Day 2 pm

Fri, 3 Jul 2009 21:00:04 -0700

Well, after hearing about endless cloudy days, we finally got one this evening. The clouds rolled in, and the more they rolled in and thickened up, the more fortunate I felt for the great light that we had. Here’s a quick Canon G10 image of a kiter as Sue and I took a mid day beach walk. I used Topaz Adjust to create the grainy look and Auto FX Platinum borders.

Here’s three upcoming events where we have space available:
July 15-21, Summer Arts Program, UC Fresno, CA
August 2 -8, The Intimate Scenic and the Digital Edge, Santa Fe Workshops, NM
NEW!! November 21, Gateway Camera Club, Seminar Contact: Paul Smith

We cut out tomorrow morning for Fresno. I’m sure that we’ll miss the cool breezes of the past few weeks.

Day 2

Fri, 3 Jul 2009 11:32:00 -0700

We still haven’t gotten the great sunset skies, yet. Maybe tonight, but last evening, the wind created large waves and quickly swirling water around the large rocks. The trick to getting these types of dramatic images is not being afraid to get very wet and very sandy. Wet sand. That’s the worst, and takes a long time to work it’s way out of tripods and my Nikon Polarizer, which plopped onto the wet sand, sounding like sand paper when I was able to turn it at all! Nik’s graduated blue filter was used to add some color in the sky and processing darkened the rocks and added the cool color in the water. The other trick is to be careful as the water is receding pulling sand out from under the tripod causing movement and blurry pics.

There were some clouds and sunlight this morning, so hopefully that will carry through to sunset, but of course, there’s no guarantees. We have one more sunset and sunrise before heading south.

CLICK HERE for a few more shots of Bandon Beach

First time to Bandon Beach, OR

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 17:36:30 -0700

After a beautiful (and very windy) drive down the incredible Oregon coast, we arrived at the very quaint, beautiful, (and very windy) town of Bandon. We got a great room at the Tabletop Inn, where we could back up to unload our carful of stuff, and went out for our first sunset. The winds were 20-30 mph, but we were hoping that the wind would die down on the beach full of sea stacks. We were wrong. We also discovered that there are several beach areas, the first one that we visited being the least dramatic of the three that we know of. In the morning (Sue slept in), we had a clear sky and a misty morning on the beach. No clouds, but very moody. This was the beach where I recognized some published sea stacks. The sun brightened up quickly, but I was able to get a few warm up shots of this area. We’ll be heading out the next few sunrises and sunsets in this cool climate before heading to the 100+ degree temps in Fresno!

p.s. I’m really enjoying conceiving the shooting panoramics again (since the demise of the Xpan). With the D3X, the pan crops are all in the 50M range (great file size for our print series)!

CLICK HERE for a few warm up shots of Bandon Beach

Parting shotz from the Palouse

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:14:14 -0700

We arrived in Portland yesterday late afternoon and have been working feverishly to get the presentation together for the Portland camera clubs this evening. We also met and had lunch with some friends at Lensbaby, Sam (co-owner along with Craig Strong), Kirsten, and Keri. We got a tour of their ever expanding operation and saw where they actually assemble the lensbabies. All lensbabies are assembled right in that room! Far out!

After a nice outdoor lunch with (from left to right) Keri, Kerstin, Sam (Lensbaby co-founder), me, and Sue (taking the video), we did a quick iPhone vid for Facebook. Thanks a lot, guys!! You’re all tremendous!!

CLICK HERE for some parting shotz from the Palouse.

p.s. Portland camera clubs talk this evening!

Day 5 and Day 6

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:22:58 -0700

We drove many miles through random backroads yesterday and will again today. Many photo ops in a long loop from Colfax to Uniontown and back through Moscow/Pullman, then to Colfax. We’ll be repeating some of that today one final time before heading back to the west coast to a lecture presentation and visit our friends at the Lensbaby world headquarters in Portland, OR tomorrow. Today, I’ll need to finish shooting R1C1 images for a photo assignment and put together a submission for another client....AND fine tune my presentation for Monday evening in Portland, OR. It’s a good thing that we carry our office with us on hard drives!

We’ll be posting our workshop dates for the Palouse later in the year (August/Sept). There’s still a lot we didn’t get to, like an old car junk yard, old rusted farm machinery, Paradise Ridge at the right time of day, and more. And there’s a ton of stuff that the locals know about and we’re just getting started with that resource. After a clear blue sky sunset on Steptoe Butte (which is what we want there), and a morning trip to the incredible wheel fence barn in Uniontown, we’re off to Portland tomorrow late morning.

