Harrisburg from City Island

Back on November 11, 2012, the Harrisburg Camera Club had a group photo shoot on City Island.  Over 20 members showed up to take pictures.  One of those members was me.

The Harrisburg Marathon was on the same day and the place was packed.  Hurricane Sandy had put a serious damper on the New York marathon so there were plenty of runners looking for an outlet for all of the training and preparation they had made.  So, instead of the New York Marathon, they ran the Harrisburg Marathon.  We photographers found room to shoot once we got away from the race route.

My best pictures from the outing were of the Harrisburg skyline and the Susquehanna River.

One of the upcoming competitions has "Reflections" as the theme, so I was looking for reflections.

All in all, it was a beautiful day with time spent shooting and conversing with other photographers!

Death Valley - Eureka Mine

(Since the latest blog, when posted, goes at the top, you may want to start at the last blog on Death Valley  (Badwater), which was actually the first posted (see the dates) and work your way back up to the present (this post).)

Annette and I had seen an abandoned car near the Eureka Mine in several of the books on Death Valley and we wanted to get our own images of it.  So on Friday Annette and I went for a drive and we found the mine and the car.

The car was an old Buick Roadmaster with a straight eight.  That was a long engine block!

I was kind of disappointed that the car was so vandalized.  I would have been OK with all of the soft stuff (cloth and plastics) missing or damage and with names scratched into the paint, but why did they have to cave in the roof?

I also found that these two car pictures are an interesting study of the difference between shooting into the sun and shooting away from the sun.

I like this next photograph in Black and White both because it works in B&W and because of the impression of zigzag lines running up through the image.

Death Valley - Mesquite Flats Dunes

The dunes were probably my favorite location for the trip.

However, I got off to a rough start.  It was 5:30 a.m.  It was still dark.  I asked the instructor which lens would work best.  He gave the right answer but it was not the one I wanted to hear.  He said that whatever lens you leave in the car will be the one you want in the field.  Ok.  I get it.  But I had just bought the camera the week before the trip and I was not going to change lenses in the middle of a sand dune.  The sand was finely textured enough that any breeze at all would have it swirling in all directions.

So I chose the 24-70mm and trudged into the dunes.  And sure enough, once I had convinced myself to climb up the large dune in front of me, I found that I was too far away from the dunes in the back that I wanted a picture of.  Oh well.  I had to make the best of it so I shot at the 70mm end of the lens.

When I got the images on the computer, I was pleasantly surprised.  I liked quite a few of them.

The warm morning light was just wonderful.  The dunes have some great shapes.  And I was able to get some B&W images.  A great morning!

In fact, we enjoyed the dunes enough that Annette and I decided to go back to the dunes by ourselves on Saturday morning after the workshop had finished.  That time I took the 70-200mm lens and felt I was too close.  Oh, well!

In this first image, notice the little speck of a person and try to comprehend the size of the dunes.  Also, notice how the long shadows caress the dunes.

This next image is a picture of Annette.  No, really!  That is Annette in the lower right.  The only reason that I know this is because I was there.

On this next image, I cropped a little too close at the top.  Unfortunately, the crop was done in camera.  But I love the shadows in this image.  I like how they gently break over the round edge and deepen into  a pool.

I like to shoot perpendicular to the direction of the light, as I did in this next image.  It allows the shadows to define the shape and form of the object.  I like how the edge of the shadow goes from a blending into a sharp edge.

Notice the shadows and the softly flowing S curves in this black and white image of the dunes.

On this trip I started looking for black and white images and I am always open to abstract images and this next image is a combination of both.

Desert Track Abstract

On one of the hillocks as you enter the dunes, there is a tree with lots of character.  It was too dark on the way in to the dunes to see enough to compose a shot.  I was glad I was able to get this on the way out.  The photographer in the image was a fellow student.

Death Valley - Artists Palette

Artists Palette seemed to be a favorite of the group and particularly of the instructors.  Annette, too, seemed to love the place.  Each of them seemed to remark about the beauty of the multi-hued dirt soil.  But for me, we were taking pictures of piles of dirt.  Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder.

To be fair, the dirt did have some interesting colors that are not seen back home.  The turquoise, the pinks, the various shades of brown and black.

This first image is meant to show those various shades and colors.

This second image is one of my first experiments with B&W on this trip.  I think the mountains look much more majestic and timeless in black and white.  What do you think?

Death Valley - 20 Mule Canyon

Wednesday was a day of shooting dirt.  In the morning was 20 Mule Canyon and in the evening was the Artists' Palette.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.  Let's start with 20 Mule Canyon, which is where we went for sunrise.

Sunrise was wonderful to watch.  You could see the sun light the tips of the far mountains, but with the near foreground not lit, I did not get any images worth showing.  

