it's hard to resist a good reflection

This past Saturday morning, I headed over to Sawhill Ponds outside Boulder for sunrise. There was nothing terribly exciting going on, but I do like the above image from that morning’s shooting. It’s hard to resist a good reflection.

Before I started to get serious about photography, I have to admit that I don’t remember paying any attention whatsoever to reflections. Now I look for them all the time. Anytime I’m out & about and there’s water, I check it for reflections of the landscape or sky. Big lakes, small ponds, calm pools in streams, even rain puddles… they’re all worth checking out.

The best time to get reflection shots is, big surprise, the usual magic hours around sunrise & sunset. This is not only when you will have the best chance of finding calm water, but it will also allow you to get shots without direct sunlight hitting the water’s surface.

If the sun is up and the landscape is illuminated by direct light, but the water is still in shadow, you’ll need to think about using a graduated neutral density filter. But if you're shooting multiple exposures for HDR or for merging two exposures in Photoshop, then you’ll just need to bracket a shot (for HDR) or make two exposures for the high contrast/low contrast sections of the scene (for merging in Photoshop).

If shooting a reflection in shallow water, it’s a good idea to leave your polarizing filter off the camera since it will tend to wash out the reflection and instead allow you to see whatever is under the water’s surface (gravel, rocks, grass, mud, etc…).

Reflections are worth searching out since a good reflection can add an extra dimension to an already interesting scene (the Chapel on the Rock image), make something interesting of an otherwise dull scene (the Lake Irene shot, below on the left), allow for a different interpretation of a scene (the rock and reflection of the Indian Peaks, below on the right). Even if the landscape itself is boring, some heavenly light in the sky or some captivating clouds can make for a lovely reflection shot.

So whenever you’re out & about and find some water, check it out for reflections because they make for beautiful photos and because, hey, let’s be honest, very few things say, “I’m a serious landscape photographer” like a cool reflection shot :-)

Thanks for reading about stuff I’ve photographed. ~Rich

embracing winter's rearguard action

This is an odd ‘in-between’ season of the year when it’s not really winter any longer, but it’s not yet spring either. Here in Colorado, that means it can be 70 degrees & sunny one day, then 25 degrees & a blizzard the next.

It’s all a bit frustrating, photographically-speaking. There are beginning to be tantalizing glimpses of spring, and yet in the last ten days or so we’ve had three snowstorms. I’m wishing spring would go ahead and really start building some momentum, since I’d like to get started on my 2009 photo wish list (the twenty places in Colorado that I want to get to this year during spring, summer, & fall). I’ll admit that a good snow makes for a lovely landscape… but I’ll also admit that I’m no fan of winter. In fact, I can’t wait for it to be over.

Okay, sorry... I think I just needed to vent a bit. To be honest, winter actually does present some great opportunities for photography. You just have to be willing to get Out There in the snow & cold. And even when it’s warm and everything is brown & blah down here near Denver in early spring, you can still head up into the mountains and find beautiful, wintry scenes. Shoot, there were places I went hiking last July that still had quite a bit of snow on the ground. And in August we had a snow storm up in the mountains that resulted in one of my favorite photos ever (the shot of me in front of Longs Peak that is in the upper right corner of my blog).

This past weekend, I decided to embrace the most recent round of wintry weather that was making a determined attempt to roll back the tentative advancements of spring, and so my wife & I headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park and did some snowshoeing. We rented snowshoes at The Warming House (great folks there) and we hiked up to Dream Lake. The landscape was gorgeous. The pine trees looked especially elegant wearing their coating of snow. We had a great time and… don’t tell anyone, but… for a few hours there in the achingly beautiful, snow-covered mountains of the Colorado High Country, I forgot how much I’ve been wishing for spring.

Thanks for reading about stuff I’ve photographed. ~Rich

photography quotes

I realized it had been a while since my last post and that it was about time for me to get something new out... but I sat down and was having a bit of writer's block, so I thought I'd just share some photography-related quotes I've been collecting lately.

