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Morning Fog on the Shenandoah River – Harpers Ferry, WV

 Harpers Ferry, Heliopan Filters, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Mountains, National Parks, Photography Composition, Photography Technique, Potomac River, River, Robert H Clark Photography, sunrise, Trees, Water, West Virginia, Zeiss Lenses  3 Responses »
Oct 122011
 

Morning Fog on the Shenandoah River, Harpers Ferry, WV.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. In my last post I admonished myself for not getting out and enjoying the many scenic possibilities that exist in my own backyard. I received quite a few comments via e-mail from folks all coming clean about falling prey to the same malady. It is easy to do of course. When you plan a shooting trip, say out west, your whole focus is on that trip and the physical and mental act of scouting, shooting, chasing the light, composition, and the list goes on and on. It is different at home however. Because all the home obligations from family to work to putting a roof on the house take over. It is natural because unless we live totally in a self-absorbed vacuum we still have to take care of the business end of life. And that means manage our commitments. It is just life. But, and here is a really big but, if we do not take the time to pursue what we love then it will pass us by. Lost opportunities will turn into the “I wish I had done that”. I for one have a big bucket list of places I want to go and things I want to see, do, and experience. It is quite long and I may never get to the end of the list but I am going to try. If you want something to happen then you have to take matters into your own hands. You can’t wait for it to come to you. You must throw you aspirations out into the karmic airwaves and step by step begin the journey. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Oddly enough the journey, for most of us, begins at home.

I am fortunate to live and work in a very beautiful place. Just twenty minutes from my house the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers meet just below Harpers Ferry. The Appalachian Trail passes below my office and Loudoun Heights and Maryland Heights, part of the Appalachian chain, tower over the the confluence of the two rivers. Needless to say it is not only beautiful but an amazing barometer of the changing seasons. Fall color has started to appear and it will not be long before sheets of ice will stretch across the river. Though constantly changing the river is the catalyst which draws me to shoot. Fall brings some incredible fog events caused by the temperature inversions as the weather changes. So I have been spending a few days at “home” now just getting reacquainted with the river. As I have discovered it has a lot to offer.

Technical Details: I was on the river fairly early in the morning. The fog is generally thicker at this time and depending on the temperature swings can hang low to the river, obscuring all but the closest details, or float higher revealing more of the landscape. On this day I waited for the fog to begin to burn off just a bit and set up the shot to play on the various converging lines. The image was shot with a Sony a900 and a Zeiss 24-70mm lens at 24mm. The image was exposed at ISO 100 at f11 for 6 seconds. I used a Heliopan Circular Warming Polarizer to remove specular highlights and a Singh-Ray 3-Stop, Soft Edge, Split Neutral Density Filter over a portion of the sky and background to hold in the sky and fog.

Thanks for stopping by today. Remember where your journey starts. Get out and shoot.

Bob

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Vidae Falls – Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

 Abstracts, Crater Lake, Crater Lake National Park, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Oregon, Photography Technique, Photography Trips, Robert H Clark Photography, Singh-Ray Filters, Sony α900, Waterfalls  2 Responses »
Oct 052011
 

Vidae Falls, Crater Lake National Park. Image shot with a Sony a900 and a Sony 70-300 lens at 200mm. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f11 for 1.5 seconds.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. Today’s image is a close up view of Vidae Falls, located on the East Rim Drive, in Crater Lake National Park. This waterfall is the best known and most viewed at the park and easily accessible by a turnout on the Rim Drive. Though many people presume the falls represent a leak in the crater the source is actually 600 feet above the lake levels. It is formed by springs which flow together to become Vidae Creek. At a a high point just above the drive the creek plunges over 100 feet through a landscape of native wildflowers.

The closeup was shot at the lower base of the falls as it flows into a scree field. While it is often desirable to photograph the entire waterfall, and I am no exception here, some of the best shots come from isolating the various cascades and shooting a more intimate portrait. A good telephoto works wonders for these compositions and the falls can be explored visually from a safe distance. Though Vidae can be shot in the early morning my preference is late in the afternoon after the sun has passed overhead. The result is a shot where the falls are more evenly lit by ambient light without hotspots and harsh specular light.

