Archive for the ‘Landscape’ Category:
The Horse Knows The Way
Here’s another image from the beautiful frosty morning that I spent at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum a couple of weeks ago. I love bringing this barn into my images – it’s as if they positioned it on the hill above the meadow to make a perfect background to lead your eye into the image. Yes, it’s not a mountain range – but it’s what we have to live with here in Minnesnowta.
This is actually a pretty severe crop into what was originally a horizontal picture. I had too sweeping of a vista in the original shot, and the subject got lost. I like this one much better – it’s a much simpler composition.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 70-200 f/4L @ 140mm ISO 200, f/13, 1/250 sec.
Winter Wonderland
I love winter. That’s probably good because I live in a state where we get lots of it. Sometimes I get in a rut like everyone else and think I can’t get out to shoot in the winter because it’s too snowy or cold or drab or whatever. Frankly, it often is. On Saturday I was reminded again about why I love winter – everything looked Heavenly with fresh snow and fresh hoarfrost. There was a saintly white wonderland in every direction – so bright and white I wore sunglasses even though it was fully overcast.
Shooting on days like this is a challenge too – there is no detail in the sky or the ground. Do you emphasize the negative space or minimize it? The last post maximized it – this one minimizes it to focus detail on the frosty trees. Another gotcha is the light meter in the camera. It is important to set the meter to +1EV since everything is white. If you don’t, the camera will try to make everything 18% grey – and this will mean an image that is way too dark. One final winter shooting tip? Bring spare batteries and keep ‘em warm! Battery life is shortened by a huge amount when it’s below freezing.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 40mm ISO 200, f/13, 1/250 sec.
Hoarfrost in Minnesota
Today marked a milestone of sorts – it’s the first time in two years that we had a heavy hoarfrost and I didn’t have a prior commitment that kept me from going out to shoot it. I anticipated we’d get some last night since a pea-soup fog rolled in last evening. When I woke up this morning and saw the crystalline world outdoors, I bundled up and headed out to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.
The tough part about shooting there in the winter is that they close off the 3-mile drive to motor vehicles. That means a hike in the snow to get anywhere. Framing up a shot without the snowbank along the road meant trudging through 2 feet of snow with a full load of camera gear. The conditions were perfect – the sun didn’t burn off the frost and the fog rolled out leaving it nice and clear.
Strangely, this picture is not black and white. With a white sky, lots of snow, and dark tree bark there’s almost no color in the picture. A slight blue cast to the snow is about the only giveaway that it’s not black and white.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @26mm ISO 200, f/13, 1/250 sec.
Desolate Shelter
It doesn’t get any more accommodating than this, folks! This, and a 2-story outhouse (yes, really) are all that greet you when you make the brutal 4-mile hike to Ka’aha. It isn’t much – it’s a three sided lean-to with dirt floors that is home to all manner of beasties that want to get out of the direct sun. All the same, it’s a very welcome break from that same sun that tends to make the black volcanic rock pretty warm.
The view from that three-sided lean-to is spectacular! When you look south out of the shelter, there is nothing between you and Antarctica.
That two-story outhouse? It seems it’s pretty tough to make an hole into volcanic rock – so they had to build a tank sitting on the rock. The second story was to ensure that you were on top of that tank. It also made a pretty good midday shelter – complete with throne.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 40mm ISO 100, f/10, 1/40 sec.
Ka’aha Waves
Here is a beautiful dawn image from Ka’aha in Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii. This was taken during my recent photo trip to Hawaii with Jon Cornforth.
Jon suggested this area since it’s pretty and it’s pretty tough to get to. It was only a 4-mile hike, but in the four miles there is a 2400 foot elevation change between the trailhead and the campsite. 1800 feet of that elevation change takes place in the first mile. As you would guess, that’s pretty much straight down a cliff. The big wall in the background of this photo? Yep, that’s the big wall we hiked down and had to hike back up.
This photo was taken right at dawn the second day of our backpacking trip. It was just above our campsite on the plateau where the first rays of dawn light would hit these rocks. I took this picture because I love the rainbow wave texture in the volcanic rocks and I think it contrasts well with the lichen (or mineral) splotches on the foreground rocks.
If you can find this rock again at Ka’aha – look for my bubble level. I lost it when I took this shot!
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L ISO 400, f/22, .8 sec.
Kohala Valley
“Do you ever think to yourself: Why the @#$^ doesn’t my good camera take pictures this nice?”
-Jon Cornforth, near Hawi, Hawaii
This picture was made on the iPhone using what was easily my iPhone photo app of the year – Autostitch. Autostitch is an app that takes several iPhone images The results that this program delivers are stunning – and it couldn’t be easier.
To make a panoramic picture with your iPhone and Autostitch, take several shots with your iPhone that overlap slightly (about 25% seems to be fine). Use Autostitch to select all the component images and press the “Stitch” button. Once it’s done – and it’s done VERY quickly with the latest version – select the ‘crop’ gizmo to automatically slice off the rough edges. The resulting image is pretty big – not hard to believe since it is several pictures stitched together.
