Dark Meets Light

Same day, same storm as seen in my previous post. Summer-like weather ever since. This was the best spot I could find to capture these great heavy clouds against the fresh white snow.
The last couple of years, we've had one last bit of snow around Mother's Day, so we'll see what happens this year.  All I know for sure is that we will NOT be planting the vegetable garden before June.. we made the mistake of putting the veggies in in May last year, and ended up starting all over again in June, because of a week of below-freezing nights that killed almost everything.

Spring Snow

It's been a really unusual winter here in the San Jacinto Mountains.. the real winter months were mostly warm and dry; now that it's spring, we've had several pretty good snow storms.  I usually don't expect to shoot scenes like this in mid-April, but here you go, this one is from last Saturday.  Now, it's back into the 70° range and the snow is already gone... go figure. This, and a couple more from the same day, will probably be my last opportunity for snow scenes this year, but that's o.k., because I am actually quite happy with a few from this day.

Fun With Moving Pictures

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.

SkyWatch: Winter Wonderland and Clearing Storm

I very nearly made the mistake of going out for a walk the other day without any photo gear.. the weather had just barely let up after snowing all day and it was still gray and dark when I left the house. Luckily I relented and grabbed my SLR, because 10 minutes later, the local fog had lifted and I had a few minutes to capture some spectacular light on the dissipating clouds far below.

This was shot from a forestry road that runs around the town just below our house. Someone had amazingly driven their truck up the road earlier, providing me a couple of nice tracks through the deep snow to walk on, otherwise I probably wouldn't have bothered to hike to this spot.. one of the few nearby that offers a view out through the dense trees to the lower elevations. That's the luck element, I guess.. I have gone out many days looking specifically for light and clouds that look like this, and come up empty, then this day unexpectedly, it's right there and I just had to be ready.

That is actually not the sun you see shining THROUGH the cloud, but a bright reflection ON the cloud, as the sun in this scene was way off to the left and just a few minutes from setting... the resulting touch of orange/yellow against the soft blues is really important to the scene, don't you think? A painter would know that and simply add it in; for a photographer it's a more elusive thing, but that's the fun and the challenge of landscape photography.

Check out the SkyWatch homepage every weekend for more great sky images from all around the world.

Thorn Bush and Fresh Snow

Six inches of fresh snow on Sunday night/Monday morning produced some beautiful winter scenery here on Mt. San Jacinto... at least for a short time.  Around here, it usually doesn't take too long for the snow on the trees to start melting and falling off, so optimal shooting time can be kind of brief after the actual storm clears out...  Huge clumps of snow falling from the trees onto your head, down your neck and all over your camera makes for messy working conditions:)
While walking in the national forest just below our house, the abstraction and contrast of this sharp, thorny bush against the soft fresh-fallen powder caught my eye.

Cold Blue Cold

Another manzanita bush; but this one ended up a bit "under the weather":)...
Yeah, it can be uncomfortable to get up early in the morning after a snowy night, or stand around trying to frame and shoot while your hands are freezing, but fresh snow is such a great subject for minimal, stark, white-on-white images. Something I've been wanting to work on for a long time, but just wasn't in the right place.  Cloudy days are ideal, so you have more flexibility of time to work... and, color or monochrome seem to work equally well. This shot looked fine in pure monochrome, but I decided to leave it in color for now; I think it feels right with the cold blue cast in the shadows to emphasize the feeling.
This will be the first winter in many years that I am actually living where it snows, so I am hoping to put together a nice, unified folio of winter images this season.

Manzanita in the Snow

No, I'm not quite done with the autumn stuff yet, but it'll keep for a bit.  We're well into the winter season up here in the mountains and I've been kind of slow getting started on taking advantage of this new environment's opportunities.  I figured it's about time to get out and capture some of the beautiful local scenery.. winter is probably the most attractive season, photographically speaking, in this area.
Manzanita bushes are everywhere up here and they are an especially interesting subject with their intricate branching and contrasting bark that grows away from the wood over much of the tree.. this one has more bark coverage than most.  They stay green all winter and produce thousands of small red berries, thus the name which means "little apple" in Spanish.
I found this almost perfectly shaped one growing among some lichen-covered rocks and snow. There are also some evergreen oaks in the background there, contributing to the green-ness. We were showing some visiting friends around the area and for some reason I just decided to grab my old Nikon D70 that I haven't used for years, and throw a lens on it for walking around.  On close inspection, the quality of this image is really awful compared to what I'm used to.. I guess technology really HAS improved a lot over the last 6-7 years.  I plan to go back to this spot on a similar day and get it on film, or at least a decent digital capture when I get a chance. 

Preoccupied

I'm currently involved in an ongoing studio project for a client that requires a lot of shooting and processing, so it's tapping my photographic time and energy a bit... resulting in a slowdown of posts here on the blog. Not complaining though, because at least it pays well:)
In the meantime, here is a "rainy-day" project from the past weekend.. reprocessing a view of the Kolob Canyons area of Zion N.P. in Utah, that I shot several years ago.  A bit hard to tell since this is in monochrome, but that is snow on the lower slopes, as this was shot on a bitter cold New Year's Eve morning.  A lot of people totally bypass this area in favor of the park's main canyon an hour to the south... although it is literally right on the major I-15 freeway, midway between St. George and Cedar City. The freeway exit goes directly into the park and it is only a couple of miles up a smooth road to this spot.  You can just stop anywhere at the many turnouts for views like this (It was so deserted on the day I was here, that I was able to set up my tripod right in the middle of the road), or there are several easy hiking trails that wind up into the backcountry.  A truly majestic scene if you are ever in the area.

Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing;
it is the defining of observation full and felt.

- Walker Evans

No Go for the Snow Show

My effort to find some pristine, fresh snow-covered landscapes last weekend was basically a bust. I've been wanting to work on some wide angle, white-on-white winter scenes, a la Andrew Wyeth's watercolors of Pennsylvania's woods and fields. I should have realized that half of the residents of San Diego would be heading out with their kids and dogs to play in the snow, all on the same day and to approximately the same spot. One of the two main roads was closed to anyone without chains (I lived half my life in New England where it snows 5 months of the year and never once used chains!), so the other road was so congested with cars and people that it became pretty hopeless for my purposes. Oh well, try again on a weekday and get there really early, I guess. Anyway, I didn't even pull my gear out of the car, just snagged a few quickies near the end of the day with my trusty iPhone, this being the most interesting. Never leave home without it.

From this spot, the ocean would be found beneath that little break in the clouds just at the horizon.. about 50 miles to the west and 4500ft. in elevation below. The peaks in this area can be easily seen on a clear day from where I live in the city. Believe it or not, the following day we were taking a pleasant, sunny walk on the beach.. we really do have it all around here.