The Photographic Aspect

Nothing But Blue Skies

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:22:00 +0000

Still working through a few stragglers from my Olympic Peninsula trip last Fall... I just haven't had the time since then to get away for much new shooting and the winter around here locally has been a total dud (photographically speaking.. but we are saving a lot on firewood and propane:)
Normally I look for more going on in the sky than there is happening here, but when you're traveling, the weather just has a mind of it's own and after all, I think the clean blue sky kind of adds to an overall simple, graphic effect on this one.
This is Second Beach, just south of La Push, WA.
Visit the SkyWatch home page each weekend for more great skies from all over the world.

Fun With Moving Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:38:00 +0000

Down at the coast again last weekend. The day was not really that good for photography... pretty windy and gray, but I decided to shoot some video footage just for the fun of it and try to capture this location that I have photographed many times in a different way.
This was all done hand-held with a DSLR, so forgive me if there are a few shakes here and there or the horizon is not so straight:) I had to clip a bit off the end of the opening scene.. that last wave came in a whole lot further that I expected and I ended up getting my feet wet... the original segment turns to a crazy panic as I rushed to back up and keep from getting totally soaked...
This was kind of fun to put together.. hope you enjoy a change of pace.

Serene Twilight

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:39:00 +0000

I've got just one or two more to share from this current set. This one was done well after sunset.. in fact, it was getting so dark that I couldn't really compose all that well, but seems like I can never resist milking those last few shots on the way back to my car. This is where the camera and the human eye really diverge.. as I said, it was hard for me to see much at all, but the remaining little bit of ambient light, combined with a long exposure, reveals a very pleasant, slightly surreal scene.

A Break at the Ocean

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:13:00 +0000

It seems like a very long time since I have done any seascapes. We were down in the city doing some shopping and errands last week and my wife wanted to spend a few hours catching up with a friend, so I had the opportunity to spend the last part of the day over at my favorite seaside spot catching the sunset. Yes, I had some gear with me because I had anticipated the opportunity:)
I never get tired of the reflecting pools in these rocks and the light on the winter waves. You can find a couple of surfers out there if you look closely.
Visit the SkyWatch home page each weekend for more great skies from all over the world.

And the Winner Is?

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:58:00 +0000

Just before sunset, a particular lone tree standing in the glassy water caught my attention... and I decided to stay put in this one spot and work with it as many ways as possible in the perfect part of the twilight. This quality of light only lasts for a very short short period, so you don't really have precious minutes to be wandering around looking for subjects.. better to be already committed to it and set up.
I usually stick with one pic per post, but thought I would show two side-by-side here today, because this is a very good example of how the same subject can be interpreted in such different ways by changing lenses, composition, subject emphasis and timing.
I don't really have to choose between these of course; they would both make nice prints (and I actually have two or three other variations too), but if I did, I'm really not sure yet which I would select. I would love to hear your opinions about which one works better to your eye... and even a little bit about why you think so, if someone feels like taking the time to give it some thought. An opinion poll for me and a bit of a creative exercise for you, as it were:)

Sky Watch: Looking Homeward

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:24:00 +0000

Number 3 in this current series: The clouds lit up in a remarkable way for just a few minutes after sunset, as you can see here (and lucky that I was in a spot with the glassy water to mirror it). One of those situations that you can't always anticipate, but when you see a lot of high, thin clouds late in the afternoon, it's more than likely that something good is going to happen.. just have to be ready:)
The large mountain in the distance (45 miles southeast from this spot) is where I live. The smaller, pointy peak far to the right of the whole mount, towards the foreground hills, is Tahquiz Peak and our house would be directly below there on the ridge that crosses in front of it. (A friend from town was hiking up to that peak at exactly the same time I was shooting this, but even with the recent warm weather, there was too much snow and ice to make it all the way to the top, meanwhile, I was quite comfortable here working in a tee shirt.. a true land of contrasts).
I framed this shot specifically to get the view of the mountain prominently into the scene. I have another one from a couple of minutes earlier where the mountain is lit up beautifully by the setting sun, but the sky was more unique at this moment.
Visit the SkyWatch home page each weekend for more great skies from all over the world.