These first two pictures show the difference in light.  The first picture was before the sun light had reached this valley and the second picture was with the sun higher in the sky.

One reason that I included the first picture was to give you an idea of the scale of the landscape.  Notice the two people in the first picture and notice how big they are relative to the hills and mountain around them.

And now to my new-found interest in B&W images.  It seems a shame to throw away all of the various colors of the dirt in the canyon, but the B&W image show so much of the light and texture.

Our instructors gave us the assignment of shooting the same scene in landscape and portrait modes.  My attempt at this assignment is below.  For this particular pair of pictures, I like the horizontal image better.  It seems that the vertical image crowds the chocolate topped mound too much.  What do you think?

Death Valley - Rhyolite

Rhyolite is a ghost town on the road out of Death Valley toward Beatty, NV.  It is pretty accessible and that is why I was somewhat disappointed.  All of the building remains were fenced off.  I suppose it was for the average tourists' safety, but it meant that we couldn't get up close and personal with the buildings and it meant that the fence would show up in the pictures.  So they put a crimp in my style.

This first image is of the "Bottle House".  It appears that the builder used bottles as building materials.  The bottom of the bottles were pointed to the outside of the hose and mortar/cement placed around them.  I wonder how much light the bottles allowed into the house???

It appeared that the Rhyolite Mercantile was a building in transition and in transit.  With the windows boarded up, I hope that the building was transitioning to a better state that would help to demonstrate life in Rhyolite.  Also, it was up on blocks as though it had just been moved or as though it was about to be moved.

The instructors gave us an assignment  to make an artistic abstract image and then make an equally appealing image of the "reveal".  As you can see in these next two pictures, I was not very successful!  The first image is an abstract of a broken screen which was in the window of the caboose in the second image.  

The first image appeals to me, but I wish that I had used an aperture that would have given a greater depth of field, which for you non-photographers is the area with acceptable focus.  The second image I don't like so much because it just documents that there was a caboose without wheels sitting in a barren landscape.

At the lower end of Rhyolite was an "artistic" section.  There was a crude woman made from cement blocks.  Hhhmm...  There was a circular stone maze.  And there was an installation that was supposed to be an artist's interpretation of Da Vinci's Last Supper painting.  

It appeared to me that the artist had fiberglass blankets thrown over people enacting the Last Supper.  We photographers thought it would make great images to light up the sculpture on the inside with a flashlight and have the sunset sky in the background.  Notice how the telephone poles on the distant horizon appear to be three crosses.

Death Valley - Salt Creek

Tuesday morning dawned bright and early.  Annette and I know this because we was already out at Salt creek looking for the perfect composition for a sunrise shot!

Salt Creek?  I didn't know there were creeks in the desert!  Ah, but there are!  Salt creek is fed by a spring.  Unfortunately, the water coming up through the ground picks up minerals and become very salty.  Hence, the name, Salt Creek!

There was a boardwalk at Salt Creek that was very helpful to many park visitors, especially those with limited mobility.  However, the boardwalk was right along the edge of the creek.  Great for visitors to view the creek.  Not so great for those of us who want a picture without any manmade items.

I was able to get this shot.  Notice the white fringe on the mounds.  Almost looks like a dusting of snow.  But the temperature was in the high 40's (F).

I like this next picture because it reminds me of old time paintings of the western US.  Those paintings had the same pastel colors and the same type of rock outcroppings.

After it got light, I went looking for a unique vantage point so that I could get a perspective that none of my fellow students would have.  So I climbed up on one of those hills beside a deep ravine.  Below is what my vantage point gave me.  Notice the person in the picture.  He gives you an idea of the size of the ravines.  Also notice the "bowl" just right of center and just above half way up.  That is the same "bowl" that is in my next picture, a B&W.  (This is not a great picture.  I just wanted you to see what I was seeing.)

I have not experimented with Black and White very much before the trip, but I tried several during the trip.  Here is one.

One of the members of the Camera Club back home was on an abstract kick for a couple of years.  Most of the work he showed during that time was abstracts.  So that planted a seed in my mind.  Now I look for abstracts.  Not all of the time, but the thought is there in the back of my mind.

This next picture is both an abstract and a straight photograph.  It is a picture of the exposed root system of a plant.  Yet it seems to work as an abstract.

Let me know what you think!

Death Valley - Texas Springs

Monday morning and afternoon, 5 of the 6 students went with one instructor back to the classroom while the other instructor contacted the Park Rangers and started the search for our missing classmate at Zabriskie Point.

(Since the latest blog, when posted, goes at the top, you may want to start at the last blog on Death Valley and work your way up to the present.)

We spent the afternoon working on our pictures and doing critiques of each other's work.  However, in the back of all of our minds was our lost classmate.