Technical Details: To shoot this image I wanted to slow down my shutter speed to produce the flowing, frozen ice, look to the water. To achieve this effect I made a “filter sandwich” with my Heliopan Circular Warming Polarizer and a Singh-Ray 4-Stop Neutral Density Filter. The polarizer has the added benefit of reducing specular highlights in the water and other surfaces wet surfaces such as rocks and plants. As the flow of waters constantly changing I made many exposures so I could chose an image with a pleasing look to the water.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

 

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Glen Avon Falls No 4, Beaver River, North Shore of Lake Superior

 Black and White, Lake Superior, Lake Superior Photography, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Minnesota, Photography Trips, River, Robert H Clark Photography, Sony α900, Zeiss Lenses  No Responses »
Sep 232011
 

Glen Avon Falls, Beaver River, North Shore of Lake Superior. Shot with a Sony a900 and a Zeiss 24-70mm lens at 42mm. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f11 for 1/3 of a second.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. Here is another image from my Glen Avon Falls shoot on the Beaver River. On my other posts the images show the real power in the falls as a fast moving flow is cutting through a channel of granite. I love the power in those shots but the falls also contain smaller and more intimate vignettes that show a different side to the river. I passed this image over in my first cut and on a second look decided to give it chance to come to life. Aside from the trees along the banks and the water of the river Glen Avon is nearly monochromatic. The dark rock seems to swallow all the color and light. To this extent removing all the color and processing as a black and white makes the image, in my mind, more cohesive. The conversion simplifies the shot and reduces everything to lights and darks which in turn helps give emphasis to the forms. Like many of my images this one has a strong series of leading lines and anchor points that frame the main subject.

I did the black and white conversion in Lightroom and exported the file out to Photoshop for the final work. Oddly this was a scout shot only and I only took one exposure. Fortunately I pushed the histogram to the right and was able to recover a lot of highlight detail. To further aid the shot density I created a Multiply Blend Layer in PS. I needed this density increase in the upper regions of the file. I reduced the opacity of the layer to 80% and painted in where I needed the density increase. I also used several curves adjustments and a dodge and burn layer. I am glad I gave this one a second look.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

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Superior Sunset – Silver Bay, North Shore of Lake Superior

 Adobe Lightroom, Lake Superior, Lake Superior Photography, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Minnesota, North Shore, North Shore of Lake Superior, Photography Technique, Photography Trips, Photography Workshops, Reflections, Robert H Clark Photography, Singh-Ray Filters, Sony α900, Split Neutral Density Filters, sunset, Zeiss Lenses  2 Responses »
Sep 202011
 

Superior Sunset, Silver Bay, North Shore of Lake Superior. Shot with a Sony a900 and a Zeiss 24-70mm lens at 24mm. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f11 for 2 seconds.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. Well folks just file this image under the heading of “insane”. I can’t remember when I have seen a sunset this incredible. I made this image two days before our Lake Superior Workshop while Alec and I were out scouting the locations. We had driven up from Minneapolis in a driving rainstorm that did not give any appearance of breaking up for the evening. I was just a little bit jet lagged and tired from my early travel and so resigned myself to an evening of rest. Oh me of little faith. By the time we had finish lunch in Duluth and began the final leg along the north shore the rain broke and we could see the beginning of possibilities.

By the time we got to Silver Bay in the late afternoon the clouds began to break up to reveal small patches of blue. As the light began to change the clouds looked like giant puffs of cotton candy as the wind carried them out over the Lake. No matter where you looked, up or down the shoreline, it was amazing. When the color came the clouds exploded, airbrushed in hues of yellow, red, orange, and magenta. The shoreline absorbed the colors and the atmosphere glowed with light. On my first visit to Lake Superior I had been given an ethereal gift. What a way to start the week.

