Tag Archives: landscape

#52weekproject – Week 23: Mazama Village Campgrounds

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Crater Lake, Oregon

52wp-W23 Crater Lake Mazama Campground 2014-09-27

Taken Friday, September 26, 2014.

Drove into Crater Lake National Park, well after sundown. After we set up our tents, I decided to set up my cameras for some long exposure timelapses of the sky, even though I was kind of exhausted. Really wanted to do this timelapse over Crater Lake, but driving back up those switchbacks in the dark from the campground didn’t seem appealing. Unfortunately, putting off til tomorrow what could have been done that day came back to bite me, as the following night was cloudy, and windy, so unfortunately, I didn’t end up getting any starscapes over Crater Lake. Looks like I’ll have to go back out to some other time!

I did crop the photo a bit to balance the image, and cut out the truck and the light from the bathroom. And, since I did do a timelapse with this, I was also able to stack the photos into a startrails photo. Using a different method than I have before, I stacked these in photoshop, grouped them as a smart object, and set the Stack Mode to median, which I think gave a more pleasant result than I typically get (the trails usually look more jagged and noisy). I’m still learning some of the post-processing on these photos, but overall, it’s pretty solid! Let me know what you think, or if you have any tips, or tutorials to share!

Mazama Village Startrails stacked

#52weekproject: Week 14 – Panorama Point and Mount Hood

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Panorama Point - Mount Hood

Taken Saturday, May 24th, 2014.

I went to Portland, Oregon to visit my friends Hagene and Jared (from Week 4’s photo). They were awesome enough to take me around to see the awesome sights in the Columbia River Gorge. We saw waterfalls, and bald eagles (or so I was told). Oh, and Mount Hood. At sunset. (See above. Note the orange and yellow hues on the peak.)

We then went to Hood River at Double Mountain brewery for some beers and pizza. And took a few more photos on the way back. I’ll be sure to share those at some point as well. Thanks for an awesome weekend guys!

#52weekproject: Week 12 #Jesstin2014

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Week 12: #Jesstin2014

Photo taken on Friday, May 9th, 2014. This technically falls under Week 11, but I’m willing to fudge this so it gets it’s own week.

Misty Farms, Ann Arbor, MI

Misty Farms, Ann Arbor, MI

 

Jessica and Justin chose an awesome farm to host their awesome wedding festivities. They were awesome enough to allow me to pull them away for a couple of awesome minutes during the awesome welcome reception to take this awesome photo.

There had been couple of crazy short storms rolling through the area that day, but it made for some really beautiful evening light. I think this could have been even better as a portrait panorama, but didn’t think of it at the time. I might have been a couple beers in. Thanks for an awesome weekend guys! And congrats! (And did I mention how awesome they are?)

#52weekproject: Week 11 – The Lampost and the Lighthouse

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Week 11: The Lamppost and the Lighthouse

Lamppost Painting

Taken on Tuesday, May 6th, 2014. Took the bus down to Adler Planetarium after work on a day that was windier and colder than it seemed. I was looking for a sunset picture of the skyline, but since I had shown up way before dusk, I decided to try a few different things, which is what this project is all about. The sunset photo was a little pedestrian, so it doesn’t get top billing this week. (Also, full disclosure, it was super windy and cold by the lake, and I was losing feeling in my fingers so I wanted to skedaddle before the sky got interesting enough for a great skyline pic.)

This photo is pretty simple. Make the horizontal things horizontal, the vertical things vertical. Compose the elements in a visually appealing way. Find some balance in the subject. Have an interesting foreground, midground and background. The hard part was composing this with an ND3 filter on it, which only allows 1/1024th of the light through (but it gave me the ability to make this a long exposure).

One of the things I like about this photo is that it has a painting like quality to it with the choppy water smoothed out with the long exposure. It actually has some semblance to my desktop wallpaper that I found that is based on Rene Magritte’s Son of Man painting (that you may recall from the newer-but-not-that-new Thomas Crown Affair movie). Here’s that wallpaper:

Also, here’s the other photo that didn’t make the cut:

The Chicago Skyline at Sunset(ish)

Sunset skyline

It’s amazing how you can get 2 completely different photos just 30 minutes and 50 yards from each other.