Postcards from the Creative Journey

553 Lessons Learned from Photo Safari XXXII

There are always things one learns while out photographing in the field. As a public service to the world of internet savvy photographers, I offer the following factoids established during Photo Safari XXXII.

1. On the topic of Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve beer:
   1. Blitz Weinhard Brewing, Milwaukee, Wisconsin just does not sound right
   2. Can a premium beer be sold for $8.88 per 18 pack?
   3. My homebrew clone of HWPR Beer is pretty darn close to the real thing.
2. It’s tough to find good restaurants in small, rural towns. It’s tough to find even acceptable restaurants. I think this is why franchises are very popular in small towns. It provides a recognized level of quality. Delivering on that quality is yet another story.
3. If you expect to do more than chimp your EVF to sort out your images while on the road, having the right cables is of primary importance aspect of using digital cameras on the road. In other words, getting images off the memory card is the start of the whole process. If you can’t do that, you can’t work while on the road.
4. Fast WiFi in small town hotels is a myth. Personal Hotspots are much more reliable.
5. Adobe has all sorts of options for using their software on the road. The only warning is that you have to have a strong internet connection to make any of it work.
6. Woe unto you if you have a question on a Lightroom product. Who designed the architecture and kewording of AdobeLightroom help? The only answer I can ever find is, “Yes, we can answer your question, but not with the version of Lightroom you are using.”
7. Souvenirs? I brought home a couple of pounds of Eastern Oregon dust – mostly in my sinuses.
8. Spending accumulated coins is just like getting something for free. It doesn’t feel like you are spending any “real” money when you buy something with coins.
9. Photo technical discussions should be relatively short and fact based with decisive answers. They are usually not because everybody wants to make one little change to an assumption or a condition to make their opinion the unassailable internet truth.
10. YouTube has lots of talking heads making pronouncements on new cameras. Have you ever seen any of the photographs they made by the people who deliver pronouncements on these cameras? Me neither.
11. Levi’s are city jeans, Carhart jeans are worn by people that actually have to work.
12. One really must do a couple of things each morning. One is to make sure that your lenses are clean. If your camera renumbers files, do that every morning, too. That way each day's photos live in their own little folder and they will be easier to sort out when you get home. 

This post concludes the blog entries for Photo Safari XXXII. We don't know where we'll be next year, but it will be a fun time for sure. 

Next week I'll resume the usual blogging pattern and topics. 

Photo Safari XXXII Day 11, A Day in the Garden

We made it to the Japanese Garden in Portland just after noon. We had lunch and then spent the next four hours photographing Portland’s Japanese Garden. There is no shortage of subject matter there and the question to be answered is how to frame the objects in front of the camera. When photographing a place such is this the photographer is the last in a line of artists. The designers, architects, constructors, gardeners and the maintenance people have all made their art well in advance of the photographer’s arrival. It is our job to do homage and honor these people through our photography and  not to muck it up the beauty with some poorly selected compositions.

 

The Garden was crowded because it was a lovely day and rain was predicted for later in the week. In Portland, you have to take advantage of sunny days because the perma-rain will soon be here. Just about everyone in the Garden had a camera, be it a smartphone, point and shoot or a big bodied DSLR. Everyone was enjoying the beauty around them and felt it necessary to capture the beauty around them. While we were all restricted to the walking paths and the same vantage points, we did not make the same images. Portland’s Japanese Garden clearly demonstrates what one sees, not the device used to capture the image is the most important part of the creative process.

 

This was a fitting end to Photo Safari XXXII, starting with the wild, rambling and unstructured land of Eastern Oregon and finishing with the perfectly laid out, compact and populated landscape of the Japanese Garden.

Photo Safari XXXII Day 10, A Day Without Memories

There days and then there are days. This one was the latter (see yesterday’s post). We took off from Prineville to explore the Maury Mountains. It was an absolutely beautiful day, a comfortable temperature, sunny skies and the usual low humidity - and the craic was good. It seems, though, I can’t remember anything being memorable about this day. It seemed like we drove a lot, saw a lot, but not much of it was truly remarkable.