Technical Details: The image was shot with my Sony α900 and a Zeiss 24-70mm lens at 24mm. The relative brightness in terms of stops of light was nearly the same for the lake and the upper part of the clouds but brighter along the horizon. In order to hold this correctly I used a 4-Stop Singh-Ray, Daryl Benson, Reverse Split Neutral Density Filter. This is a secret weapon that I use quite often and it is tailor-made for these light conditions. The filter is made with a darker strip on the bottom portion of the resin which fades up towards the top. It is specifically designed to hold back lighter horizon lines which can be a few stops brighter than the sky above or even the foreground. In my mind it is a must have for the filter kit. I would not leave home without it. The RAW file was processed in Light room and finished in Photoshop.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

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Glen Avon Falls and Trees – Beaver River, North Shore of Lake Superior

 Lake Superior, Lake Superior Photography, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lightroom, Minnesota, North Shore, North Shore of Lake Superior, Photography Technique, Robert H Clark Photography, Singh-Ray Filters, Sony α900, Split Neutral Density Filters, Zeiss Lenses  No Responses »
Sep 172011
 

Glen Avon Falls and Trees, Beaver River, North Shore of Lake Superior. Shot with a Sony a900 and Zeiss 24-70mm lens at 50mm. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f8 for 4 seconds.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. Today I am returning to an image I made on the Beaver River on the North Shore of Lake Superior. During editing I passed over this image and jumped on the more dramatic waterfall shots I took. But on a second take I think this may be the more successful image I took. On my first scout trip I picked out this grouping of trees almost immediately. The wonderful way the trunks twisted and rolled at their roots seemed to emulate the fast moving water rushing by.

Photographed in the early evening the shot required a long exposure to capture detail in the deeper part of the woods and at the same time to capture the water motion. There were not a lot of specular highlights to contend with so I did not use a polarizer. Instead I employed two of my favorite Singh-Ray Filters; a 2-stop, Soft Edge Split Neutral Density to cover the water, and a Singh-Ray 4-stop Neutral Density to add exposure time. The RAW file was processed in Lightroom and then finished in Photoshop.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

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Morning Fog – Shenandoah River, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

 Harpers Ferry, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lightroom, Robert H Clark Photography, Shenandoah River, Sony α900, sunrise, Trees, WV, Zeiss Lenses  No Responses »
Sep 122011
 

Morning Fog, Shenandoah River, Harpers Ferry, WV. Shot with a Sony a900 and a Zeiss 24-70mm lens at 35mm. Image exposed at ISO 200 hand held at f11 for 1/60th of a second.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. The drive in to work this morning was simply beautiful. Low lying fog in the cornfields gave way to a blue sky full of wispy, cirrus clouds. I grabbed my camera before leaving the house this morning in the hopes of something special along the river. Often in the early days of fall we will get an inversion that will hold the fog low and floating just above the river.  Sometimes the fog envelopes Loudon Heights and the Virginia mountains on the other side of the river. And sometimes you get the view that greeted me when I got to the office this morning. A long band of fog hung low, drifting parallel to the line of the river. Above the cirrus wisps gained form and structure as the high winds moved them over the mountains. This view, from the patio of our office, greets me everyday I come to work. Every morning I walk to the edge and take in the view, tracing the course of the river until it turns the corner and disappears from sight. This view, like life in general, can be plain and ordinary. But when you least expect it the view, like life, can be full of surprises. Today the river gave me a surprise gift. And the funny thing is I knew it before I even got in the car. Some days are like that. Days when you are so in tune every fiber of your being vibrates and resonates with the world around you. The kind of day when everything just seems to go your way. Magic really.

Thanks for stopping by today. Walk in peace.

Bob

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Seastacks at Waters Edge – Bandon Beach, Oregon

 Bandon Beach, Helicon Focus, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lightroom, Oregon, Oregon Coast, Pacific Ocean, Photography Trips, Sony α900, Split Neutral Density Filters, sunset, Wide Angle Photography  6 Responses »
Sep 062011
 

