46. Ansel Adams(ish) - April 27-May 3, 2014
Deron-
I went out last Sunday morning at 6:00 AM to shoot Lake Mathews. I had a group of photos of islands in the lake, cacti with the lake in the background, sunrise over the lake, but the photo you see seemed to fit the subject best.
It was a bit of an afterthought, as I drove down Cajalco Road to my next location. I always look at this road while I ride by on my bicycle, thinking how fun it would be to 'get lost' riding the dirt to nowhere. Unfortunately, this road is behind a gate with a No Trespassing sign.
Anyway, with the low sun hitting the rutted road and dry brush and with the Santa Ana Mountains in the background, this seemed to be pretty Ansel(ish) to me.
I went out last Sunday morning at 6:00 AM to shoot Lake Mathews. I had a group of photos of islands in the lake, cacti with the lake in the background, sunrise over the lake, but the photo you see seemed to fit the subject best.
It was a bit of an afterthought, as I drove down Cajalco Road to my next location. I always look at this road while I ride by on my bicycle, thinking how fun it would be to 'get lost' riding the dirt to nowhere. Unfortunately, this road is behind a gate with a No Trespassing sign.
Anyway, with the low sun hitting the rutted road and dry brush and with the Santa Ana Mountains in the background, this seemed to be pretty Ansel(ish) to me.
Paul-
The Chet Ager Nature Center—which to my mind is more of a wild life sanctuary—is Lincoln’s oldest Park. It even has bison and elk, honest. It is adjacent to Pioneers Park where I have shot a few photograph for past WPOTM themes. The Nature Center has none of the swings, statues, picnic grills, lake-side benches, sand volley pits, or the wonderful Amphitheatre Pioneers Park does. It just has the kind of land you would fully expect a creaking Conestoga wagon to be trundling through on its way west. The place is home to high prairie grasses, solitary thickets, marshes, and a creek that carves its lazy wave though the whole thing. And it is very noisy. Especially after a rain—which is when I visited there this week past Sunday. There was a cacophony of frogs croaking (what I assume was) their amphibian love songs, song birds vying for places in their segregated avian chorales, and my favorite sound of all: sly wind gusts threading through pine trees. I love it there. Even the muddy footpaths were somehow satisfying as they reluctantly let go one my hiking shoes.
I digress. I choose this modest scenic oasis hoping I’d find something…to quote Deron, Ansel Adamish. I figured I had little to lose because if you simply take away the mountains, arroyos, water falls, valleys, cliffs, buttes, escarpments, deep forests, massifs, small moon-lit towns, broad rivers, vast lakes, bouldered terrain, gnarled trees, rugged canyons, misty tableaus, adobe buildings, towering cacti and magnificent cloudscapes…well, this is exactly the kind of place old Ansel would have loved to set up his gear and get to work. And I may have found something that is a little reminiscent of some of his images: a tree that stands out just a bit more than its brethren and is very beautiful in its simplicity. Adams did it with aspens and birches. I did it with a pine. It doesn’t come close to capturing his skill or choice of striking locations, of course, but I like it just the same.
It was the first series of pictures I took in the nature preserve, and was vastly outnumbered by others shots I took of what I thought would be more interesting and eye-catching subjects. Then, after reviewing what I brought home, I saw how wrong I was. It just goes to show you.
Our Story So Far… Amid the perfect, albeit brief, solitude granted by the small parcel of—home to smaller creatures (and one or two larger ones) then himself—it was all the finally smiling man could do but whisper back to the susurrating wind: “Olympus E500; 14-45mm telephoto lens at 26mm focal length; 1/200 sec. at f13; ISO 500; the camera is hand-held.”
The Chet Ager Nature Center—which to my mind is more of a wild life sanctuary—is Lincoln’s oldest Park. It even has bison and elk, honest. It is adjacent to Pioneers Park where I have shot a few photograph for past WPOTM themes. The Nature Center has none of the swings, statues, picnic grills, lake-side benches, sand volley pits, or the wonderful Amphitheatre Pioneers Park does. It just has the kind of land you would fully expect a creaking Conestoga wagon to be trundling through on its way west. The place is home to high prairie grasses, solitary thickets, marshes, and a creek that carves its lazy wave though the whole thing. And it is very noisy. Especially after a rain—which is when I visited there this week past Sunday. There was a cacophony of frogs croaking (what I assume was) their amphibian love songs, song birds vying for places in their segregated avian chorales, and my favorite sound of all: sly wind gusts threading through pine trees. I love it there. Even the muddy footpaths were somehow satisfying as they reluctantly let go one my hiking shoes.