CLICK HERE for a gallery from the past two days.

Day 3 and Day 4

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:16:47 -0700

Sue hung in (read slept in) this morning..no way she was continuing to get up at 0330! Me? I LOVE early mornings! So, took a solo run to Steptoe and then some scouting on my own. After getting back and catching up on some office work, Sue and I went to Palouse to eat at a great little cafe (The Green Frog), then driving back roads for a few hours. We’ll be heading out this evening to the Butte to shoot verticals for a calendar client. The light should be great....hopefully. We’ll be here through Sat. and still have some scouting to do.

The blog image is a 5 image HDR, details enhanced in Lucis, then a touch or Topaz Adjust.

CLICK HERE for a gallery from the past two days.

Day 1 and Day 2

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:40:50 -0700

We began by getting up at 0330 to get to Steptoe Butte at dawn to catch the early light, as we had great light the previous evening: clear sky at the horizon and warm light skimming across the Palouse. Later in the day Sue, Jim, Brian, and myself drove all over the region scouting out shooting locations for a future workshop. Afterwards, we grabbed some great tex-mex to finish the day. Brian went home to Spokane. Jim, Sue, and I will take another sunrise run to Steptoe Butte to try a different shooting location on the butte, then Jim will cut out and Sue and I will continue to drive throughout the region and mark off gps points.

CLICK HERE for a gallery from the past two days.

Day 1 on Steptoe Butte (National Park) and Mustard grass obsession

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:07:54 -0700

We just began our scouting trip to the Palouse with the help of location info from our great friend Dan (no last name so he doesn’t get bombarded with emails). I actually knew that Steptoe Butte was a great sunrise and sunset spot, but the lesser known, less specific areas are not known to us and we’ll be scouting and gps’ing them in the coming week. The vibrant field of, what I believe is, mustard grass really got our attention!

Betterphoto founder, Jim Miotke, is joining us for a couple of days to shoot for his next book.

Re: the blog image. It’s very difficult for me to resist panning across this type of scene. The late morning patchy light was an outstanding situation for this type of shooting and I shot quite a few of these. This is about a 1/8 sec exposure panning the camera across the scene beginning the camera movement before the exposure, as there wasn’t enough time to get the movement from a still camera.

We’re hangin’ in this evening to catch up on office work, but we’ll be hittin’ it hard for the remainder of the week.

CLICK HERE for a small gallery of our first outting

Day 4 and 5 Whidbey Island workshop

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:23:32 -0700

After a series of 18 hour days, yesterday’s blog post was postponed until today! We shot this morning on Madrona Way then finished up in class saying our good-byes to this exemplary group of workshop participants and new friends! Fellow musician, Dave King, (Barnum and Baily Circus organist and conductor in a past life) was a surprise participant and treated us to a great Thai lunch for a relaxing conclusion to “the show.” The body of work generated was mind blowing and as usual, left us with some great creative ideas. Thanks to the Pacific Northwest Art School for a great facility and staff (Jeri and Lisa) for a great week! I’m sure we’ll be posting student galleries soon and very much look forward to returning to Coupeville. And thanks to our great workshop group!

We’ll hang out here through tomorrow, getting caught up on office work (we got a box of mail from MD today), and grabbing some last minute shots before pulling out for Colfax,WA to shoot in the Palouse region for the next week.

p.s. The iPhone 3G S is great....fast......the “S” must stand for “Smokin’”!!

CLICK HERE for a small gallery of the last two days.

Day 3 Whidbey Island workshop

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:31:25 -0700

We visited a couple of very cool gardens this morning. I know it sounds weird just shooting garden after garden, but they are all so different that each one is an excellent adventure in flower photography. The first garden was on a large property with open areas and a hot house where I taught some multiple exposure techniques. The second place was more manicured and smaller being in a backyard, but backyards overlooking the Olympics are a bit different than the average backyard! The blog image was shot from there!

In the afternoon session, after class, we went to another garden and it became clear that everyone was “flowered out.” So, we’ll go to the Compass Rose B&B tomorrow, then back to class for some HDR training, then the Fort Casey for completely different venue to create some HDR images. We’re on the hunt for a couple of non flower venues to finish up (last day is Friday morning).

p.s. My iPhone 3GS will be here tomorrow (a day early!!)

