Postcards from the Creative Journey

Just a Moment

Sunset, Bandon, Oregon

On the way to work a few weeks ago, I looked up at the sky while waiting for the red light to change. It was just before dawn and the clouds were illuminated by the sun just before it came above the horizon. The bottoms of the clouds were highlighted in a beautiful salmon hue with grey shadows. It was breath taking. In a moment, it was gone.

Henri Cartier-Bresson spoke of the decisive moment when he was making his street photographs. I think the decisive moment applies to all forms of photography. The secret (if there is one) is to be at the right place at the right time and be ready to make the photograph. The goal is simple. Dealing with the details of the execution can be somewhat challenging. And isn’t that what we love about photography? Preserving a moment of beauty for others to enjoy forever. 

Lessons Learned: Photo Safari XXVII

Random Rock Form and Shore Acres

Every time you photograph is a learning experience. It comes even more of an experience if you travel to make your photographs. So, after Photo Safari XXVII (that's twenty seven) here's what I learned.

Any Project Manager worth their salt will tell you it’s important to analyze performance after the event is completed. Coaches review game film and project managers will do a “lessons learned.” You’ve read the daily reports from this years’ photo safari 2014. Here are the lessons learned.

1. "It just works." No, it doesn't. Attempts to blog from the field on a fruit named device failed miserably on many levels. The individual products are quite clever and work as advertised. Just don't ask them to play nicely together. "It's probably a software compatibility problem."
2. "We have free Wi-Fi." - It doesn't say how fast, how reliable or what the capacity of the network is.
3. Seeing "No service" on your cell phone means you are probably in a good spot for photography. Definitely not in the right spot to update your blog. Even if you could get the software to play nice.
4. I'm wondering if the iPhone will replaced the "noisy cricket" (Lumix LX3) as my happy snap camera.  I am not sure if that is a good thing or not.
5. Be happy if your friends have the same camera you do. You can borrow their expensive lenses.
6.  Don't start out the day with less than three fully charged batteries. (When your batteries run out in the middle of the day, you can borrow fully charged batteries from your friend with the same camera you have.)
7. Numbering batteries is a good thing to make sure that you don't use one battery more than one of the others.
8. Don’t trust the belt clips on walkie talkies. Corollary: If you pull that dropped walkie talkie out of the puddle quickly, it may not be ruined.
9. Using your camera's custom menus is a very good thing. Make sure you go through your camera settings prior to heading out to make photographs. That way you will be ready at the first opportunity.
10. A motel shower cap will keep your camera dry in a rainstorm. (Don't forget to collect one on your next trip.)
11. A forecast of rain does not mean it will rain everywhere you are for the entire day.
12. Blown highlights are blown highlights whether you are photographing with film or with a digital camera. You can't recover from that mistake. Just a friendly reminder.
13. Neutral density filters are a good thing. The graduated ones are especially useful for photographing into the sun.
14. Campgrounds reek of diesel exhaust.
15. Getting the image out of an iPhone or iPad to a place where it can be printed would be a wonderful thing to learn. I haven't worked that out yet. The pictures really look nice on the screen. I hope they look that good when printed.
16. Forgetting lunches when you go out photographing is really not a good idea. It is tough to photograph on an empty stomach. That being said, I would rather photograph on an empty stomach than eat kippered snacks.
17. It's tough to photograph the landscape if you're not a morning person. Basically, you just cut your opportunities for photographs in half. There are "morning" and "afternoon" places to photograph.
18. The rear lift gate of an SUV can provide a surprising amount of shelter from wind and rain. This is a really great place to set a single, solitary, one and only one camera to make a picture when the weather is not perfect.
19. Laundry services are much, much better than  small town laundromats. They will even fold your underwear. (Just don't expect that type of service when you get home.)
20. Photoshop Touch is not photoshop. I think adobe hired IKEA to engineer the interface. What do all those little symbols mean?  For what it is, it’s really quite clever.

Photo Safari 2014: The Last Day in the Field

Friday morning started with rain. It was predicted for the entire day. We took off on route 504 up the Toutle River valley heading for the Johnston Observation point. If the muse was speaking to me today, I wasn't listening. I saw nothing worth photographing. Brooks was looking at wet leaves and details and photographing ferns and the early seasonal color changes of oak leaves. He was manufacturing images based upon the weather and his love of tree photographs. The day dragged on and the only thing I saw was some low hanging clouds which occasionally spit some water down on me. I think I took my first picture after lunch. The clouds occasionally broke up a bit and let some light through. We took advantage of these opportunities when presented, but again we saw nothing that excited us.

