Waiting

I am still not quite sure how I saw this image, but I am glad I did. I am getting to like it more and more. I did not expect the white hat to play such a large role. This image belongs on my office wall.

This was taken as homework for the November class of Advanced Photography. This image is intended to illustrate the following quote:

"The content of art must go beyond the presentation of the individual objects of which it consists. When I project my strivings and forces into nature I do so also as to the way my strivings and forces make me feel... To miss the metaphorical and to see only the literal is to misunderstand the expressive aspects of photographs..."  -- Terry Barrett

Image: df101107_1329, 7 November 2010, Panino Restaurant, Solvang, California

Fritto Misto

This was a homework shot for the Advanced photography class. The assignment was to illustrate a selected quotation from an artist or photographer. This image was intended to illustrate this quote:

 "It is astonishing how little most people know about their feelings... Their lives pass by as a featureless stream of experience... As opposed to this state of chronic apathy, creative individuals are in very close touch with their emotions... They are aware of their inner states without having to become self-conscious." --Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I picked this out of this month's images because of its emotional overtones. Taken with the Hasselblad, Fujichrome 100 film. Rather haunting, no?

Night Joggers, Hermosa Beach Strand

October 3, 2010; Hermosa Beach Strand: This image was taken as a homework assignment. The assignment was to take an image that illustrates the following quote:

"Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not at all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks." -- Henri Cartier-Bresson

Cartier-Bresson was a master at street photography, and excelled in capturing 'the moment' in very well composed images. He worked in black and white. To attempt to capture an image in his style, I went 'hunting' with tripod and camera on the evening of October 3, and sat at this spot for almost one hour. I took 30+ images, and liked this one the best. Since I disagree with his quote in that I do care what happens after image capture, I processed this one to get a nice range of tones. The image was already noisy, having been taken at ISO 1600, but to enhance the grittiness of the night shot I added a bit more noise of my own.

Sea Stack 2, Second Beach

September 8, 2010; Second Beach, Olympic National Park: More nice sea stacks. This one is a color  image, the previous one was black and white. Not much difference, but there is some. Again, the lighting was very soft with fog in the air.

Of the two, this is my slight favorite. The foreground rock adds nice depth and more texture to the image, and the sea stack in the far background is in the haze. This image file is df100908_1193

Sea Stack 1, Second Beach

September 8, 2010; Second Beach, Olympic National Park: It was a one mile walk from the parking area down to second beach. The weather conditions were the same as at Rialto Beach, but the sea stacks here were very impressive. The tricky part of working on this image was boosting the contrast enough to get an interesting image. The lighting was very very soft. I added quite a bit of mid-tone contrast.

Let me know what you think about this image and the following one. This image file number is df100908_1189.

Rialto Beach #1

September 8, 2010, Rialto Beach, Olympic National Park: These three stark naked trees are hard by the path right out of the main parking lot at Rialto Beach. You can just feel how harsh the environment must be on these beaches. They face the winter storms that come in off the North Pacific. The fog was thick that day, and the ceiling must have been only 50 or 100 feet off the deck.

There was almost no color in the original image, so I made a slightly tinted black and white image. I think it works. File is df100908_1160.

Hoh Rain Forest #2

Here is another forest detail image from the Hoh River Trail on September 7. Growths of this white fungus were numerous. I liked this one against the small plants and the red trunk. Tricky to hold detail in the fungus (don't overexpose) and yet hold some detail in the dark trunk. But, it worked, using a bit of photoshop work to compress the dynamic range. File df100907_1149.