San Jacinto Wildlife Area (#2)

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 01:48:00 +0000

I guess I'll go through a sequence of frames from this location more or less in order, from early to late.. so this one would be next, time-wise, after my previous post. Plein-air painters and watercolorists should have a real field day here.. If I still had the inclination to paint, I could find many days of subject matter in this spot. Very tranquil and almost no people... just a few contented ducks cruising lazily through the water in this scene, if you look carefully.

Fruitful Exploration

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 05:50:00 +0000

We've been having unseasonably warm and clear weather here in Southern California the last few weeks... clear blue skies every day, no recent snow and therefore nothing much of interest to shoot up here in the mountains. My work comes to a complete stop between Christmas and New Year's anyway, so I opened the gallery for a few days during the week, but that got really slow also around mid week and I decided to take Thursday off and go exploring for some new shooting locations.
Using Google Earth (my favorite scouting tool), I noticed this area about 50 miles from where I live that I have never heard of before and it looked like a decent possibility to be the kind of place that I enjoy to shoot, so I decided to take little drive down to the flatlands and check it out. It was the one day of the whole week that I thought I saw a hint of some clouds in the sky, or honestly, I probably wouldn't have bothered to even take a camera with me.
I didn't really expect to do any serious work.. I would have been happy just to look around, take some reference shots and come back at a better time, but the light and sky actually came together nicely in the late afternoon, the place was almost totally deserted (of people, but LOTS of birds), the weather was a pleasant 80°(!) and being winter, there were no bugs, which I suspect are unbearable during the warmer season, seeing as this is a partly natural, partly man-made wetland area...
I ended up staying and working until well after sunset and to my surprise managed to produce some pretty good stuff. Definitely a worthwhile find.. if I was just passing by the area and didn't know about it beforehand, there is no way I would ever spot it from the main roads. Nice that there was a still a Fall-ish feel to the place this late in the season, I found quite a bit of color still in the trees as you can see. And, it's definitely a bird watcher's paradise. For those of you in the SoCal area, the San Jacinto Wildlife Area is just NW of Hemet, next to Lake Perris in the town of Lakeview.
BTW, Happy New Year to all the great people who stop by here throughout the year and especially those regulars who always take time to comment.

Texture Riot in the Rainforest

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:16:00 +0000

I made quite a few nice additions to my waterfall collection while up in the Olympic Peninsula. Without checking my notes (there were so many), I recall that this one is called Merryman Falls... one of quite a few found around the Lake Quinault area. My point of interest here was not so much about the falls itself, but the crazy lushness and detail of the rainforest in the surrounding scene.

Sol Duc Falls

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:00:00 +0000

Getting back to the Olympic Peninsula for a few more:
This is one of the best known falls in the area. I was kind of disappointed with the light after hiking up here... even though the forest cover was quite heavy, the blue sky and bright sun were enough to spoil the colors for me at the time we were here.. ideally, it would be a more typical rainy, wet and foggy day which would create the proper atmosphere and color.. but you have to deal with it when you only have one chance. So, in this case, a monochrome approach to the scene still shows off the falls and the textures of the forest while eliminating the harsh mid-day colors. If you check the expanded view carefully, you can just make out a guy standing on the bridge, for a sense of scale. The water splits into 3 streams as you can see, then flows down through the gorge under the bridge. Amazing that they are flowing this fast, even in the "dry" season.
Although you hardly see it anymore, scenery like this in beautiful, rich black and white (by Paul Caponigro) were exactly what got me interested in photography in the first place, more than 35 years ago....

Sky Watch: Sea of Clouds, II

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 19:08:00 +0000

Today's Sky Watch is another interpretation of the scene in my previous post. A good example, I think, of how extremely different the same thing can look from different points of view (not just in photography, I might add:) This one was shot from exactly the same spot and at the same time, but this time directly into the sun and with a short telephoto lens to bring the clouds and ridge closer together. Shooting at the sun (with my hand extended as a shade) caught these beautiful, fiery highlights on the fast moving wisps of cloud rushing across the scene just below the ridge.
Visit the SkyWatch home page each weekend for more great skies from all over the world.

A Sea of Clouds

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:58:00 +0000

An interesting part of living at 6000' elevation is that the weather sometimes approaches from BELOW, rather than above, as you might normally expect. San Jacinto is a nearly 11,000' mountain island, surrounded by desert on the east and rolling, semi-arid hill country to the west. Especially as we get into winter, that can create some spectacular effects. Driving home from town the other day, I noticed this perfect sea of clouds extending as far as the eye could see, from just below where we live... all the way out to the ocean, 100 miles to the west. As soon as I got home, I grabbed a camera and ran up the street to my favorite sunset lookout spot... an outcropping of granite boulders on the side of a ridge just near our house.
I'll have a completely different, and I think more dramatic, interpretation of the scene next.