So, CLICK HERE for a gallery of the day.

Day 2 Whidbey Island workshop

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:32:39 -0700

Today we spent the morning at a great flower nursery on south Whidbey called Bayview. Wow! We could have stayed there for days! Amazing. The workshop people got some great stuff and I decided to shoot only with the R1C1 flash unit, with an occasional multiple exposure image (the blog image is a 10 multiple exposure). The owner was very nice and generous in regards to our visit. We will certainly put this on our list every time we visit here. After our class time and critique session, we visited a local residence with great flowers, restored old gas pumps, and old bikes and other stuff in the garden for contrast. I decided to only shoot lensbaby images there. More gardens tomorrow!

p.s. My iPhone 3GS will be here on Th!!

So, CLICK HERE for a gallery of the day.

Day 1 Whidbey Island workshop

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:58:13 -0700

We hit it early this morning to Cheryl’s incredible garden where I wished I was shooting, but I had to work! We had 2.5 hours and everyone was overloaded with photo ops and incredible subject areas. Cheryl was charming, generous, and quite helpful. Here’s an IR shot of her potting studio building.

She was concerned that everyone got some great pics!

After that we went to a place called the Chocolate Farm, which has a ton of flowers and photo ops, including very colorful animals and a pre-historic tree (Monkey Puzzle).

After a break and some class time, where we had the opportunity to critique some impressive work, we went to a pioneer farm to shoot very old and rusty farm machinery and implements, then back to our green wheat field for sunset, where Sue and I shot the day before the workshop. Being in the moment, I’m not really sure what I did to get the blog image, but I shot several, with obviously some camera movement. The blue sky was dropped in with nik Color Efex 3.0 Graduated ND filter.

Off to another flower venue tomorrow morning!

Bill Strom re-visited

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:37:37 -0700

I took the morning to take a trip to Madrona Way to photograph the incredible colorful, textured, peeling bark of these fabulous trees. While getting immersed in this endeavor, I remembered that I was always enamored with our late, great friend, Bill Strom’s images of paper birch trees and saw a similarity in what I was seeing in the Madrona trees. I remembered the essence of Bill’s work and tried to recapture it here. Thanks for the inspiration, buddy.

In addition to the Madronas, Sue and I spent the afternoon at the great garden at the Compass Rose B&B. In the wind and patchy light, the Nikon R1C1 flash unit made images possible that would have been impossible without it, and they look totally natural! This thing blows me away!

We had our first meet and greet at the Pacific Northwest School in Coupeville, WA and all 18 of us head out on Day 1 to make great flower images tomorrow morning.

CLICK HERE for a small image gallery from the day

Checking things out!

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:00:17 -0700

We finally got a chance to get out to “our” Madrona trees and to Fort Casey for some photography. The Madonas were almost devoid of peeled bark, which was a bit surprising, but it’s part of the cycle. But, there’s always something to do. Then we went to Fort Casey for some HDR work then caught this great scene on the way back to our room. I tried using the VariND to get a longer exposure, but it was too long and the blowing grasses lost all detail, so I removed the VariND, however a 5-stop hard edge ND filter barely held the detail in the brightest part of the sky. Digital still doesn’t handle sunrises and sunsets as well as slide film. We’ll be scouting today with our assistant to various locations for our workshop here on Whidbey Island beginning on Sunday.

CLICK HERE for a small image gallery from the day

Hi from the Left Coast!

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:29:47 -0700

We had a fairly uneventful drive, which is good. Approaching this length of drive with the attitude of being professional drivers (10-12hrs or more each day), made the trip go by easily and we always enjoy seeing the country from the ground. It’s really an incredibly beautiful country. We could have stopped many times a day to shoot, but we did have to get over here to start work. Mileage-wise, we’re roughly 1/3 into our trip. The second third is down the west coast for a few teaching gigs, to San Diego (to visit the nik folks), then over for the Santa Fe Workshop gig, visiting Page on the way, then home for the final 1/3 of the trip. But, I’ll be blogging along the way in more detail. But, first off, we’re outta here to visit Jim and Denise Miotke on the way to the ferry to Whidbey Island, where we’ll be teaching a garden photography workshop starting on Sunday. It’ll be a bit tricky because I also have to set up a small studio somewhere to finish the R1C1 macro flash assignment by the end of the month!