On the Olentangy

Last Sunday, I had a chance to return to Kenney Park along the Olentangy River where it runs through the Beechwold neighborhood of Columbus.  I spent much of my free time here many years ago. It was nice to visit again.

-Tom

A Wider View- The Crooked River

July, 2013

Still shot at 10 millimeters, but without any subject close to the lens.  Yesterday's pickerel frog lived in the woods just above the Crooked River, a fine babbling river in western Maine, just down the road from my in-laws's place.

-Tom

Muskingum Dawn

It's hard to beat the gray.  It seems as if we've had quite a bit of it lately.  Rain, and few snowflakes, but little color or interesting winter weather so far.  There are those few magical moments, however, each morning, if we're lucky, when the sun rises up between the thick deck of clouds and the horizon.  I snapped this shot as the first light of day bathed across this typically harsh landscape in Muskingum County.

Merry Christmas- I'm hoping to catch a few snowflakes in Maine.

-Tom

Muskingum Sunrise #2

I freaking love the Iphone.  I love it even more than last year, when Megan bought it for me as a Christmas gift.  I literally took about 30 seconds to capture this image Tuesday morning.  Yes, I did spend five minutes post-processing in Photoshop CS4 tonight, but I was just bringing out the tones captured by the phone.  We think of winter as being void of color, and for most of the day, that is true.  But sometimes, for a few minutes each morning, this happens.

-Tom

Waiting for Magic

Thank you for taking a few minutes out your busy day to stop by and share with me my vision of the natural world.  This space on the internet has changed over time since I started blogging back in 2006, but the overarching theme has been my passion for nature.  I use digital cameras to help illustrate what I see, but I don't often go into details about the photographic process.  This is something I want to start diving into occasionally, and I hope those of you that are interested in photography will find these types of posts engaging.  If not, I hope you enjoy the images!

Early this week I had the rare opportunity to have an evening free to explore a few acres in Williams County, Ohio.  I meandered through area of grasslands and swamps looking for interesting photographic opportunities.  A low cloud deck obscured the sun, resulting in rather washed out, uninteresting evening light.  I tiptoed around the edge of a swamp searching for something of interest to photograph.  This dead stump, covered with living poison ivy vines, became my subject.  An interesting story, but not really a compelling photograph.  On my walk I did note a few white-barked quaking aspen, that if the clouds lifted, would make fantastic subjects bathed in the light of the "magic hour".

 

As I waited for that light, I sat on a large glacial erratic boulder, watching a gray colorless sky.  I looked at the rock and felt its ridges and furrows- it had engaging colors and patterns.  I was lamenting that Ohio doesn't have any granite bedrock like that at Yosemite, whose shear cliffs the great Ansel Adams made famous.  Then something clicked! With the right perspective, I could use this giant boulder as my Ansel Adams Cliff.  Since there wasn't much color in the scene, an Adams-esque high contrast black and white would be perfect.  What do you think?  Did I trick your eye into thinking you were looking at a tree-less mountain?

 

Finally, the light that I had visualized earlier did come- the sun dropped below the cloud deck, pouring golden light over everything.  What I hadn't anticipated was how cool the dead stems of last year's prairie grasses would look against the new spring greenery. I was pretty happy with this image- it was the one I was waiting for, and I almost went inside at this point.  The mosquitoes had enough of my blood already.

But I am glad I stayed put.  As the first cloud deck moved across the landscape, another quickly replaced it- but these clouds did not obscure the sun.  Just as the sun was at the horizon, these clouds started to catch "fire", and by this time, I was really excited- I don't often get sunset images like this, but I absolutely love this phenomenon.   Galen Rowell, an incredible photographer and mountaineer, loved photographing these types of moments. 

So there you have it- an hour long peek into my photographic brain.  Although I missed my family dearly, an overnight work trip allowed me to photograph the sunset.  If I have to be away, hopefully I can bring home images like these every time I am gone.

Tom

Shawnee Smilax

On our recent visit to Shawnee State Park and Forest over the labor day weekend, I tried to climb a ridge one evening to get a clear view of the sunset. I was unable to find a clear view of the western sky, so I set up Megan's Canon SX20 is on my tripod to take an image of the interior of the forest.

Shawnee's dry ridgetop forests are often blanketed with the tangling vines of greenbriars (Smilax species). Thank goodness for trails, because you don't want to walk through a patch of these without thick pants.

Why was I shooting with Megan's camera? I forgot my wide angle lens for the trip! Megan's SX20 has a nice wide angle/telephoto zoom, so that is what I brought with me on my evening photo adventure. For this shot, I captured 8 different exposures, and combined them using Photomatix Pro. This technique of taking varying exposure information from multiple photographs and squishing it all together into one photograph is called High Dynamic Range photography, or now simply known as HDR. It's a technique that is evolving- many point and shoot cameras can create this type of image without extra software.

Some have scoffed at HDR while others love it- it is certainly a polarizing topic in photography. To me, it is another tool in the box of camera goodies that I have at my disposal. And for something like the interior of a forest, at sunset, with bright highlights and very dark shadows, using HDR imaging allows me present an image of what my eyes actually saw better than a single photograph would have allowed.

-Tom

Images of Shawnee

 

Our trip to Shawnee State Park and Forest, September 4-6th, 2010.

Tom

Olentangy Rapids

After quite a bit of work with the long lens, this evening I wanted to give my brain a different kind of photo workout, so I headed down to the Olentangy River. The sunset petered out, but the post sunset blues made for a wonderful reflection in the full, ice laden river. The streak in the background is northbound traffic on St. Rt. 315, one of Ohio's busiest commuter freeways.

I've posted this image over at my photo gallery, Tom Arbour Photography, in a much larger size.

Tom