I digress. I choose this modest scenic oasis hoping I’d find something…to quote Deron, Ansel Adamish. I figured I had little to lose because if you simply take away the mountains, arroyos, water falls, valleys, cliffs, buttes, escarpments, deep forests, massifs, small moon-lit towns, broad rivers, vast lakes, bouldered terrain, gnarled trees, rugged canyons, misty tableaus, adobe buildings, towering cacti and magnificent cloudscapes…well, this is exactly the kind of place old Ansel would have loved to set up his gear and get to work. And I may have found something that is a little reminiscent of some of his images: a tree that stands out just a bit more than its brethren and is very beautiful in its simplicity. Adams did it with aspens and birches. I did it with a pine. It doesn’t come close to capturing his skill or choice of striking locations, of course, but I like it just the same.
It was the first series of pictures I took in the nature preserve, and was vastly outnumbered by others shots I took of what I thought would be more interesting and eye-catching subjects. Then, after reviewing what I brought home, I saw how wrong I was. It just goes to show you.
Our Story So Far… Amid the perfect, albeit brief, solitude granted by the small parcel of—home to smaller creatures (and one or two larger ones) then himself—it was all the finally smiling man could do but whisper back to the susurrating wind: “Olympus E500; 14-45mm telephoto lens at 26mm focal length; 1/200 sec. at f13; ISO 500; the camera is hand-held.”
Kevin-
Okay, so the Weekly Photo Of The Month theme for this week was Ansel Adams(ish). Now as far as I have been able to learn, Ansel Adams never visited the State of Minnesota, and why would he? Did he visit Alaska? Yes. Hawaii? Yes. And of course places like Utah, California, and Arizona. Heck he even photographed Joshua Tree National Monument which I have been to many times. (Joshua Tree didn't become a National Park until after a decade Adams passed). Minnesota of course lacks mountains, canyons, or most of the things that Adams tended to "focus" on. But we do have waterfalls. Not spectacular ones like Yosemite Falls of course (which is what I believe Byron is shooting). But we do what we can with such a flat state.
I made a drive down to Pipestone, Minnesota. It's in the far Southwest corner of the state, a little over 3 1/2 hours from our Twin Cities home. There I visited Pipestone National Monument. Pipestone is another name for Catlinite, a type of red, carvable rock that Native Americans quarried (and still quarry) for pipes and such. Michelle and I first visited Pipestone National Monument a few years ago and I remembered that there was also a small creek flowing through the pipestone rock and a nice (for Minnesota) waterfall flowing over it. So I decided to go back.
I had thought about a different drive, up to the North Shore of Lake Superior, as it's been decades since I explored place like the Temperance, Cascade or Gooseberry rivers, with their falls. But since the North Shore is still quite snow covered I decided that I didn't want to trudge though the snow and cold to see if the rivers were flowing yet.
Okay, back to Pipestone. The falls in question is called Winniwissa Falls. The "river" is called Pipestone creek, and I figured that it would be flowing well based on all the rain that Minnesota has received over the past couple of weeks. I also knew that Ansel would have set up a 4"x5"or 8"x10" view camera on a tripod. And while I am quite familiar with such equipment it's been a long time since I used it. Plus it's been years since I had a darkroom to process the sheet film or an enlarger to make the prints. So I had to settle for my full-frame Nikon D4s.
I shot from a variety of angles, using various neutral density filters to get a long exposure times and properly blur the water. The water in most of Ansel's shots was blurred to varying degrees, as he shot mostly at small f-stops and slow ASA (now ISO) film speeds, as that was all there was during most of his career.
Nikon D4s, tripod mounted, Nikkor 24-70mm zoom lens set to 45mm. ISO 100. Exposure was f/8 at 6 seconds with a 10-stop neutral density filter over the lens. I set my Nikon to black and white so the preview images on the back of the camera (and on my iPad) would appear that way. Then, since I shoot in RAW they still come out as color so back in my Digital Darkroom I had to convert the final image into black and white again and do other corrections. Brightening some areas, darkening others, just like Ansel would have done in his darkroom.
