Foggy Morning Trail

A foggy morning along the trail around Lake Hodges

Time to take a quick break from our normally scheduled Ruins photos (if you're digging them, don't fret, there are plenty more to come! If you're not, hopefully this one will get you through the home stretch of them!) to share a more recent image.

On the eve of Superbowl Sunday, I looked up the forecast for the next morning's sunrise and was excited to see what looked like perfect conditions. I charged my batteries, gathered my gear and set my alarm for 5 a.m. I made it out the door by 5:15 Sunday morning and was instantly excited by the possibilities. Not only were there a few clouds in the sky, but there was some lingering fog. I couldn't wait to get to the lake and watch the sunrise above with a low hanging fog surrounding the lake.

I got to the lake almost an hour before sunrise and found it completely shrouded. Trees just 20 feet away disappeared into the thick fog. Forget sunrise, I was just hoping I be able to see someone approaching me! (The lake is pretty secluded at that time of the morning and with the fog I felt like I was smack dab in the middle of a horror movie, so I was a little jumpy.)

I stayed in my "sunrise" spot for a while capturing some very moody, very foggy images and was about ready to head home when I saw this trail. I've walked this trail a number of times but never found it all that interesting but, since I was there and only planning on taking a nap when I got home, I decided to see if the fog made it more interesting.

As soon as I got to this spot, I knew this would be the shot of the day! Good thing I decided to check it out before heading home.

---

A friend and fellow photographer had rough plans of meeting up at the lake that morning (I wasn't sure if the alarm would wake me up, so I gave him a general idea of where I would be IF I did wake up) but due to the heavy fog, Shimon wasn't sure were to find me. Instead of staying in the fog, he ventured up the hill behind me and took this photo of the sunrise above the fog. I'm somewhere near the bottom left hand corner of his image, but it's a little hard to see me with all the fog. I would say it was a very successful day for both of us!

Morning Reflections

Morning Reflections

And it's once again been another month since I last posted an update with a new photo. We're still suffering from less than ideal conditions for photography here in San Diego so I haven't gotten out much. In fact, not at all since I took the last image just over a month ago.

I'm also trying to wrap my head around a few things concerning my site. Chief among them is image sizing. My camera outputs images in a 2x3 ratio, a "standard" size for most cameras. But somehow, this isn't a standard ratio for frames and mattes. Scott Kelby (a Photoshop & general photography guru) wrote about it not long ago on his blog, here & here, and I've had some complaints from customers that they couldn't find frames to fit the prints I had available (sorry Mom!). Anyway, since most of my images are in the 2x3 ratio (8x12) and frames come in 2x2.5 ratios (8x10) it's a massive undertaking to overhaul all my images to fit what is best, and easiest, for customers. I'm still in the "thinking" process trying to figure out how best to deal with it, but in the meantime if you're looking for prints, please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you have about sizing.

To get back on topic, the nice thing about not getting out to take photos regularly is that I've had some time to go back through my archive and find some really nice images that just got "left behind" when I was shooting more than I could process. It's easy to lose track, especially on a weekend where every sunrise and sunset has near perfect predicted conditions. That's what happened to this image, taken at Lake Hodges. That particular weekend, back in December of 2009, had near perfect sunrises and sunsets and it seems that I never got around to fully exploring my images from Saturday's sunrise. In fact, I only processed one image from that morning and there are a lot more from that morning that deserve some attention.

Stay tuned for some more "forgotten" images as I work my way through my archive!

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."