SkyWatch: Ruby Beach Twilight

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:25:00 +0000

I don't know how it works for everyone else, but for myself, out of every session, trip, or grouping of shots, there is always THE ONE that stands out and seems to have a life of it's own. This is the winner from my Olympic trip in September. Of course I got quite a few perfectly decent, printable images, but they all seem a little second-tier compared to this one, which is already framed and hanging in the prime spot in my gallery. I very rarely get stuff up that quickly; I'm still printing stuff from several years ago that I have never finished and hung.
I arrived here at Ruby Beach an hour or so before sunset, pleased to see that the cold, heavy fog from earlier in the day had disappeared. Wandering around and exploring different angles as the sun went down, I eventually worked my way behind and slightly above this glassy pool of water reflecting the sky and the sea stacks. Suddenly, the wonderful abstract design of the scene became apparent to me... and it only got better and better until well after sunset, when the soft glow of twilight brought out the best colors and the perfectly silent mood.
Visit the SkyWatch home page each weekend for more great skies from all over the world.

Sky Watch: Driftwood Sunset

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Another view of some huge driftwood on the beach, this time on a rare clear evening at sunset. For most of the time I spent in this area, the beaches were totally fogged in, so this was a pleasant break. This spot is known as Second Beach and is just near the little native american fishing town of La Push. I have a pretty funny shot of about 30 or so photographers all shooting on this beach at the same time.. I think there was some workshop or something going on this particular day. You have to walk almost a mile through the forest to get here, so I was a bit surprised, but on second thought it IS known as probably the most photogenic beach in Washington and it seems like quite a few people choose to stay and camp out overnight when the weather is good. It lived up to it's reputation for beauty on this evening.
Visit the SkyWatch home page each weekend for more great skies from all over the world.

More from the Fungi Dept.

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 19:22:00 +0000

Again in the Hoh Rainforest: Don't know what kind of mushrooms these are, but I would guess maybe not the edible kind! I thought the decaying log and moss would be an attractive subject in themselves, but the little grouping of mushrooms in the foreground definitely adds an area of contrast and that specific, attention grabbing point of interest that is so important.
I probably shot more of the color green in one week here, than I have in the last ten years combined:)

A Colorful Contrast

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 17:09:00 +0000

Driving on the main road into Hoh Rain Forest, this colorful fungus stood out so much from the background of the dark woods, that it caught my eye even from the car. I made a mental note (as I often do) but didn't stop at the time. Some days later I had kind of forgotten it, when we passed the same spot again with the same result, so on our way back out the second time, I finally stopped and and took a few exposures. Bright sunlight filtered through the thick growth of forest provided the natural highlights, which I think gives this scene that little extra bit of interest. Although I was fighting the "hot" sun spots a lot in other locations because of the clear weather, totally flat lighting on this one wouldn't have been as good.
In a week's worth of driving and hiking through lots of forest, I never saw another one anything like this.

A Whole Lotta Wood

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 05:10:00 +0000

I suppose everyone has been to the beach somewhere and seen some pieces of driftwood here and there. I had never seen anything even close to this before. Seems like anywhere there is an outlet to the sea from one of the many rivers flowing out of the Olympic mountains, the surrounding beaches are littered with great fields of dead wood washed down from the forests inland... and I am talking thousands and thousands of *huge* chunks as well as nearly whole trees. Sometimes it takes some minutes to get through it just to reach what's left of the beach. I'm afraid none of my pictures really does justice to the scale of it; I was more concerned at the time with climbing over it.
Click the image for an enlarged view and you'll get a better sense of size.