Seastacks at Waters Edge, Bandon Beach, Oregon. Shot with a Sony a900 and a Sony SAL 20mm lens. Images exposed at ISO 100 at f11 for 2 seconds.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. Today’s image was shot at sunset on Bandon Beach along the Oregon coastline. I had an opportunity to shoot on the Oregon coast about a year ago and though I had dreadful weather I knew I wanted to make a return trip. It is a wild and rugged coastline with beautiful stretches of beach and incredible shoreline seastacks. Bandon Beach is but one of many accessible shorelines along the Oregon coastline. It is an intimate and intriguing beach that is very accessible and can be shot at sunrise or sunset. In this shot the late evening sun backlit a large seastack out in the ocean causing it to glow in a warm, orange light that was the perfect complement to blue hues in the sand and water. The tide was out and an impromptu river of water was flowing back towards the Pacific Ocean. There was a beautiful, crisp, clarity to the air and the light was simply stunning.

Technical Details: The image was shot in two exposures with a 3-Stop, Singh-Ray Soft Edge, Split Neutral Density Filter. The two exposures were focus brackets and the file was merged in Helicon Focus before final finishing in Photoshop. Each of the RAW files was processed with the same settings in Lightroom and saved out as TIFF files before exporting to Helicon.

If you make the trek to Bandon I would recommend the Bandon Beach Motel. The hotel sits on a cliff over looking the beach and offers instant access to the shoreline via a stairway. When you get there ask for Caleb and tell him you want room 205, the one on the corner with the amazing view.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

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Cloud Reflections – Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

 Crater Lake, Crater Lake National Park, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Mountains, National Parks, Oregon, Photography Composition, Photography Trips, Robert H Clark Photography, Singh-Ray Filters, Sony α900, Split Neutral Density Filters, sunrise  No Responses »
Sep 042011
 

Cloud Reflections, Crater Lake National Park. Shot with a Sony a900 and a Sony SAL 20mm lens. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f11 for 1/30th of a second.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. After a long stint in the field I am finally back at home saddled with the joyful task of sorting through quite a few images. Many of the images I took on this trip will require some time consuming post-processing as I shot a lot of bracketed exposures for Helicon Focus and Photomatix. I will get to these as soon as time allows. In the meantime please enjoy a new black and white image from Crater Lake National Park.

This shot was made early in the morning from the south rim side of lake and is looking across Wizard Island towards Llao Peak. When I arrived a little before 6:00am the lake was calm and a near perfect mirror for reflections. I fooled around for about 20 minutes trying to decide where to make the shot and by the time I had set up the had wind picked up on the lake surface. Intermittent gusts though only disturbed portions of the lake leaving some areas completely calm. I was immediately irritated with myself for taking too long and losing the opportunity to fill the lake with cloud reflections. But as I watched the lake surface change I found this turn of events far more interesting and liked the muted nature of the cloud reflections in the lake. Often the wind levels on the lake leave the surface featureless which makes composition difficult since you have to balance the thin line of the crater rim and the mass of the lake. On this day I could use the crater rim as a distinctive line that separated the cloud patterns between earth and water. Additionally the patterns in the lake became my foreground elements.

Technical Details: The image was shot with a Sony a900 and a 20 mm lens. The image was exposed at ISO 100 at f11 for 1/30th of a second. The white balance was set to 5500K. I used two Singh-Ray Split Neutral Density Filters: A 3-Stop Soft edge for the top, above the rim to cover the sky, and a 2-Stop Soft Edge, below the rim to cover the water. The RAW file was processed in Lightroom and the final file was finished in Photoshop.

There are more things to come including images from the Oregon Coast and the California Redwoods. So stay tuned.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Bob

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Mountain Sheep Canyon – Navajo Lands, Arizona

 Arizona, Colorado Plateau, Desert, Grand Circle, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Mountain Sheep Canyon, Navajo Lands, Photography Technique, Photography Trips, Slot Canyon, Slot Canyon Photography, Sony α900, Zeiss Lenses  4 Responses »
Jul 232011
 

Fracture, Mountain Sheep Canyon, Navajo Lands, Arizona. Shot with a Sony α900 and a Zeiss 24-70mm lens at 24mm. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f13 for 1/2 of a second.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. One of the interesting aspects of writing a blog is finding out what posts are the most popular. WordPress offers a nice statistics section in their content management system that tells you the number of visitors, search criteria used to find your site, and a counter to the most visited pages. Interestingly, in my mind at least, there have been quite a few searches and visits to many of my Mountain Sheep Canyon images. Mountain Sheep is small, hidden jewel, located outside of Page, Arizona on Navajo Lands. The canyon is only accessible through a photographers trip offered by Carol Bigthumb of Adventurous Antelope Canyon Tours.

