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!

Troy, All Boy and a Great Joy!

We had been on hiatus from taking people pictures.  However, Annette is again very interested in taking pictures of people.  As you saw in a previous post, we had a great time taking pictures of Elizabeth in her bridal gown.

This past weekend, we took pictures of Kathleen & Troy and again it was a great time.

Troy is a beautiful little three-year-old boy whose real name is "Troy, the Joy", because he is such a great kid to be around!  When we first got to the park, Kathleen told Troy to give Annette a hug.  So Troy comes running full speed at Annette and throws himself into her, throws his arms around her neck and squeezes.  At that point, Annette was in love!

Troy has an active imagination.  He was searching the woods looking for dragons and monsters.  At one point, he intensely said, "Shhhh!  Do you hear the monster?"  It was great.

Troy also had great energy combined with great curiosity.  He searched the creek bed and all along the path.

I would love to adopt him as a grandkid!

Let me show you this great kid!

The picture above was when we first arrived.  Although he had given Annette a hug, he wasn't quite sure about that huge camera she was carrying around.

Hey, Troy!  Give your mother a kiss!

He did kiss his mother, but then he wiped it off!

Emerging from the enchanted forest.

I know there is a dragon out there somewhere!!!

A momentary pause.

These leaves were made for throwing!

I'm gonna get you with these leaves!

You can't get me!

The Dragon Slayer

A boy in his glory!

Elizabeth Spinning

It's always great to work with a subject who is willing to try things that may be slightly outside of her comfort zone.  Elizabeth was just such a person.  She was willing to try anything that Annette suggested.  (Annette is the one with the ideas.  I'm lucky to be allowed to follow her around!) Elizabeth tried anything from hugging a lamppost with weird paint, to climbing into a window, to spinning to get her skirt to twirl!

Here are a few pictures with the twirling skirt.

I takes a little bit of effort to get the skirt to swirl in a pleasing pattern and then the photographer has to be coordinated enough to catch it at just the right moment.  You'll see what I mean in this sequence.  The first one is an "almost", but not quite.  I like the other ones.  There were a lot of "misses" in between.

Notice the blue Adirondack chair in the background!

This one is my favorite, although it still needs a little work.

Elizabeth and the Blue Adirondack Chair

Sometimes a photo needs a splash of color, doesn't it?  I think so, too.

While Annette and I were shooting Elizabeth in her wedding gown at a local college, we came across a couple of bright blue Adirondack Chairs.  So Annette immediately places Elizabeth in the chair and starts posing her.  I have my long lens (70-200mm) on my camera and just stand back and get some great images.  See what you think!

I guess that means I have to give credit where credit is due.  Thanks, Annette, for putting Elizabeth in the chair and directing her poses!

Pondering the Future

Basking in the Sun

The Direct Gaze

A Moment of Laughter

I have to say that the real Elizabeth is in the last photo.  She is a super sweet, down-to-earth girl without pretension!  If she looks different than this in the pictures, it's just her "modeling" face!

Elizabeth and the '57 Chevy

Annette and I are very lucky.  Let me show and tell you what I mean.

Annette has a friend whose daughter, Elizabeth, is strikingly beautiful.  This girl got married in September.  We were guests at the wedding, not photographers.  But, when Annette asked her if she wanted to do a photo shoot with her wedding gown, she jumped at the chance.

So, yesterday, Annette and I were at a local college campus shooting Elizabeth in her wedding gown.  Normally, that would have gotten several quizzical looks, but the looks were toned down just a smidgen by the fact that it was Homecoming for the college and there were a whole army of girls in fancy dresses.  (Yes, I know that a fancy dress is not a wedding gown!)

So there we were going from one location on campus to another, when we ran across a beautiful 1957 Chevy Bel Air.  We wanted to take pictures of Elizabeth with the car but it was in shade.  Then alongs comes one of those girls in a fancy dress with her date.  Annette starts to talk to her and soon she yells out, "Hey, Pap!  Can you move the car into the sunlight?"  Wow!

So, Grandpa moves the car out of the shade and into the sunlight and we got several just beautiful pictures. 

I love the way the sunlight lights up the car, Elizabeth and the columns in the background.

I had my long lens on my camera and could not get back far enough to get all of the car  (including the fins!) and Elizabeth in the picture, so I had to "settle" for this.