* "Being a photographer means living your whole life subconsciously considering the light, but there are worse things to be obsessed with." David Noton

* "As the light changes from moment to moment, from day to day, and from season to season, it alters the appearance of the landscape. As a photographer, you should become visually sensitive to this process and be aware of how the landscape is shaped by the light." John Shaw

* "Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing." Edward Weston

* "At the point of capture, the photographer benefits from the entire scene, not only the light in the landscape but the scene's scale and depth. Only a small portion of the landscape can be included in the viewfinder. My vision of a final image helps me to ensure that the exclusion of the periphery of a scene does not prevent me from conveying what I saw and felt when I was there." Michael James Brown

* "Every successful photograph is a balanced fusion of subject, composition and light." David Ward

* "Luck plays its part in landscape photography. But being in the right place at the right time is not really about luck. If the location itself is spectacular, then the place, to an extent, will do the work. But the good photographer has the determination, skill and sensitivity to make photographic sense of it all, and the sense to witness those wonders when the light is at its most magical." Joe Cornish

* "The question could be posed: 'Why photograph?' This gives rise to huge debate but, essentially, the impulse that leads one to make a landscape image perhaps amounts to no more than a simple wish to please oneself. For there can be no doubt that the image-making process draws us into the essence of things." Charlie Waite

* "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust

look more, shoot less

While driving up to Rocky Mountain National Park this past Saturday afternoon, I decided I’d only take ten photos during my visit to the park. Usually I return from an outing and I’ve filled the memory card with shot after shot. And most, many, the vast vast majority, just get deleted. Once I get them open on the computer, I cringe, wondering what on earth I was thinking. So on Saturday, I decided to look more & shoot less.

I used two of my self-imposed limit of ten before I even entered the park. As I drove down into Estes Park, I saw the Stanley Hotel sitting over to the right and thought, “Hey, how’s come you’ve never photographed the Stanley???” Two shots from two different viewpoints later, and I only had eight shots left for the park.

Once I entered the park, I drove up to Bear Lake and took two shots there. The light was all wrong in both shots, and I knew that even when I was there, so I don’t know why I took them. Grrrr. Delete. Six shots left.

I drove back down to Moraine Park and parked along the road to the campground. I’d never really explored this, the western end of the spacious meadow. I wandered around for quite a while along the banks of the Big Thompson River, exploring different compositions. I would’ve liked to take a photo looking west, including the peaks of the Continental Divide up beyond the end of the valley… but the position of the sun late in the day made the light all wrong (I’d learned my lesson up at Bear Lake!). I ended-up taking four shots (vertical & horizontal compositions) of the scene you see at the top of the post. The reddish rocks attracted me to the spot, as did the s-curve in the stream. At first, I had the camera set up very low, at knee-level, but belatedly realized that viewpoint was below the raised bank of the river and therefore cut off any view of the vast expanse of the meadow (you just saw the rocks, the stream, and then the wooded hills in the far far distance). To better the composition, and to fully utilize the incredible depth of field of the 10-22mm wide angle lens, I raised the camera up so the composition would include the rocks at my feet, the stream, the meadow beyond, and the hills in the background.

The vertical composition that you see here is my favorite image from that spot. It nicely channels your eyes up into the photo (rocks, stream, meadow, hills). The horizontal composition is also pleasing to the eye; it allows your eyes to roam from side to side and in that way conveys a sense of the vast expanse of the meadow.

On the way back to the Mini I used my last two shots (horizontal & vertical compositions) on a lone tree I’d seen up on a hill when I’d first drove back the road and parked. I set up the shot with the bright ball of the setting sun directly behind the tree (and the camera in the shadow of the trunk), intensely backlighting the branches. What can I say? I like trees!

And that was my ten shots. It turned out to be an interesting experiment. It really forced me to look around more & think about each composition. I “wasted” a few shots, but learned something even from those ones, so they weren’t really wasted efforts. I’m very happy with the photo of the stream at the top of the post, especially since I doubt I would’ve even discovered that spot if I hadn’t set out to look more & shoot less.

Thanks for reading about stuff I’ve photographed. ~Rich

photoshop magic

While I was on my Denver photowalk this past weekend, I was excited to shoot the Holy Ghost Church & 1999 Broadway. It's such an amazing scene, with the skyscraper rearing up right behind the little church. But when I got home and opened up those shots on the computer, I wasn't happy with any of them. The compositions were okay, but the blah, washed-out, gray sky ruined the images.