Okay, so the Weekly Photo Of The Month theme for this week was Ansel Adams(ish). Now as far as I have been able to learn, Ansel Adams never visited the State of Minnesota, and why would he? Did he visit Alaska? Yes. Hawaii? Yes. And of course places like Utah, California, and Arizona. Heck he even photographed Joshua Tree National Monument which I have been to many times. (Joshua Tree didn't become a National Park until after a decade Adams passed). Minnesota of course lacks mountains, canyons, or most of the things that Adams tended to "focus" on. But we do have waterfalls. Not spectacular ones like Yosemite Falls of course (which is what I believe Byron is shooting). But we do what we can with such a flat state.
I made a drive down to Pipestone, Minnesota. It's in the far Southwest corner of the state, a little over 3 1/2 hours from our Twin Cities home. There I visited Pipestone National Monument. Pipestone is another name for Catlinite, a type of red, carvable rock that Native Americans quarried (and still quarry) for pipes and such. Michelle and I first visited Pipestone National Monument a few years ago and I remembered that there was also a small creek flowing through the pipestone rock and a nice (for Minnesota) waterfall flowing over it. So I decided to go back.
I had thought about a different drive, up to the North Shore of Lake Superior, as it's been decades since I explored place like the Temperance, Cascade or Gooseberry rivers, with their falls. But since the North Shore is still quite snow covered I decided that I didn't want to trudge though the snow and cold to see if the rivers were flowing yet.
Okay, back to Pipestone. The falls in question is called Winniwissa Falls. The "river" is called Pipestone creek, and I figured that it would be flowing well based on all the rain that Minnesota has received over the past couple of weeks. I also knew that Ansel would have set up a 4"x5"or 8"x10" view camera on a tripod. And while I am quite familiar with such equipment it's been a long time since I used it. Plus it's been years since I had a darkroom to process the sheet film or an enlarger to make the prints. So I had to settle for my full-frame Nikon D4s.
I shot from a variety of angles, using various neutral density filters to get a long exposure times and properly blur the water. The water in most of Ansel's shots was blurred to varying degrees, as he shot mostly at small f-stops and slow ASA (now ISO) film speeds, as that was all there was during most of his career.
Nikon D4s, tripod mounted, Nikkor 24-70mm zoom lens set to 45mm. ISO 100. Exposure was f/8 at 6 seconds with a 10-stop neutral density filter over the lens. I set my Nikon to black and white so the preview images on the back of the camera (and on my iPad) would appear that way. Then, since I shoot in RAW they still come out as color so back in my Digital Darkroom I had to convert the final image into black and white again and do other corrections. Brightening some areas, darkening others, just like Ansel would have done in his darkroom.
Byron-
The timing couldn't have been better for this topic. I traveled Idaho for a cousins Memorial service. We passed near Yellowstone National Park so I looked up Photos That Ansel Adams shot in Yellowstone. My favorite was Yellowstone Falls. We were lucky because many of the roads in Yellowstone are still closed because of the snow. The road to the falls was open. There are 2 viewing areas for the falls. The upper and the lower. The upper was open the lower was closed. Adams shot his picture from near the lower area. I had to shoot mine from the upper area. Oh well, It was as close as I could come. It is an awesome site. I would like to go back another time, probably early June of whatever year I go. Other that the higher viewpoint, I tried to make it like Ansel Adams(ish) as best I could. This was really a fun topic. I haven't researched, driven and spent so much money to achieve a picture before. It was exhilarating!
The timing couldn't have been better for this topic. I traveled Idaho for a cousins Memorial service. We passed near Yellowstone National Park so I looked up Photos That Ansel Adams shot in Yellowstone. My favorite was Yellowstone Falls. We were lucky because many of the roads in Yellowstone are still closed because of the snow. The road to the falls was open. There are 2 viewing areas for the falls. The upper and the lower. The upper was open the lower was closed. Adams shot his picture from near the lower area. I had to shoot mine from the upper area. Oh well, It was as close as I could come. It is an awesome site. I would like to go back another time, probably early June of whatever year I go. Other that the higher viewpoint, I tried to make it like Ansel Adams(ish) as best I could. This was really a fun topic. I haven't researched, driven and spent so much money to achieve a picture before. It was exhilarating!