The whole day was such a good time taking pictures of this beautiful girl and chasing the light that is was energizing.  In fact, so energizing that we were up loading  and editing pictures until way past our bedtime!

Anderson Grist Mill, 2012

It's been two great days this weekend!  The only problem is...they are over!

I'll tell you about yesterday in a future blog, but for now, let's talk about today.

Last year Annette and I arranged for the camera club to go to the Anderson Grist Mill near Mercersburg, PA.  The participants who attended the photo shoot last year were very excited about all of the opportunities for pictures inside of the grist mill.  Several asked if they could get in on their own!  The club president said that it was the most requested photo shoot of the year.

So, what could we do but an encore.  Annette and I arranged for the Camera Club to go to the Anderson Grist Mill near Mercersburg, PA for the second time.  The weather shaped up right on cue.  It was a beautiful day full of warm fall air and wonderful sunshine!

The grist mill is so full of ingenious contraptions that I just look for more time than I spent taking pictures!

Inside the grist mill there was a tool room with all kinds of hand tools laying on the work benches and hanging from the wall.  There was also quite a bit of old junk.  In the middle of the floor was a table with window light hitting it just right.  So, I used that table as a place to "stage" some of the junk treasures.

This first picture includes a bottle, just for Annette.  On one of our first workshops, Annette found some old bottles and arranged them just so against a colorful rusted bucket.  I wondered why she was photographing trash!  Now here I am doing the same.

This second picture is of a wooden box with an orchard brand name stamped into the end.  I set up the box so that the sunlight would rake the side of the box and create shadows in the imprint so that the imprint would be more visible.

There were three planes in the tool room.  One of them had so much dirt and grime that you could no longer see the wood grain.  So I set up the two other ones.  I wanted the handles to echo one another.

I even had a chance to make an abstract photo.  The lights in this abstract are from holes in the wall of the mill.  I used a longer shutter speed to get more length to the streaks.  I was pointed up a little so I think the blue color comes from the sky.

One other thing that deserves more telling than I am going to do is that it was great to see fellow photographers in action and share tips and tricks.  This is the way that friendships are born.  I think some were birthing today!

Well, I hope you enjoyed hearing from me again and also enjoyed the pictures.

More importantly, get out there an keep making photos!

Kenilworth Aquatic Park Flowers

 On July 21, 2012, Annette and I found the time to go to the Lotus Blossom Festival at the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens.

It rained off and on during the drive down.  So much so that we wondered if this was going to be a wash out.  But we kept on going.

When we arrived it was lightly sprinkling.  We took our ponchos along just in case.

We arrived at 3:00 pm and it looked like most of the activities for the day had already left.  There were a couple of bands still left on the schedule and they both bravely trooped on, but their audience had all but disappeared.  Oh well, we didn't come for the activities, we came to see the flowers.

At first, I was a little discouraged by the rain.  Nobody likes to get wet when they are facing a two hour car ride home in wet clothes and every photographer wants to protect his gear (electronics and water do not mix!).

But I dutifully followed Annette into the gardens.  It turns out that it was worth the trip, in spite of the rain, or maybe because of the rain!

The wind from the storm had turned some of the more fully opened blossoms almost inside out!

Lotus Blossom feeling the effects of the Rainstorm

The huge bowl-shaped leaves of the Lotus plant caught and retained some of the water from the storm. I wondered how the plants put that water to good use.

I also liked how the shape of the leaf and the shape of the blossom mirror each other.

In the image below, it appears as if the pedals are wrapping themselves defensively around then core of the blossom, protecting it from the effects of the storm.

This new blossom appears to be coyly emerging from behind the leaves.

Besides the Lotus Plants there were many others, such as this blossom on a vine.

I was worried that the monochromatic, gray sky would be a problem, but in this picture,  it reduced the contrast (versus the bright, harsh sun in a nearly cloudless blue sky) such that you can actually see the reflection of the blossom rather than just a black shadow.

The rain also added some interest to this next Lilly pad image.  It is what was making the ripples in the water.

After an hour and a half, the drizzle turned into a shower.  You should have seen Annette!  She had on her poncho with the hood up and her camera, backpack on her back!  She also poked a hole in the poncho so that she could look through the viewfinder with the camera under the poncho.  She is one die hard photographer!

I guess I am not that dedicated to my craft.  I thought that when the rain came, it was a good time to look at the displays inside of the park office building!

Talk to you next time.  Keep on Clicking!