So I decided to try something I'd never attempted before: using Photoshop to replace the sky in a shot. I dug out a book I have on Photoshop Elements 6 (The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage) and went to work. I used the sky from another one of my Denver photowalk locations (the St Cajetan Church photograph). After much trial & error, I finally had an image I was happy with.

I'm still not sure how I feel about doing something like this to a photograph, though. I can't decide if I've crossed some line and destroyed the integrity of the original image, or if I've simply creatively enhanced the scene that was before me.

Thanks for reading about stuff I've photographed. ~Rich

my wide angle denver photowalk

date of activity: 3/7/09

I went into Denver yesterday to try out my new Canon 10-22mm lens. I’ve seen some interesting cityscapes & architectural shots taken with this wide angle lens (on different Flickr groups), so that’s why I decided to head into the big city for the lens’ initial outing.

I got a book from the library called Getting To Know Denver by Francis J Pierson, and used it to cobble together my own photowalk through the Mile High City. There were several places on my itinerary that I didn’t get to, but after three+ hours of walking around & shooting, I was starting to get tired and I’m always kinda stressed in the city anyway, so I decided to head back to the car without hitting the last few locations.

The spots I did get to, in order, are:
*Millenium Bridge
*Union Station
*St Cajetan Church
*D&F Tower
*Federal Courthouse
*Holy Ghost Church & 1999 Broadway
*Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church
*17th & Broadway
*Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
*State Capitol Building
*Denver Art Museum & Denver Public Library

And I have to laugh because while I was making my way around the city on my little photowalk, I was asked on three different occasions if I would use someone’s camera to take their photo. Each time, it was with some variation of, “You look like you know what you’re doing.” I tell ya, all you have to do is carry around a tripod and people think you’re Ansel freakin’ Adams! (I wish.)

I’m glad I did the photowalk in Denver as the first outing with my new lens, but I just don’t get cities. I’ve been in my share of big cities, and as far as urban craziness, Denver is admittedly pretty mild… but still, I’d much rather be up in the mountains than walking around a city any day. Being in the city absolutely drains me, while being out on a trail somewhere makes my spirit come alive. Soooo… I think it’s pretty safe to say that the next time I take my new lens out & about, there’s probably not going to be a building in sight in any of the photos I bring back :-)

Thanks for reading about stuff I’ve photographed. ~Rich

the scene & the moment

“To isolate any tree imbues it with stateliness and nobility.” Charlie Waite in Landscape: The Story of 50 Favorite Photographs

We passed this spot while we were on our way to eat with my wife’s family a couple of weeks ago. Several trees out in the field caught my eye and I immediately imagined a photograph made later in the day, at last light, with the bare branches silhouetted against a clear sky as if they were etched upon it. It was only when I returned to the spot this past weekend that I realized I’d be able to arrange a composition that included Longs Peak… so getting my favorite 14er in the shot turned out to be an unexpected, but very welcome, bonus.

One of the things I enjoy about photography is how we, as photographers, are able to not only capture a scene, but capture a moment… and, more than that, help shape the scene & moment that are preserved in our image.

The time of day we choose to photograph a scene helps shape the image we capture. I got this shot at sunset, and this would have been a totally different photograph at any other time of the day, in different light.

The season in which we choose to photograph a scene helps shape the image we capture. I love the stark, bare branches of the tree silhouetted against the empty sky in this image. If I’d taken this shot in summer, with the branches full of leaves, this would be a totally different shot.

How we choose to compose a shot helps shape the scene we capture. I chose to isolate this tree in the frame, along with Longs Peak, so that it’d be a very simple composition. There were other trees just out-of-frame to the left and right, and a barbed wire fence immediately in front of me, but this photo is simply about a tree and a mountain, captured in a moment of time.

Of course, there are other factors/tools/choices that can help shape the nature of the image we capture: things like the lens we choose to use, or our choice of aperture or shutter speed or focus or filters. Any post-processing & editing we do once we have the shot opened up on the computer is important, too.

To me, when you get right down to it, photography is about Being There, about capturing an interesting scene in an unrepeatable, unique moment of time. As landscape photographers, we of course have to work with the raw material which nature gives us, but that we can help shape the scene & the moment we capture is, to me, very cool and very humbling.

Thanks for reading about stuff I’ve photographed. ~Rich