Unlike Upper and Lower Antelope, Mountain Sheep Canyon is what I refer to as an open top slot. It has a straight in entry and only requires a little bit of scrambling. It takes some effort to get out to the canyon through sandy washes but the canyon receives few visitors making it a special place to photograph. Because of the wide open top light can be intense and often many of the formations are blown out. The better photographs come by looking for the reflected light on the canyon walls and creating compositions that focus on the lower parts of the canyon. The light changes rapidly and you should look for compositions during the trip in and out.

Slots are formed by the erosive forces of water that flow during flash floods through the sandstone drainages. Rocks, sand, tree limbs and other debris contribute to the carving of the canyon walls and are often deposited along the floor after a flood. The fast moving water scours the walls revealing intricate and colorful layers of stone. In many cases the water is caught in whirlpool like eddies that over time carve out chambers and alcoves in the rock. Ultimately this is how rooms in slot canyons are formed. The image above shows the beginnings of a small alcove where the swirling water has begun to carve a semi circular space in the stone. The group of rocks in the alcove are transient visitors and may move on during the next flood.

Thank you for stopping by today.

Hozógo nasádo (Navajo): Walk in Beauty

Bob

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Rio Grande Overlook – Big Bend Country, Texas

 Big Bend, Big Bend National Park, Landscape, Landscape Photography, Lightroom, National Parks, Photography Trips, River, Sony α900, sunset, Texas, Water  12 Responses »
Jul 202011
 

Rio Grande Overlook, Big Bend Country. Shot with a Sony α900 and a Sony SAL 20mm lens. Image exposed at ISO 100 at f14 for 8 seconds.

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s post. Today I was officially labeled as out of control regarding my photography. I think the word obsessive was used a few times. This moniker was given to me by none other than my wife with a few here here’s thrown in from my daughter. Ok, I freely admit this. If I am not shooting, I am processing. If not processing than I am shooting with the iPhone, or tinkering, or reading blogs, or cleaning cameras, you get the idea I think. What to do? I did not say much having been stung to the core by such honesty. I did not promise to do better because I do not think that is a possibility. I do think about photography quite a bit but I have never thought of myself as obsessive-passionate yes, but never obsessive. The iPhone has caused some of this. Or, in the true spirit of excepting responsibility for my actions, I have allowed the “thing” to consume me. But fun is fun, I think, and photography, in all its aspects, is fun. It combines many things that I like; travel, art, technical knowhow, the great outdoors, planning, friendship, equipment, experimentation, and the list can go on. Passion is to be pursued. I am passionate about photography and I pursue it with an all consuming energy. There is so much to do, so much still to learn. It is something that pulses through me , a yearning, a longing, a desire. If I come off as neglectful to the ones I love then I am sorry and I will try to be more attentive. I promise. I did say above that it may not be possible, but I will try. But I am not sorry, nor will I ever be about my passion for making images. I only have one life and as I get older I am finding it needs to be lived fully and in the pursuit of ones passion, whatever that may be.

So what does all this diatribe and self-aware angst have to do with the image above? Nothing perhaps. Or maybe everything. The image was made in the pursuit of my passion. It was made in a beautiful place, on an outcrop of rocks, and amongst good friends. In my mind it does not get much better than that. It was the last day of the Big Bend workshop and this grand landscape could not have been more appropriate as our final shoot. From this lofty perch the Rio Grande flowed into the the dying of the day. As we shot we felt the power of this place and the special bond of friendship forged in pursuit of the same passions. And though we would all be parting company soon the river bound us together and we flowed along its curves into the sunset. My grandmother once said that in life you need someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to. My friends, that is passion. Be consumed.

Thank you as always for stopping by to visit.

Hozógo nasádo (Navajo): Walk in Beauty

Bob

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