SkyWatch: Kalaloch Sunset

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:28:00 +0000

An off-hand shot from our Olympic Peninsula trip, taken on my iPhone:-o. Yes, further proof that being in the right place at the right time (and realizing it) is always step #1, before concerns about equipment. That said, shame on me for not appreciating a potentially great shot and being too lazy to walk a few feet back to our car and haul out my regular gear. Thing is, it was cold and windy and I was kind of tired after a long day:( Because of that, I'm afraid this one will never make it to the gallery wall, except as a framed mini-print or maybe as a greeting card. Other than the horizontal crop, image is straight out of my camera/phone as-shot, with the handy "HDR" feature turned on.
Taken literally 50 ft. from the exact location in my previous post, at Kalaloch beach (pronounced "clay-lock"), in far western Washington. Different day, different time of day... during a rest stop on the way back to our lodge near La Push, after spending a day around Lake Quinault to the south. You'll notice on closer look, that the sun in the moment captured here is actually setting behind an off-shore fog bank (which most nights was not so "off-shore"). Click for a larger view, and I'll talk later about the amazing fields of giant driftwood that you get a taste of in this scene.
"Kalaloch", in the native Quinault language, means something along the lines of "sheltered landing" or "canoe launch place"..I guess you can see why.
Visit the SkyWatch home page each weekend for more great skies from all over the world.

Back From the Wild Northwest

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:26:00 +0000

I just returned from a long-planned trip up to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, with it's rain forests, waterfalls and gorgeous beaches. So I should, at last, have a flurry of new work to show over the next few weeks.
We had been to the area only once before briefly on the way to Canada, so it was a little familiar, but my wife and I have wanted for years to spend some real time exploring up there. We made sure to stay in a central location that would allow access to the whole peninsula each day without having to change lodgings all the time, and I think that worked out pretty well. The weather was not quite as cooperative as I would have hoped.. we had clear blue skies inland most days (who would have thought, in this most rainy part of the country) until the last two days, and that made shooting in the rainforest a little difficult.. lots of hot spots from the sun in the otherwise deep shade; then the opposite with heavy fog at the ocean, some nights so thick that you couldn't even see the water from a few feet away. But, hey, that's nature for you. All in all we had a great time and I did manage to catch some good new material... and very different subject matter for me. The whole area has such a different vibe to it, compared to the desert and mountain scenery that I usually work with here in the southwest corner.
The above shot is right near the ocean at Kalaloch...(can you tell where the ocean is, based on the shape of the trees?).. it was a very foggy shot as exposed, and that was my intention, but with a little contrast boost while playing around, most of the fog disappeared and I kind of prefer the detail in the main tree now with just a hint of fog around the edges. Experimenting with different interpretations is always the most fun part for me.. also, this one may well end up with in monochrome.. after a quick look I like it that way too.

Long Time, No See...

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 05:11:00 +0000

Yep, I'm still here. And wow, it sure gets easy to put off posting once you get out of the habit of doing it on a regular basis.. before you know it, one or two months have gone by.
My regular commercial work and now, running the new gallery, are conspiring to keep me from getting outdoors to shoot, but that should change in September, since my wife and I have booked a week-long trip to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington right after Labor Day... I hope to spend a lot of time photographing the lush, green rain forest and uniquely beautiful beaches up there. That should certainly generate some interesting new work and will be kind of a fresh subject matter for me, which is always nice.

A couple of weeks ago, my old friend (from art school days, back in the '70's.. a long time!) stopped by here for a few days with his family, while on a north-south tour of California, visiting various family and friends along the way. He teaches art now at a private school in western Massachusetts, where we both grew up, and is a really fine plein-air painter... he works at that a lot during the summers while he is off from teaching. He of course wanted me to show off some of my favorite local scenes so he could take a stab at painting them and on the one session that I hung around while he was working, I couldn't resist to wander up the stream and do some studies with my trusty iPhone while killing time. Of course the quality is not there for any kind of printing, but it's sometimes fun to just shoot carefree with no tripod and no worries about quality... and see what you can see.

Since I don't have any new stuff right now and haven't had the inspiration to dig up and talk about anything already in the can, I thought I'd post a few of these just for a hoot. All here shot with my phone. Notice the detail in the shadow area of the first one below. The iPhone has a pretty nifty HDR capability built right in; it takes two exposures, then blends them right in-camera and it works quite well... I actually had to tone it down some to make it look natural. I expect most digital cameras will have this feature in the near future.