Photography by Wandering Around® is like that. Lots of driving, lots of looking, lots of trying to figure out just where you’ve been and where you’re going and spending a lot of energy on travel and not much attention to photography. This is probably why we evolved our photo safari tactics to Destination Location Photography®. Less driving around time means more time for photography.

Maybe we are just getting jaded by the grand landscape and what is merely really good has been overshadowed by the great scenery we have experienced earlier in the safari. Maybe we are just taking the photography for granted and not paying attention to how much we created. Maybe we’re just (perish the thought) getting tired of photographing all the time. (Gasp. Heresy, heresy!)

Tomorrow morning we head back to Portland in the morning with the intention of photographing the Japanese Garden in the afternoon and we’ll have the traditional farewell sushi dinner. (After photographing a Japanese Garden why not have sushi?) Tuesday Brooks heads home, I spend a day with friends in Portland and this year’s safari is in the record books.

540 Better Looking leads to Better Looking Photographs

 

 

Breathtaking landscapes are really fun to make because most of us have to leave home and travel a long way to arrive at the place where those breathtaking landscapes live. How many photographers have photographed in their homes, their backyard gardens and scenes from their everyday life and made great photographs? Ansel Adams lived in Yosemite Valley and Edward Weston lived almost next door to Point Lobos and they made some great photographs in their respective backyards. Gee, maybe I picked two really bad examples to illustrate my point. We can’t all live in photogenic places, so what can we do in our own backyards?

There are a number of great photographers that made wonderful photographs in their hometowns. Josef Sudek made great photographs in his yard. Late in his life, Paul Strand spent many hours in his garden photographing. Eugene Atget never stopped photographing the back streets and out of way spots in Paris.

What can you find within a couple of miles your house that is just waiting to be photographed? We are so used to where we live we take it all for granted and are so focused on what we are doing we fail to see what is around us. Suppose you decided to make your next photographic trip a local one? Approach the exploration of your town as if it was Yosemite, or Death Valley or some other American Landscape destination. What would you see differently?

Your world is ready for you. All you have to do is bring your camera and powers of observation.

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Not quite in my backyard, but I didn't have to travel this far to make a nice landscape photograph. This pleasant August afternoon was spent in Buies Creek, North Carolina. Specifically, it was made on the eighteenth fairway at the Campbell University Keith Hills golf course. This is the second golf course landscape to appear in the blog this summer. This just might be the start of a new project, landscape photographs on golf courses. It could be a nice project combining two things I really enjoy. Hmmmm. 

Photo Safari XXXII Day 9, John Day to Prineville

Blue Basin

There days and then there are days. This one was the latter. What a great variety of photographic locations today. We left Prineville and stopped by the Mascall Overlook, took the Drive up Picture Gorge and continued on to Blue Basin. The Blue Basin required a short hike to a geologic formation identical to the Hell’s Half Acre in Wyoming we photographed some twelve years ago. The Blue Basin is much, much smaller and staying on the paths is required. We met the same situation at the Foree Fossil Beds; stay on the paths and the paths are not that close to the rock formations. In both places we all pretty much get the same photographs from the same vantage points.

I think it’s worth noting we photograph along the way. Our tradition is to call out for a photo stop if we see something worth photographing. We do this frequently. It makes the trips a little bit longer because photo speed is not the same as highway driving speed. I think this is how we make photographs that don’t look like touristy photographs. We stop at the places most people drive by.

Goose Mountain

I had not been to the Painted Hills in decades. I don’t remember too much about my last trip there, but this one was memorable because I didn’t see rocks. I saw some huge pre-historic mega-beast emerging from the earth with lots of tentacles pulling itself out of the magma.

My thoughts on the photographs from this safari remind me of a quote from Tom Landry (Dallas Cowboys football coach). When asked about the game, he replied “I won’t know a thing until I see the game film.” That’s the way I feel about this week’s images. I can’t tell from the camera’s EVF and the WiFi connections have been very slow this week so I can’t upload pictures to lightroom.  The pictures I am uploading to the blog have been processed through my chromebook’s native photo editor. My workflow is to click on the “fix it” tool and then resize the picture for the blog. Not exactly a rigorous process. So, I guess I’ll know more when I get home and “see the game film.”

Tomorrow we photograph in the Maury Mountains.

