Waves in the Trees

Eucalyptus Grove Abstract

Another abstract image from a few nights ago at Lake Miramar. The goal of the night was to come away with an image that could be used in the Stripes photo challenge I mentioned in my last post, but the very nature of this type of shooting is unpredictable.

I shot a few hundred frames that evening, doing my absolute best to only move the camera straight up and down while the shutter was open. However, as evidenced by this image, I wasn't always successful staying in a straight line. Many of those images were deleted right away when I saw them on my computer screen, but the gentle side-to-side motion in this one created a nice rhythmic feeling for me, almost like there were waves in the trees.

Natural Stripes

Natural Stripes

When I've got the time (or a unique idea) I try to participate in DGrin.com's photography challenges and when the newest one, "Stripes," was announced I saw it as a perfect opportunity to expand on my Of an Abstract Nature gallery.

Once the idea struck me to create this type of abstract image, the challenge was to find a dense enough grove of trees to make it happen. That might not be a big challenge for many parts of the country, but here in San Diego, there just aren't a whole lot of groves of trees to choose from. Earlier in the week, I just happened to spot a number of eucalyptus trees along the side of the road on my way to the bank and knew they were the perfect subject for this shot. Their tall, slender trucks are generally uninterrupted by branches, allowing for better streaking, or in this case, more distinct stripes.

I returned a couple nights ago after work but just couldn't get the lighting or composition I wanted with the trees I had originally planned on. Luckily, Miramar Lake was less than a minute away. This reservoir had been on my "to visit" list for a while so even if the light wasn't great, I stopped by, planning to scout out the location for future shoots.

Just a couple hundred feet from the parking lot (good short distance because I'm out of shape and it was the hottest day of the year so far!) I found a tightly packed grove of eucalyptus trees squeezed in between the path and the edge of the lake. From the angle I was at, the late afternoon sun lit up only the left side of the trucks leaving the right side in shadow and further emphasizing the stripes created by the slow shutter speed and moving the camera vertically throughout the exposure.

Panoramas Part 2: Return to the Same Locations

Late Evening Light on Lake Hodges

Another panorama from the shores of Lake Hodges. This one is a combination of 4 horizontally oriented frames, taken back in December (or about 3 months before the other panorama I already posted). Both were taken at sunrise and illustrate why it's possible to keep visiting the same locations time and time again. Don't get me wrong, I love finding interesting new locations, and while it's not a perfect comparison, (this one was taken from a slightly different vantage point looking North instead of East) this image and the previous panorama image could have been taken at two vastly different locations not just different conditions.

In this image, San Diego had yet to receive its spring rains and the water level of the reservoir is much lower, showing more reds in the foreground than in the previous image. The air temperature was much closer to the water temperature in this image than the last, as evidenced by the lack of steam rising from the water's surface. Those are seasonal changes though, and can be predicted with relative ease. The major difference is much harder to predict. The light! Light is building blocks of any photograph, landscape or otherwise. Portrait photographers have the luxury of carefully crafting their studio lighting set up to achieve the desired effect time after time. For landscapes, you can make your best guess at how the sunrise or sunset will turn out based on the natural conditions (temperature, cloud cover, etc) but by and large you just need to be there and hope you get lucky. Good days go bad if the clouds aren't in the right spots and bad days can go good at a moment's notice if there's a break in the clouds in the distance. This unpredictable nature is exactly what makes an image such as this one and the previous panorama so rewarding to capture.
See more of my panoramas here, in the appropriately title Panoramas gallery.

Panoramas: Not Just a Fun Word to Say

Early Morning Light on Lake Hodges

I'm breaking my own post template for this one, and asking you to make sure your browser window is wide enough to take in the full photo above. Go ahead and resize it now, I'll wait...

That's the joy and the problem of panoramic photos. They're HUGE! In fact, it's difficult to properly display them on a website due to their size. This particular image has a wealth of detail, even in the back lit hills, however, due to its overall dimensions, I can't display it large enough for those details to be seen.

In the olden days of film cameras, a specially formatted panoramic camera to be done seamlessly. Now, with the advent of digital photography and the magic of Photoshop, creating a panoramic can be done painlessly and without a special camera. This particular image is actually 6 images, taken in horizontal orientation shot about 20 minutes before sunrise, and then "stitched" together in Photoshop.

Panoramas can be difficult to plan, since you can't see the entire image in the viewfinder at once and minor shifts in camera position can cause insurmountable perspective distortions and, as seen above, the vast scope of the image often encompasses very different lighting from edge to edge. Despite the difficulties, they can be truly rewarding to capture, especially when they turn out like this one!

See more of my panoramas here, in the appropriately title Panoramas gallery.

Lake Hodges Sunrise

Lake Hodges Sunrise

Lake Hodges is a new favorite location for me, especially for sunrise. The lake is peaceful enough in the early morning hours to like a remote destination, and yet is only minutes off the freeway making it a quick enough trip I don't have to make special plans to get to.

This image is from my first visit to the lake and in hindsight, I should have visited during the day to plan out a couple good locations. Scouting locations is almost impossibly hard to do in the pre-dawn darkness. When I arrived, I wasn't even sure where I could park and the delay nearly caused me to miss this special sunrise. I've found that sunrises are best just before the sun actually comes up and as I got out of the car, I could see a few clouds through the trees that surround the lake already lit up with a slight pinkish color. Fearing that was the best color of the morning, I rushed to the lake shore and hurriedly began taking photos. The first few shots were poorly composed and clearly not thought out.

As I slowed down, relaxed and thought through each photo before tripping the shutter, I was rewarded with the brilliant sunrise you see here. Further proof that it's better to slow down and "smell the roses."