Visual Story Telling Archives - Page 5 of 9

Landscape Photography in the Painted Hills

September 11, 2019 by Kirk

Once a year we head out to Oregon to visit our sons in Portland. So I always try to schedule in some landscape photography if I can. This year we decided on The Painted Hills . It was a long three hour drive down to Prineville (our Hotel) from Portland. We met up with some friends there and we headed out around 5pm (it’s an hour drive) to get there an hour before sunset even though it was very cloudy. When we arrived the lighting was very flat and was not a very good situation for interesting light on the hills. Plus it was dark as a thunder storm was moving in. But we soldiered on and made images anyway.

Landscape photography in the Painted Hills abstract — The Painted Hills of Eastern Oregon form an interesting abstract design on a cloudy day.

The situation steadily got worse as the thunder storms kept getting closer so the photography was a bit hurried. At the same time I was trying to shoot video as well. Really it was kind of a nightmare. The images are ok but nothing that really gets me excited.

Painted Hills Oregon — Early morning sun at the Painted Hills in Eastern Oregon.

The next morning we decided to try and get there a bit after sunrise. This time of day is not optimal for the Painted Hills as the light is coming from the wrong direction. Most of the iconic hills are facing west toward sunset. We did find some that looked fairly decent.

Painted Hills landscape — Scrub trees along the Painted Cove section of the Painted Hills in Oregon.

On the way out I decided to make a shot of the iconic hill that everyone takes around sunset to just give some contrast to what we were given in the morning light wise. I tried to old patience and persistence that I mention in this blog post but it just did not workout this time.

Overall the trip was worth it, even with the lousy light on the first day. Landscape photography is always weather dependent so we were lucky to be able to go back twice. Take a look at the video below to get a feel for the experience.

Early Evening Sail

July 30, 2019July 30, 2019 by Kirk

I love bringing my camera along when I go out sailing. My wife and I went out for a sail on the Thomas E. Lannon for a beautiful evening on Gloucester Harbor. We had a nice light breeze to off-set the heat of the day. I did not shoot a lot of images but the ones I did I like quite a bit. So often I find myself converting images around the water to B&W. I don’t know why but for some reason I love the look of B&W maritime images. The wonderful tones in the low light of early evening are such a joy to work with.

I chose to bring my Fujifilm X-T30 with the 10-24 f4 which gave me the opportunity for shots of sails and things with the ultra wide, like the shot above with the binnacle in the foreground.

In the stern of the schooner this mainsheet block and tackle with the line woven around it was an interesting subject and I was looking at it all the time. Finally near the end of the sail I made a photo of it.

The sunset never did work out great but it still added to the horizon on the eastern shore of Gloucester. It was a great sail and I’m looking forward to doing it on the Ardelle and Adventure near the end of the month.

Patience and Persistence in Landscape Photography

July 23, 2019 by Kirk

Twin Lights moon — The Buck Moon rises next to the South Light on Thachers Island in July of 2019. Fuji X-T3 w/Fujinon 55-200 exp. ISO 400 1/13s @ f5.6. Luckily it was not real windy so the long shutter speed was fine. This is a fairly large crop from the original as I don’t have a lens longer than 300 (35mm terms).

A couple of the things that I preach with workshop attendees is that in most cases you will be rewarded when using patience and persistence. This image of the Buck Moon rising next to the South Light on Thacher’s Island is an image that required both. A friend had called a few days before reminding me of the Buck Moon and that it would be rising very close to sunset and that it would be rising between the the Twin Lights of Thacher’s Island in Rockport. As the appointed hour started to approach, which was at 8:21 PM, the clouds started to move in. What a real bummer it would be if the clouds blocked the moon. As the time approached I got even more apprehensive. Should I bother to go? Here is where the persistence came in. I decided to go and just see – who knows what will happen.

It still did not look promising as I walked up to our location on Eden Rd. From this location you can’t see the moon as it rises as the island blocks the horizon. I estimated that we would see the moon around ten minutes after it rose. So as we talked about the possibilities, the moon slowly poked out of the clouds and gave us a brief glimpse. So our patience paid off as we got about five minutes of shooting in before it rose into the clouds. It would show itself again later when it was dark but not near the lighthouses. The difficulty came with trying to time the red light on the lighthouse. I first counted how long it took to come around and once I figured that out it was just a matter of hitting the shutter a milli second before the light came around. So luck and skill were involved in making this image.

Others on social media have cheated and merged two images, one taken well before when it was obscured and another when it was well up in the sky. So in this case the image is not reality. The blending of two exposures to balance the dynamic range can make for a dramatic image. Unfortunately it produces images which are not a representation of reality. So I tend not to do them.

Therefore I give you this image which is and example of persistence and patience which is reality!.