 

Toutle River Valley

Identical Fir Trees

By the time we made it to Mount St. Helens, the clouds had been driven up the Toutle River Valley with clouds and the flanks of the volcano in sunlight. An entire day of patient scouting, evaluating, trying and waiting on the light finally paid off. The sides the volcano and the west edge of the rim were in sunlight. 

Mt. St. Helen, clearing storm

We photographed and started the trek back down the valley. Our scouting from earlier in the day paid off as the weather finally cooperated in spectacular fashion with scattered clouds hanging on the tops of pine trees and back lit clouds. A day's worth of driving, scouting, waiting and visualizing finally paid off in the last our or two of daylight.

Toutle River Valley

This is our last day of photography for this trip. It ended well.

Photo Safari 2014: Moving Base Camp

We decided that we had photographed enough around the Bandon area enough. We knew it would take two days to get back to SeaTac for me to catch my flight home. The question is what to photograph on Friday? We never photographed around Mt. St. Helen. That put us within a couple of hours of Seattle, so we hooked up the trailer and headed off for Castle Rock, Washington a spot convenient to Mt. St. Helen. We set up camp just before a storm set in and the storm raged through the night.

 The thing about photographing the American West is one doesn't realize how far apart locations really are. It's only a few inches on a map, but we don't think of scale. The time to traverse the distances becomes even more pronounced when the top speed is 55 miles per hour.

 

Photo Safari 2014: Exploring the Coast

We drove south from Bandon and came across another state park, Cape Blanco. It is also the site of the Hughes House, a pioneer house. The Hughes House was closed, so we photographed the Outside of the house because was a lovely example of Victorian architecture. We decided that if the weather was rainy, we would go back when the house was open.

 
Entrance to the Hughes House 

Beyond the Hughes House was Cape Blanco. We took shelter behind the Cape and made photographs of the lighthouse and looking inland at the bay.

 

View from Cape Blanco

Further south, we found a wonderful spot to have a picnic lunch at Arizona Bay. We had been assaulted by chilled winds all day, but at this one little state park, it was shirtsleeves and only the gentlest zephyr during our lunch. (I remembered the food today.) The rain and chill wind stopped for a half hour and we had our lunch by the beach.

We went further south and was able to photograph Humbug Mountain from a point further on down the coast. Beyond that was an unnamed pull out view point (Later research from our friend, Google maps identified the place as Three Sisters Rock). There was a path down to a peninsula. Of course, I had to get out and take a hike down to sea level. The wind was almost knock you down strong. It was a real struggle to stay on my feet coming back up the hill.

Three Sisters rocks, a big hill to climb and wind enough to knock you down.

Humbug Mountain from half way to the beach at Three Sisters

 

 

Driftwood on the beach at Three Sisters

On the way back to Bandon we stopped by Elk River to see if the torrential downpour of the previous evening and early morning had any effect on the flow of water over the rocks we photographed on Sunday. You don't know what it will look like unless you go take a look. We did. There was more water coming over the rocks, and the quality of the water was quite different. Instead of being crystal clear, the water was completely cloudy. This is not a surprise because of sediment filled water washed down into the river.

Photo Safari 2014: The Hughes House

It's raining in Bandon, so we thought we would head south and see what the Hughes House looked like on the inside. I am fond of fin de siecle architecture, so I was hoping we could photograph inside the house. The house was open, the staff was friendly and they pretty much let us have the run of the house to photograph. We agreed to send them copies of pictures we made in exchange for the favor. Several hours later we moved on further south to see what else we could find on a raw, windy day. 

 

The Sun Room (optimistically speaking)

Kitchen Detail

Corner of the Master Bedroom

We continued down the coast stopping to photograph when we saw something that interested us. The weather was not the least bit cooperating and we made it down to Port Orford. We turned around and drove back to Bandon, stopping at Kronenberg County Park for some more obligatory late afternoon seascapes. 

 For a day that started out as a washout, we made many nice images. 

Photo Safari 2014: The First Real Day of Photography.

 The interesting part of this trip is that Brooks Jensen and I first met at a photography workshop on the Southern Oregon coast thirty years ago almost to the exact day of this trip. Neither of us thought about this until just before we came down here. Of course, we'll haunt the same locations again-maybe.

 This morning we are heading south in search of the elusive "Elk Creek," the site of one of the first folios I made, "Joy of Discovery." Standing in for Elk Creek is Elk River. While the name may not be exactly the same, the geology is. And isn't that what's important?

