmstead Point was taken earlier, near dusk.
I got back to Yosemite Lodge about 2 AM and was asleep a few minutes later. It was a bit difficult, but I managed to get up early this morning to drive to Berkeley to visit a professor and a few students. Tomorrow, I start my trip up north, eventually to Oregon.
Today, I visited Bodie State Historical Park, north of Mono Lake and Lee Vining. Bodie was a gold mining town and is now a ghost town. There are still a couple of hundred building there. Most are standing. A few are falling down.
The image below is the interior of the stamp mill, where the ore was crushed into dust to make it easier to extract gold and silver. (Shot at ISO 6400.)
You can peer into most of the buildings and see the lives that people left behind in Bodie. Wallpaper falling down. Clothes littering the floor…
I walked over to the town cemetery. Many of the graves were from the heyday of Bodie. And a few are more recent, of family members returned, perhaps, to where they grew up.
After I left Bodie, I returned to Yosemite. The Grouse Creek fire continues to grow, and the haze in the valley is worse than when I was here a few days ago.
Tomorrow marks the halfway point of my trip.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but my time at Devil’s Postpile National Monument turned into a full day of hiking and about a hundred photos.
Today was July 4, so the park was crowded—probably a couple of thousand visitors—their busiest day of the year. They have a shuttle bus system to reduce the number of cars on the narrow, windy roads.
Among other things, the monument protects Rainbow Falls of the San Joaquin River. This photo shows how the falls got its name… (As always, click the images to enlarge them.)
The monument is named after a large, well, “pile” of columnar basalt. Normally perpendicular, there are some places where the columns seem to bend over. This image is infrared, which shows the green foliage as nearly white.
Here’s another infrared shot, of the dead trees left from the 1992 Rainbow Fire, which burned about 8000 acres of forest.
And here are a few other favorite images from my five-mile hike at about 7500 feet of elevation.
Tomorrow, it’s back to Yosemite.
I continue to be inspired by my infrared photos. The image above is from the South Tufa area of Mono Lake, near Lee Vining, California. Mono Lake is an alkaline and saline lake, and the tufas are calcite rock formations in several locations there. The infrared camera highlights the interesting clouds we had today.
In Yosemite, the Grouse Creek fire continues to burn, and the Yosemite Valley had even more smoke today than yesterday. I did spend more time at the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias.
Tomorrow, I plan to explore south from Bishop.
I spent the day exploring more of Yosemite, hiking to Taft Point, driving to Washburn and Glacier Points, and then spending more time in Yosemite Valley.
The Valley has a lot of smoke in it from the Grouse Fire, which started from lightning about a month ago. It’s a little frustrating that the grand vistas are pretty hazy, but I appreciate the benefits that fire brings to the forest environment.
The image above is another infrared photo. It is the classic view from the “Tunnel View” overlook. El Capitan is on the left. Half Dome is just left of center in the far distance. Bridalveil Falls is in the lower right.
Tomorrow, I work my way back through the Yosemite high country, and will end up in Bishop, on the other side of the Sierras.
PS: My friend Nancy wanted a photo of me driving through one of those “tunnel trees”. The California Tunnel Tree in the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias isn’t big enough for a car (and they don’t allow them there anyway). When the tunnel was cut in 1895, they didn’t foresee the size of today’s cars. No car, but here I am under the tree.
Jun 30
I drove down to Yosemite today—my first time visiting this park.
I like to get to know a place before I try to get serious with my photography. I spent some time at Tuolomne Meadows, and some time in Yosemite Valley. In the valley, I took some of the iconic shots that you’ve seen from other photographers. Of course, as I mentioned in my earlier post, if it’s in Yosemite Valley, somebody’s taken the photo before.
I am doing something a little different—I brought my Infrared Nikon D200, and trying a few infrared shots. The image above is an infrared shot of Upper Yosemite Falls in afternoon light, converted to black and white with Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro.
I also brought along my video camera. I’m not good at video yet, but I’m working on it.
Tomorrow is another day in Yosemite.
Yesterday, I traveled down to San Antonio with one of my best friends for a photography expedition. Our goal was to just explore and play. I took my infrared Nikon D200 (converted by LifePixel) and my visible light (unmodified) Nikon D300.
We visited several of the missions that are part of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. Here’s an infrared tree portrait from Mission San Juan Capistrano.
We also visited the San Antonio Japanese Tea Garden, which had completed a major renovation the day before.
One of my favorite photos is this one looking straight up at the ceiling of the pagoda.
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(Click to enlarge.)