 

Photo Safari XXXII Day 8, On the way to John Day

Rocks and Trees in Devine Valley

Another slow day in getting to John Day. 395 takes a route through Devine Canyon. I spotted a rock outcropping near the entrance to the Malheur Forest and we stopped. It was one of those very small side canyons overrun with small trees and rocks. It was a short stop for some nice photographs. We drove through the Silvies Valley Ranch on the way to Seneca.

A Larch Tree 

Heading east out of Seneca we took a side trip to the Logan Valley, a peaceful western flat floored valley. Not very photogenic at all, but it was a nice drive. Back on 395 we stopped to photograph some fire blasted hillsides before we got to John Day. We did some exploring west of John Day, but came up only with a few moonrise photographs.

Tomorrow we take all day to get to Prineville.

Photo Safari XXXII Day 7, It’s What We’re Here For

One of the gorges coming down from Steens Mountain.

It’s what we came here for; The ascent to the top of Steens Mountain. Yesterday we were stopped because of poor road conditions near the summit, so today we approached from the opposite direction. We had great road conditions the entire way and only had a little bit of wet road for the last half mile to the summit. The air was clear and not a cloud in the sky. The clear air is great, but for landscape photographers not having some clouds for the top of the photograph is not exactly the best aid to a good composition.

The Alvord Desert from the East Rim of Steens Mountain

We had a great deal of fun near the summit because we’re at 9500 feet elevation, fifty or sixty miles away from any type of civilization and we posted photos from our smart phones because we had 4 bars of 4G cell service thanks to a nearby cell tower. We had that same experience a few years ago at Patriarch Grove in the White Mountains of California. Wilderness with great cellular service. Is this a Great Country or what?

Moonrise, Malheur County

We were happy to see some welcome clouds on the way back to the base camp in Bend. Tomorrow we start photographing on the way to John Day. If the photography is good, we might stay there, if not we'll continue to Prineville to get into position to photograph the Maury Mountains this weekend.

 

Photo Safari XXXII Day 6, Moving the Base Camp

Headed out from Lakeview this morning heading toward Burns. We headed up US 395 and passed Lake Abert (again) and some other alkali lakes. This drive was one of the most lonely drives I have experienced. There was nothing but sand and sagebrush for miles and miles. In one place the road bisected an alkali lake. We had to stop for a bit just to make a happy snap.

We hit Burns, arranged for a hotel room and kept on truckin’ to the Steens Mountain. Our goal was to drive the Mountain loop road in reconnaissance mode and plan tomorrow’s expedition. We did not make the complete loop because of the snowfall near the summit. (Yes, snowfall.) Instead we made some photographs from near the summit of Steens Mountain.

We hope to drive the Loop road tomorrow morning from the south to the summit and photograph more landscapes with snow.

Photo Safari XXXII Day 5, Cruisin’ Through the Hills

This morning we headed south from Lakeview and made it into California (all of fourteen miles). Our years of experience in cruisn’ fer snaps led us to turn left at a sign that read Lilly Lake. We never made it to Lilly Lake, but we found a mirror surfaced pond.

We headed north back to Oregon and made it up to Paisley where we turned west and began exploring the Fremont National Forest. We drove quite a bit and didn’t find too much to photograph until we came down to the exit from the Park. The Aspens as we exited the park slowed us down a bit while we created some nice postcard photographs.

Our last loop of the day took us back through Lakeview and up the Warner Mountain valley. We took a turn that promised us a boat launching ramp (we were looking for some water). We found just about everything but a lake. Tarns, aspen groves in various stages of turning colors, majestic pines and a magnificent view point from the top of Mount Warner. A pretty good way to end the day.

Yesterday for me was all about single images. We drove a lot and I could not get myself into a mindset where I was looking for groups of photographs. Just one of those days where I could only see the single image. Good tourist images, but not high art.

Tomorrow we head for Burns as a base camp for the Steens Mountains.

Photo Safari XXXII Day 4, A Drive Around the Lake

We’re off and running with a full day of photographic reconnaissance in force. We left Lakeview this morning and headed up the east side of Lake Abert so we could photograph with the sun over our shoulders (just like Kodak taught us). Lake Abert is an akali lake and the only thing that can live in the water are brine shrimp. There was no one around us and the water was flat. We captured nice reflections off the surface of the water. We took our time and worked out way around the north end of the lake.

