Tag: Lake Pend Oreille

Shot from the heart…

as expected, in black and white.

Fourth of July
Fourth of July

“I’ve been forty years discovering that the Queen of all colors is black.”

Henri Matisse

I did warn you in last week’s post. What can I say? I love the clarity that comes with black and white. While others are anticipating a riot of colors bursting into the night sky I see a hazy red blur that is much better defined without the color.

I do love an opportunity to shoot fireworks. There is such an element of surprise as to what you might see. Each time I do it I find myself more relaxed and able to take in the show at the same time as I am photographing it. I was even able to ignore the popping of flashes behind me with hardly an eye-roll as the other spectators  attempted to capture this on various flash equipped devices.

I found this to be almost meditative too as I calculated how long to leave the shutter open and envisioned what elements I was building into each frame. Would it be one singular explosion or a longer shot enveloping multiple explosions?!

Fourth of July

Fourth of July

For those disappointed by these black and white images I offer this as an opportunity to imagine all the colors of the rainbow. Whatever colors your heart may desire…and a happy independence day America!

Sometimes it’s better to just get up…

and go capture a moment.

20150308-DSC_0436-2

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul-and sings the tunes without the words-and never stops at all.

Emily Dickinson

After a somewhat sleepless night following some disturbing news I decided to give up on the idea of sleep and go lose myself in some early morning photography. There are several apps available now from which you can track sunrise, sunsets, moonrise, moonsets and all manner of night sky events. From apps like Photographers Ephemeris you can pull up locations that you’ve logged and see exactly when and where these events are going to occur so that you can be in the right place for shots that you’d like to take. Slipping my iPad into my gear bag I set out for one of my favorite spots; the site of ruins from an old sawmill on the shores of a mountain lake.

It was peaceful and quite chilly but being well dressed for the weather and armed with handwarmers to thaw chilly fingers, I explored my area and tried out several compositions before settling on this one. When it is still dark out, a quick way to do that is to bump up your ISO really high and take a quick shot to see how you like it.

I love that early morning light before the sun rise but shot all the way through, finally capturing the sun as it rose directly behind one of the pillars. Even when I’m not taking pictures, I’m thinking about taking pictures and keeping track of points of interest for future shoots.

I enjoyed my first morning of Daylight Savings time, how was yours?