 

 

Well, you know what else is important? Food. Lunch. Something to keep the strength up between breakfast and dinner. I made myself a nice sandwich to have for lunch. We also packed fruit, cheese, crackers, chips, kippered snacks. (Don't get me started on that allegedly edible foodstuff favored by certain photographers of Scandinavian heritage.) On the way back to the campground, we stopped by one of the many Bandon Beach overlooks to check out a sunset.

 All these photographs were made with my iPhone 5. The editing was done on photoshop touch loaded on my iPad mini. I upgraded to the new iOS the evening before I left for safari. I have no idea if updating on the eve of the trip is a good thing or not. I must say the photographs made with the iPhone look really nice. If it will replace the Noisy Cricket (nickname of my Panasonic Lumix LX3) as the official Happy Snap camera has yet to be determined.

 

Photo Safari 2014: Old Haunts

Shore Acres was the site of the first Oregon Coast workshop Brooks and I attended. So we had to go back and see how we've changed. The rocks haven't changed much, but I have changed quite a bit since then. Shore Acres was the estate of a lumber entrepreneur donated to the state of Oregon. The only things left of the estate are some beautiful formal gardens and some spectacular rock formations. Nature photographers flock to Shore Acres to make pictures of the rocks and flowers. Why do they do this? Because that's what nature photographers do - take pictures of rocks, surf, flowers, trees and other stuff that makes up nature. It is best not to question this or the fabric of the universe just might unravel. I don't want to be responsible for the destruction of the universe, so I spent the morning making photographs of rocks, and water.

 

Shore Acres, the topmost of three levels of rock formations.
 

The background noise for our photographs at Shore Acres was the barking of sea lions. When we headed back down US 101, we stopped at the Simpson Reef overview, a prime viewing spot for hundreds of aquatic mammals sunning themselves on the rocks off and barking up a storm.

 
 Sunset Bay

We stopped at Sunset Bay for a moment to capture a happy snap. I do remember my first time at this particular beach. We were challenged by an elephant seal that was quite perturbed that we were invading his beach. This time there was no seal. We continued driving south to see what there was south of Bandon and beyond the Elk River.

At the end of the day, we stopped by Bandon Beach where the Coquille River empties into the Pacific Ocean and made some more sunset photographs.

Bandon Beach, near the North Jetty

Photo Safari 2014:Just getting there

The easiest way to learn something new is to just do it. So here I sit in seat 6B learning how to do photoshop on the way to Seattle. This is also a lesson in how to use Blogsy to create. A polished presentation for the blog with an actual picture I worked on during the airplane flight.

Somewhere over America

I am sure that I will be able to improve how this whole thing works as I continue to play with it. I will have some time because it's going to take about two days to get into photo territory. While I'm flying into SeaTac this afternoon, that's only the first part of today's journey. Brooks will pick me up at SeaTac and we will drive to Canby, Oregon and spend tonight in the camper at his daughter's house. Saturday will be spent in moving the camper from Canby down to Bandon. It's going to be a long two days.

 
 

At the end of the first day, Time for a happy snap from China Creek.

 

PS - I'm way behind on blogging because of trouble getting access to the internet and my lack of ability in making the remote blogging software work with all sorts of new (to me) and different programs. Life should be simpler than it is, but it just isn't. I guess the answer to the problem is that getting something to work once at home isn't the same as getting it to work in a campground with really slow internet. Eventually, this and succeeding posts will make their way to the blog.

Getting There From Here

Jones House, Academy Street, Cary NC

The ability to successfully get from visualization to a finished product comes from skill with the tools of the trade. We have trouble determining the “here” and the “there” but we have all sorts of tools, tips, tricks, hardware and software to figure out how to get from “here” to “there.” We’re not sure what the starting and ending points are, but we have great technology to help us get from here to there. The common preference is to learn the technology and then try to figure out how to use it. If the preference is to showcase the tools, then the end result is a photograph looking like it is the victim of some form of technical legerdemain.

Consider the opposite approach to figure out what you want to accomplish and make the tools the servant to the artist. Learning what to do and how to do it is a necessary part of being an artist, but it is not the reason to be a photographer these days. In the past, there was an entire class of photographers that were worshipped because of their technical prowess in making very ordinary images. With the great technological leveling of the digital age, there is no longer any reason to worship a photographer because of his skill with software. It is the skill in getting from here to there that is worthy of worship. 

The 2014 Photo Safari is a done deal. My hopes and plans for the daily blogfest while on the road was run off the rails due to many technical and logistical reasons. The thoughts and images enroute were dutifully recorded and their appearance in this spot is imminent.