The AAA map and the google lady both said there was a road that ran down the west side of the lake. In an incredible coincidence, both maps were incorrect. There is no road down the west side of Lake Abert. The road we wound up taking eventually brought us out to the little town of Paisley, just in time for lunch.

The afternoon was filled with our famous “Photography by Driving Around.” Or, as the late Fred Picker called it, "cruisin' fer snaps." We attempted to find the county roads that ran down the east side of Summer Lake but found the same map inaccuracy issues again. While on the map and online, the roads simply did not exist in the real world. That was frustrating, but we saw a lot of sagebrush. By that time we finished that loop we began the trek back to Lakeview. The sun, now to our right, lit up the landscape and we had a few stops on the way home catching early evening sun.

Photo Safari XXXII Day 3, He drives, He shoots…

We took a long leisurely drive from Madras to Lakeview, Oregon. Stops along the way inlcuded Smith Rocks, with an amazing number of people taking a leisurely climb up the vertical faces of the Smith Rocks. We had visited the Rocks many years ago but I don’t remember them being as crowded as they were yesterday. But, it was a weekend and the weather was crisp and clear.

From there we drove over to Paulina Lakes and the Big Obsidian Flow. Most of the resorts and campgrounds are closed for the season, but it does not diminish from the splendor of the area. The Big Obsidian Flow is a mountain sized pile of obsidian rock. There are designated trails to climb to the top and ones does stay on the trail because another name for obsidian is glass. It is hard and the edges are sharp. The view from the top is very nice. Brooks tried to photograph the obsidian many years ago in the age of film. Film could not capture the rock surfaces to fulfill his artistic intent. But today, with digital cameras and editing the results were truly spectacular.

We passed by Fort Rock and took some obligatory photographs of the old volcano cone and passed by Silver Lake in the “golden hour” of the afternoon.

We did discover than the golden hour varies widely by location because of the hills and mountains between the sun and the photographic subject. We noted the time and figured out how to make that part of our schedule while we stay in Lakeview for a few days.We got into Lakeview around dinner time and were fortunate enough to get one of the last rooms at our hotel. Evidently there is some government project going on in the area and the hotels in this very small town are full all week. We are ensconced in a two room ADA suite with a refrigerator and kitchen sink. The only bad news is that wi-fi and internet are really poor. I guess you have to expect that in a small, remote town, so I am posting using my iPhone as a hot spot. I haven’t figured out yet how I am going to post the photos to the blog, but that should take a little time to figure out. We have time to do it, too. This morning the outside temperature is 23F. This boy from North Carolina is really cold. It might be a while before we get outdoors.

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Techno Geek update on how the pictures were posted to the blog. To avoid the super slow internet speed at the local hotel, I changed the settings on my Lumix G85 to create a small jpg to accompany the RAW file when I make a capture. I then uploaded the file from the camera to the chromebook and edited the photos with native chromebook technology. I was amazed that the chromebook read the RAW files and then converted them to jpg after I made the changes. 

Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.

Photo Safari XXXII Day 2, An Airplane Collection

Air Intake, Messerschmidt Bf-109

One the way into town Friday, we passed by a sign declaring the Madras airport as the home of the Erickson Airplane Collection. We decided that it would be the first thing we would photograph on Day 2. Some people collect stamps. Others books. Some might even collect photographs. It does take a certain amount of resources to collect airplanes. The Erickson collection comprises twenty some WWII vintage aircraft which are, save two, airworthy.

The airplanes are parked very close together in a large hangar and it was a challenge to get around them to create good compositions. Most of them I recognized because these were the planes I assembled from kits when I was young. I was sadly disappointed to find out the Boeing B-17 was touring airshows and was not in Madras.

We spent the better part of the day photographing the details on many of the planes. I have no idea what I am going to do with these images, but I had an absolutely great time being surrounded by these incredible flying machines.

Along the Road to Ashwood

Later in the afternoon, we hit the road in search of an old dirt road Brooks remembered from thirty or so years ago. Amazingly enough, we found the road (now paved!) and there was the opportunity a few nice landscape photographs along the way.