Hiking Mt Pilchuk
September 12, 2009
I had a chance to hike Mt Pilchuk recently – one of the classic hikes of the north Cascades, and the views on the way up and from the old fire lookout at the top are spectacular. On this day, the low clouds added great texture and shadows to the mountains, and Mt Rainier to the southeast and Mt Baker to the north came in and out of view as the clouds ebbed and flowed through the valley and around the shoulder of the mountain. Here are some of the images from the day.
Blue Heron
September 9, 2009
I went out and shot in the rain on Monday afternoon hoping to get some interesting landscapes. I didn’t get anything remarkable other than finding a spot that I want to go reshoot at another time, but did spend some time with this beautiful heron. The sky was perfectly overcast and the angle of the reflection on the (absolutely still) water gave a perfect gray background. Off-camera flash to the left to give the colors some pop and put a catchlight in his eye. And yes, he only has one leg – didn’t seem to bother him one bit.
Dawn over Calico Hills, Nevada
September 4, 2009
This is a shot I made a couple of years ago, that I recently brought back up from my archives and did some additional cleanup editing. It was shot about 45 minutes before sunrise, with the early light just starting to hit the hills, and the moon setting overhead. It’s both a stitch of two shots to create the panorama and an HDR image, as I double processed the RAW images to bring the exposure on the sky way down – in the end I had to comp in the moon because the original was too blown out. One of my favorite landscape shots, so I thought I’d share it.
Mountain biking
September 1, 2009
This weekend I made plans to go on a mountain bike ride with a couple of friends. It wasn’t a photo shoot per se, but I wanted to see if I could make some interesting images on the go without slowing the group down too much. We had great plans to start early and with the morning fog I was hoping for some good, even light, but we ended up with a couple of mechanical issues on the bikes and by the time we got going, it was mid-day, the sun was blazing overhead, and our group was down to just two of us. Luckily my riding partner was my good friend Gustavo who not only is a tremendous athlete but also a gracious model. I was definitely concerned about how much camera weight I was going to be pulling up hills, but I brought my D700 with the 24-70 f2.8 and an SB-900. It was a fair bit of weight to carry on a ride but I was able to get a couple of interesting shots. There’s off-camera fill flash in all three of these shots – necessary on a bright sunny day to open up the shadows.
Downhill run
Riding the light
Flying portrait