It does a beautiful job of lining the pictures up and correcting for warp. It doesn’t do as well with things moving right on a merge line – and there is some of that in this image.
At the end of the day, it creates a beautiful – though not technically perfect – image… and that’s what it’s all about.
Vital Stats: 4 iPhone pictures + Autostitch
One Last Evening in Paradise
On my last evening in Hawaii, Jon and I made our third trek out to Place of Refuge (known locally as Pu’uhonua O Honaunau). The conditions and satellite predicted that we might not get the daily onslaught of vog, so we made a point of being in position if the light conditions materialized. As we did our 1.5 mile hike across the rough lava to get to this location, a large cloud filled the sky blocking any sun. Our hope was that it was still clear on the horizon.. so we might get a narrow window of golden light from the sun before it set.
I’m set up a little farther up the coast than I was on previous nights. If you look carefully in previous pictures, you can actually see this rock formation in the background. What appealed to me about this spot is a couple of things – the interesting shelves on the rock that water would cascade off after each wave and the very random way water would stream off the big rock in the foreground.
As predicted, the sun popped out from the clouds 15 minutes before the sun sank below the horizon bathing everything in a deep orange glow. Since it was so low in the sky, things were very dim requiring some long exposures. I knew this would do great things for the water patterns – but I honestly didn’t know how great until I got home and downloaded these pictures.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 17mm ISO 200, f/22, 2.0 sec.
Kapoho Tidepools
Patience and persistence does pay off!
I’ve been in Hawaii for a week and had yet to see an interesting sunrise – until this morning. Jon and I got up at about 5:30 to drive down to the tidepools in Puna on the Big Island of Hawaii. It had rained quite a bit overnight and the sky appeared to be a wall of gray as we drove to the oceanfront. Just when it looked like we’d get skunked again – we saw an orange band breaking through the clouds on the horizon. We sped up to make sure we got in position when the sunrise occurred.
Getting into position was another story – we had to clamber over the rocks you see in this picture – plus many more. Though the lava looks rough, it’s actually extremely slippery. I had to plant each step carefully since I didn’t want to go for a swim with my camera gear – or suffer all the abrasions from the lava.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 25mm ISO 100, f/22, .6 sec. Other gear used: Manfrotto tripod + ballhead, B+W circular polarizer, Hitech GND filters, a remote shutter release, and Jon’s spare bubble level (mine never left Ka’aha).
The Ka’aha Coastline
For the past couple of days, Jon Cornforth and I have been backpacking to an area called Ka’aha in Volcanos National Park. It is a spot that isn’t often photographed because it’s very difficult to get to. The 5.5 miles to get to this spot is some of the most unforgiving terrain Hawaii has to offer. The first mile is down a 2000 foot cliff with a precarious switchback trail winding down to a plateau. The plateau is about 3 miles of sunbaked lava and thorny grass that constantly needles your feet and legs. Then, it’s a short steep drop to the campsite. Once you reach the campsite, you still have 1.5 miles to scramble over broken up lava to get to where this picture was taken.
Once you get here – it’s gorgeous. It’s very remote and pristine – and you’ve got it all to yourself. There are tidepools teeming with fish to swim in, ancient ruins, and scenic vistas. Best yet – lots and lots of things to photograph.
This shot was taken just before sundown on Friday as the sun was peeking in and out of the clouds behind us. Within minutes, the sun would go behind the clouds never to return that day ending any chance of an epic shot.
We walked out of this location this morning the same way we walked in – in 85 degree heat and no shade. It was still worth it!
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 17mm ISO 200, f/22.0, .4 sec.
One Dark and Voggy Evening
No.. Voggy wasn’t a typo. I frankly had never heard of “vog” until I got to Hawaii either. What’s “vog” you say? Well, it’s really an Al Gore-style inconvenient truth, Mother Nature-style. The word is a mashup of “volcanic fog”.. or VOG! All the volcanoes in Hawaii constantly belch greenhouse gases, sulfur dioxide, and a bunch of other stuff into the air that gets trapped low to the ground and makes it really hazy. For the past couple of days, we’ve been skunked at sunset by the vog making it too hazy to get a really clear, dramatic shot. Since we couldn’t shoot in the vog, we went to the Kua Bay at sunset to hang out.
When we got there, the haze in the air made the coolest coppery sunset above the black lava rocks on the shoreline. Even though I didn’t have all of my gear with me – I did have my camera. I picked my way across the uneven lava risking waves to line up the shot. Since the conditions weren’t great – I truthfully didn’t know whether I had anything useful until I got home to edit it. After a little tweaking – I ended up with a pretty cool shot that I think really conveys what we were seeing at dusk tonight.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 24-105mm f/4L @ 55mm ISO 400, f/4, 1/60 sec.