We received several requests for information:
How tall was he?
What was he wearing?
What kind of shoes did he have on?
What did he have with him?  Water?  Photographic equipment?

Those questions were meant to give the searchers additional information, but they trigger thoughts in our minds:
Had they found a body?
Had they found someone who was unconscious?
Why did they want to know about his shoes?  (They wanted to know about his shoes so that they could know what his footprint looked like.  A recommendation that we heard later was that if you are going hiking in the back country, you should take a picture of your shoes and the print that they leave and text it to someone who can share it with searchers if needed.)

So our work went a little slower and we stayed at the classroom a little longer so that we could hear any news.

Finally, at 2:30 or so we heard good news.  He had been found.  He was uninjured!  Yippee!

So we finished up what we were working on and headed to the Texas Springs Campground for our sunset shoot for the evening.

Unfortunately, we got there a little too late.  The sun was already below the horizon.  So we did not get any shots with strong, warm, slanting sunlight.

But we stayed long enough to get some night time star shots, like the one below:

Death Valley - Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie Point was our first sunrise.  We had to drive 30 minutes to get there and we wanted to be there before civil twilight co that we could find a great place for a sunrise image.

Do you realize what time we had to get out of bed?  Fortunately, our bodies were on East Coast time.  But that didn't last too long because we went to bed at 9:00 local time, which was midnight at home!

The day at Zabriskie Point proved interesting.  More interesting for some than for others.

One of our fellow students wanted a picture of Zabriskie Point from the other side.  I think he was trying to get the beautiful colors of the sunrise as a back drop for the Point.  Anyway, he wanted an image that no one else would have, so he went down into the canyons/ravines below the observation point looking for that perfect shot.

 I also went down in the ravine and realized how out of shape I was, so I allowed almost a half hour to get back up out.  And it was a struggle.  I had to stop several times to catch my breath and let my pulse subside.

We were all to meet back at the cars at 8:30.   Fortunately I made it back in time.  But the instructors were not in any hurry to leave.  I figured that everyone was still shooting and getting good shots so the instructors were allowing them to continue.

However when it got past 9:00, I realized that they were waiting for that fellow student to return out of the canyons.  When 9:15 arrived, they decided that they had to do something.

We yelled.  We honked the car horns loud and long.  Still nothing.

So one instructor took the students who had returned back to our home base to continue instruction.

The other instructor contacted the Park Rangers.  The Rangers sent two trackers down to look to the guy.  They were unable to find him.  So the Rangers call the California Highway Patrol and arranged for a helicopter to come and search for the lost soul.

Finally, at approximately 2:00 they found him and airlifted him out of the canyons and back to Zabriskie Point.  Fortunately, he suffered no injuries, except to his pride!  Once we saw him and saw he was safe, the teasing began!

Anyway, here are some pictures that I took that morning.

I got a little bit of instruction in processing B&W images at this workshop.  Expect to see some B&W images from this trip.  In fact all of my favorite images from this trip are in black and white!

Death Valley - Badwater

Annette and I participated in a Photography Workshop in Death Valley this past week.  In fact, we just got home today after taking the red-eye flight back east.

The workshop was good.  They pushed you to expand your vision.  In fact, part of their tag line is to, "Seek your vision."

Each day we were out before daybreak so that we could be in location by the time the sweet, warm, morning light hit the subject.

Each mid-day was spent putting the images on the computer and processing them.  I learned a lot about processing B&W images.  None in this blog, but you will see them in future blogs.

Each evening we were in location before sunset and we stayed until long after dark.  We were trying for the sunset colors and the stars in the sky.

Our first evening, we went to Badwater, the lowest point on the continent.  Badwater is the site of an immense salt fat.  It stretched to the horizon in the North and the South and was bounded by mountains on the East and the West.

We must have walked more than a mile out onto the flats.  It sure seemed like a long way when we had to trudge back to the cars in the dark! We went that far because we just had to get to the point where the patterns in the salt had not been disturbed by human footprints.

Here are a couple of pictures from that shoot.  Let me know what you think of them.

I wanted to show how the salt stretched out into the distant mountains.

The salt and the sky stretched forever!

The sunset sky was so full of color and texture!

I light painted the foreground to give the image an Otherworldly feeling.

The salt was not what Annette and I expected.  I expected that the salt would be soft and would crumble easily.  That was not the case!

When I knelt down on the salt to get a lower perspective, the salt was very hard on my knees.  It did not crumble easily!  You could pick up a chunk of the salt and actually have to put some effort into  breaking it!

Annette loves low perspectives and she has the injuries to prove it.  She has scratches on her knees and shins.  Salt in an open wound is no fun!

One of our fellow students thought ahead.  He brought knee pads with him.  I also saw another photo workshop group there and every one of the students had knee pads.  Oh well, if there is a next time, I will know to bring the pads!