Making Progress

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 01:54:00 +0000

As suspected, no chance at all to go out and shoot new stuff recently, but our gallery here in Idyllwild is really taking shape, though still some final setup work to do. Then, we can turn our attention to marketing and promotion... the most important stuff. We did manage to get the doors open this past holiday weekend and will have an official opening reception in 2 weeks, after we take care of all the details. Meanwhile, some "Before" and "After" pics so that you can see that I've not been just goofing off recently:)
So far, we have gone from this:

To this:

After installing all-new lighting, painting the walls, refinishing the wood and cleaning the tile, we've got a nice little space going, I think. The walls are all mine, (love it!), and then sculptor Norman Deesing has the floor (yes, he is almost an exact double of a certain well known actor:).. We also found a fine collection of classic native-american silver and turquoise jewelry to provide some smaller choices and it complements the larger works beautifully. Join us on Facebook at "Earthlight Gallery", for news and updates.

Probably my next update here will be regarding the grand opening and then I'll hopefully get back to generating some new work...

One More From the Foggy Forest... and Some News.

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 18:54:00 +0000

The third, and probably the last one from this series, at least for now. Somehow I'm picturing this set of images as large, contemporary stretched-canvas prints, probably soon to be seen on the walls of my new gallery. Which bring us to the "some news" part...
Ever since we moved here from the city a year ago, it has been a goal to have my own permanent space to show and sell in. (Setting up outdoors at art shows is fun, but LOTS of work and hard to do consistently, while showing in a large gallery among dozens of other artists is less than ideal for sales.) I didn't want to do this right away last year, because I knew we needed some time to get resettled and there was lots of other work to do on the house, etc., but this spring, the right space, at the right price just kind of popped up. Also, I was lucky enough to find a motivated and talented partner (a sculptor-who only needs floor space, as opposed to my needing only wall space, so that's perfect) to help out and share the expense. It's a fairly small space for now until we see how it goes, but there are neighboring spaces that will be available in the future for expansion if we can make it work. Selling artwork even in the best of times is tricky and with the economy still shaky, there are no guarantees of success, but I am excited to give it a try anyway. Idyllwild is known as a destination for it's galleries and art... and with the busy summer tourist season coming, we should be able to do o.k.
I'll be tied up with planning and setup for the next few weeks, (we want to open for the July 4 weekend), so I may not be posting any new work for a while (probably not SHOOTING any new work for a while either:), but I'll try to keep the blog updated with our progress on this new project. Stay tuned:)

And It Gets Thicker...

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:33:00 +0000

The second in my "Foggy Forest" grouping. The soft transition from detailed foreground to the misty background gives it an especially watercolor-like style that I always like to see. It's really nice to compose under these conditions because the background is so easily abstracted and free of distracting details. Walking past this spot yesterday evening, I noticed that there are quite a few wildflowers blooming now that would have been a nice accent.. too bad I was a few days early.. not likely to get this opportunity again before they are gone, at least for this year.

Foggy Forest Evening

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Sat, 21 May 2011 05:47:00 +0000

This scene - and a few more similar ones upcoming - have been in my head for literally months now, but obviously it required some very specific conditions: late afternoon light, thick fog, and preferably little or no rain (which makes it very difficult or impossible to shoot, unless you have someone there to hold an umbrella for you). So, I finally got my opportunity this week and spent a busy hour shooting like crazy out in the foggy, wet forest one early evening after several previous days of rain. Shooting fog is tricky, because the contrast that you see with your eyes is sometimes so different than what the camera sees; some shots that feel fantastic at the moment don't do anything when you look at them later, but others that didn't seem so dynamic in the field look great when you get to processing them. When you hit it just right, the sense of depth and deep, saturated colors can really work well. I got a dozen or so pretty good frames in about an hour of work; probably two or three will make it as prints at some point... not a bad day's work. I have a few more of these in the pipeline.

Granite Swirl

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Alan Meader) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:37:00 +0000

Another from a recently processed batch.. I probably shot this back in early December, I don't recall exactly. This is on film, so no EXIF data.. guess I should get back in the habit of taking notes:)
There are quite a few small waterfalls on the numerous streams in my area, but I've never seen one like this, carved right into solid granite. I'm especially pleased because I found this one completely on my own.. no one told me about it and I've never seen a picture of it, which is kind of surprising. I had no idea there was even a stream here, let alone this nice fall, until I pulled over and parked one day to explore some rock formations and noticed sound of the stream. Following the water down a ways, I came across this. I shot a few variations because the shape is so unique, but this is my favorite so far.. maybe I will post a couple more, to see if one gets more reaction than the others.