I hate the bandwagon effect, the idea that just because everyone else is doing it you should be, too. Isn’t that what leads all those lemmings off the cliff? But I’ve been hearing from other photographers across the country how much fun they’re having photographing pets. And there’s a certain profit motive involved here as well. I read a few days ago that people in the USA spend some $35 billion annually on their pets.
Dogs (and cats) are much-loved members of the family for many households. They give unconditional love and affection, something that is often otherwise missing in our daily lives.
I’m starting to explore those bonds and relationships between pets and humans in my photography. My latest venture, Purebred Pet Portraits, is an outgrowth of my human portrait photography. I’m getting some marketing guidance from Taimi Gorman, owner of Gorman Publicity and the unfortunately now-defunct Doggie Diner in Fairhaven. That’s Taimi with Oscar in the photo at the right. Madeline the pug, sitting on the wooden chair, is also her dog. continue reading »
Wow, where is the summer going? It seems like just yesterday that I joined with dozens of other Birchwood Garden Club members to visit three more unique and interesting Bellingham gardens on a warm summer evening in the golden sunset light. It’s actually been a couple of weeks, August 4 to be precise.
First up was Jennifer Wall’s garden, which is actually in the Birchwood neighborhood. She purchased the home, with an existing garden, a couple of years ago and has been on a journey of discovery to see what was there. Now she’s adding her own personal touches and style to the place. People were oohing and aahing over her plant choices and asking lots of “what’s this?” questions.
Then we caravaned down Chuckanut Drive to the edge of Mud Bay where we enjoyed Donna and Allen Buehler’s waterside garden and the view out over the bay at high tide. Lots of containers here, and outdoor entertaining spaces.
Finally, a few miles further down Chuckanut to a garden that backs up to Larrabee State Park. The Susan and Landry Corkery garden features an extensive collection of trees that blend with the native vegetation. Myriad paths twist, turn, and invite getting lost among the foliage. The Corkerys say they have 66 varieties of Maples, 50 Japanese Maples, 23 Magnolias, 8 Pines, 7 Oaks, and 275 Rhododendrons.
As usual on a garden tour, I just carried a pocket camera. This time is was my Canon S70, which provides more control and choices than the iPhone I carried on the July Birchwood tour. All of the images in the slideshow were processed through Adobe Lightroom and the show itself was produced in Animoto.
Last Saturday I made a trip up the North Cascades Highway to scout out locations to take my Pocket Camera Wildflower Photography class at North Cascades Institute on Tuesday. The trail I used the last time I taught the class, Heather Pass and Maple Pass, was reported to still have a lot of snow. So I chose the Easy Pass trail, which climbs reasonably gently for a couple of miles through wonderful forest and then breaks out into the subalpine and alpine splendor.
Since I was teaching pocket camera photography, I only carried my Canon S70 with me to photograph the flowers. My idea was to create a video slideshow to introduce my students to the trail they’d be hiking and to show what can be done with little cameras.
The class has now come and gone, with 15 delightful students who learned a lot. I learned from them, too. The North Cascades Learning Center on Diablo Lake is a great place to have a class, with comfortable facilities, a splendid setting, and outrageously good food. The evaluations are coming in and they’re looking good. I hope to be able to teach the class again next year.
In addition to hiking to Easy Pass, we also hiked and photographed on Sauk Mountain, one of my all-time favorite easy-access wildflower hikes. Following our Tuesday hike and photo session everyone chose three favorite images and we had a group critique with their photos on the big screen. Some of the students had some very nice photos to share.
The slideshow was created in ProShow Producer, a Windows-only program. I used the random effects tool, and then manually adjusted image movement and transitions when the auto feature produced something that I didn’t like. All the images were processed in Adobe Lightroom 3 before bringing them into Producer.
We finally got our first day of summer on July 7, right on schedule. It was the evening of the Birchwood Garden Club July members-only private garden tour, a delightful opportunity to visit four very nice Bellingham gardens. If you’re not a member of an active garden club, like Birchwood, you’re missing out on seeing gardens you otherwise wouldn’t get to see. Thank you, Sheri Lambert, for organizing the tour.
The four gardening families that welcomed us included Ira Penn and Dee Dee O’Connor, gardening on Alabama Hill; Lynette Jensen and Joan Wayne, each gardening on south hill; and garden designer Susann Schwiesow, gardening in Edgemore. Each garden is unique, appropriate to the site, representative of the personalities of the owners and designers, and a joy to explore. There were plant surprises and nice design elements in each garden.
As has become my custom on garden tours, I did all my photography with my iPhone 3G. This very sunny evening with strong contrast pointed out the limitations of the camera. Everything is completely automatic except for where you hold it to compose the image. Auto everything works pretty well in even light, but with bright highlights and deep shadows the camera tended to overexpose, washing out the bright spots and opening the shadows more than I like. Auto white balance doesn’t always know what to do with flowers and foliage, either. The tradeoff is that the camera is small, light, and already in my pocket.
I processed all the images in Adobe Lightroom 3, adjusting brightness and contrast, sometimes tweaking color balance, and applying a vignette to emphasize the center area. I spent less than a minute on each photo. I’ll be talking about the process and showing the technique in a program at the Garden Writers Association annual symposium in Dallas this September.
Nooksack Falls is a popular tourist destination along the Mount Baker Highway just a few miles east of the tiny town of Glacier, Washington. The usual vantage point is from the north side of the river and at the top of the falls. There’s a stout fence to keep people from accidentally falling off the cliff and to discourage people from getting too close to the edge.
I’ve photographed the falls several times in the past 20 years and we almost always take out-of-town visitors there when we head to the mountains. It’s the largest waterfall in the county and very accessible.
However, you can’t see the whole falls from the standard observation point. For years, I’ve looked across the river, and across Wells Creek which flows into the Nooksack at the base of the falls. There’s a moss-covered boulder field above the creek and river, drenched in spray from the falls. I’ve thought that there should be a way to get to the south side of the river, and down those mossy boulders to river level. I tried once a few years ago and didn’t make it, probably because I failed to plot a compass bearing to follow through the woods.
Today, pretty much on a whim, I decided to head to the falls again. This time I plotted a bearing on the topo map before heading out. I drove up the road to the Skyline Divide trailhead and parked at the second righthand switchback. From there it’s only a quarter mile, and about 400 feet down, to the base of the falls. Following my compass I headed through the woods, carpeted with a dense layer of stairstep moss and decaying logs.
I came to a vantage point on the canyon rim overlooking the falls and photographed from there. Then I scouted a route down the cliff to the boulder field below. I scrambled down and photographed from several vantage points. The photo here is one of my favorites.
I haven’t processed them yet, but I shot a couple of multi-frame panoramas to stitch together. I’m thinking a big print might be nice. Since I knew how big my subject was, I only carried two lenses, 24-105 and 16-35, and used them both. Scrambling down and up with a tripod in hand was a little dicey, but never really dangerous and well worth the effort.
Now I can cross “see Nooksack Falls from the other side” off my to-do list.
Nooksack Falls is a popular tourist destination along the Mount Baker Highway just a few miles east of the tiny town of Glacier, Washington. The usual vantage point is from the north side of the river and at the top of the falls. There’s a stout fence to keep people from accidentally falling off the cliff and to discourage people from getting too close to the edge.