Cody Hatch Photography

Haystack Rock at Dusk

Dusk is my favorite time of day because of the colors on display – a mix of cool blues and purples with vivid, warm oranges, reds, and yellows. I feel that dusk has a certain mood to it that makes for great pictures and, fortunately, I don’t have to get up early in the morning to capture it! These photos were taken a bit after the one in yesterday’s post. I was looking for a shot that would focus primarily on the waves crashing against Haystack Rock but, once I got to what I thought might be a good location to do so, I realized I could go wide and capture a pretty moody picture due to the darkness settling in, the setting sun, and the amazing looking rocks in the water. I swapped lenses, framed the shot, and then got the camera setup on the tripod. I took probably fifteen different shots like this with varying compositions, with and without a polarizing filter (I wanted the extra stops of darkness the polarizer would provide – and thus a longer shutter speed – rather than using the filter for its polarizing capabilities). I also timed my shots to coincide with different patterns in the waves [...]

Cannon Beach at Sunset

Cannon Beach in Oregon is one of the most spectacular beaches I have been to. It’s a beautiful town with well-maintained beach homes and great, scenic coastline. If you’re looking for rugged Oregon coastline then Cannon Beach isn’t the location to visit, but it has sandy beaches and some unique, scenic coastline (especially if you have seen the movie “Goonies”). I visited Cannon Beach for a couple of days and hoped to get some good weather. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy the entire time I was there but there was a brief period during which the sun made an appearance and I had made the trip to the beach in hopes that I could capitalize on the brief opening in the clouds during sunset. After searching for a decent location I settled in and waited for the sun to work its magic. I tried to time my shots properly so as to capture the warm sunlight and good waves along the beach. I was hoping for the waves to provide some leading lines into the frame and I was able to get some decent lines to coincide with the excellent lighting we briefly received. The one real difficulty for me was the large number of [...]

Jon Cornforth Site Added

I added to the list of links another photographer who I think deserves mentioning. His name is Jon Cornforth and he’s got some excellent photographs. Here is an example of one of his latest (and one of my favorite shots of his): Reflection Lake Wildflowers 1 Take some time to visit his site and view his photos.

Busy Months

I’m finally winding down two very busy months. Things are only slowing down a bit – I’ve still got plenty to do – but I won’t be traveling near as much as I have been the past couple of months. It will be nice. I also have a bunch of photos to process from the Uinta Mountains and the Oregon coast. I’m excited to get them processed and to see if any of them match up to what I envisioned them to be when I tripped the shutter. Hopefully there will be updates forthcoming.

Snow Canyon State Park – First Visit

I had to go to St. George for work this past week so we decided to make a family trip of it. My wife and kids had never been to either Zion or Bryce National Park so, in addition to lounging by the pool (well, the family did more of that than I did as I had to work), we hopped over to those parks for some hiking and to enjoy the beautiful scenery. We also managed to make it to Snow Canyon State Park, which is just north of St. George. I had never been there but I heard that it was quite amazing and, I must say, the reports are accurate. It was beautiful and I was able to spend a brief amount of time taking some photos. Since I had never been there I wasn’t sure what to expect or when the best light would be available, but I took some shots anyway. We made our way over there at about 6:00 PM and the lighting was decent. Though we didn’t have much time to spend hiking and photographing, it was a lot of fun and I definitely plan on returning when I have more time for photography. The below shot was [...]

Hayden Peak in Spring

Hayden Peak is in the Uinta Mountains in northern Utah. The Uintas are one of the only east-to-west mountain ranges in the Western Hemisphere and is one of the largest primitive wilderness areas within the United States. We are lucky to have such beautiful country so close to home. We took a family trip up there today and schedules permitted me to hang around Hayden Peak for sunset. This is a shot I’ve had on my “to photograph” list for some time so I was happy for the chance. My first couple of compositions were not too pleasing but I settled with my third composition. All framed the peak with the pines as you see here but I tried different angles, finally settling on this one. I wish there had been more dramatic skies but you work with what you have, I guess. I do like the frozen lake toward the bottom of the frame, though. The blue water coming through the ice is pretty neat. Oh, and I had to break out the trusty hyperfocal distance table to get the focus just right.

Black-Eyed Susan

I was digging through my old photos when I ran across a shot I took in 2005. I had completely forgotten about this photo and it really struck me as probably one of my strongest photos. I haven’t the foggiest idea why I let this one slip through the cracks but it happened. It goes to show you the importance of not deleting your photos (storage is really quite cheap) and the fact that your opinion of a photo can change over time. The photo was taken at the Memorial Grove Park in Salt Lake City, Utah. I had stopped by there to shoot flowers after returning from a photo trip up Little Cottonwood Canyon. The skies were overcast and I hadn’t really tried to shoot flowers before so I gave it a shot. I remember what struck me about these flowers was their bright yellow petals and the purple flowers providing ground cover underneath them.

Peeking Sunflower

My wife loves photos of sunflowers so I had been looking for a sunflower as a subject for quite some time before I shot this. I haven’t shot flowers much, mainly because I haven’t been inspired by them as a subject, but I wanted to get at least one good sunflower photo. I had gone out looking for sunflowers specifically on many occasions but up to this point had not shot anything that I liked. My shots never seemed to have that “yes, that’s the one” type of quality so I kept looking. Well, one day my family had gone to a local farm to get pumpkins. As we were getting set to leave I noticed a sunflower patch and wandered over there. The sunflowers were huge and the leaves were nice and green (not the faded yellow of so many others I’d seen). Couple nice flowers with a bright, blue sky and I figured I had a decent opportunity for a pleasing photo. The only problem was that it was very windy so the flowers were swaying quite a bit. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try. There wasn’t room to setup a tripod without trampling the farmer’s sunflowers so I had to [...]

Spring Storm in Boise, Idaho

Here are the photos, mostly panoramics, from my shooting session in Boise, Idaho. As mentioned previously, a rain storm provided some wonderfully dramatic skies to go along with a setting sun over the city of Boise. I headed up to Camel’s Back Park to get a vantage point overlooking the city and spent some time shooting panoramics. Click on images for larger versions, though the panos can be printed huge. The web doesn’t portray the detail in the shots. The above photograph was created by merging nine photos together to form a huge panoramic. It was very tough to get my tripod level and to get everything lined up to get this shot to work out but I am glad that I made the effort. It’s my favorite shot from the series and captures the storm front as it moved in over Boise. The above photograph is a merging of seven photos that have been stitched together using Photoshop. It captures the storm as it continues to pass over Boise and the rainbow adds a wonderful touch of color to the shot. The above photograph consists of five photos stitched together to create a panoramic image. It was taken much later in the evening than [...]

Spring Shooting in Boise, Idaho

I just returned from a business trip to Boise, Idaho and I packed my camera along for the trip. I sure was glad I did because, as I was eating dinner one of the nights, I noticed a nice storm rolling in that might allow for dramatic skies and great lighting during the sunset. I jumped in the car and headed to a spot I had “scouted” on Google Earth called Camel’s Back Park. I was looking for a good panoramic of the downtown area and this looked like it might hold promise. As I pulled up and saw the hill within the park I got pretty excited. It would allow me an unobstructed view of downtown from a location that was not too close and not too far away, thus allowing for good panoramic-friendly focal lengths. I hiked up the hill and spent the rest of the evening there shooting panos as the weather changed. I eventually got pounded with wind and rain but I stuck it out and was rewarded with some very dramatic skies over downtown Boise and a well-lit sunset. The most difficult thing with the outing was having to deal with the wind. The wind was strong enough to jostle [...]