I love the worlds I discover in flowers, and the imaginings they inspire in me. It never amazes me how I can walk down a sidewalk I have dozens and dozens of times before, but on this day I have a camera that allows me to get into this abstract world of color found in a flower bed no higher than my ankles. This is how I found the purple flower on a sunny day while we were out taking Owen for a walk. While he was off running through the grass playing in worlds open only to the perspective of a 17 month old, I was discovering those allowed me by the reversed lenses on my Pentax 6x7. If there is any aspect of photography I like the most, it is this. The ability to see in ways that normal human vision cannot. To see things, that normally cannot be seen. Or in ways that cannot. This ability of cameras and lenses constantly blows my mind.
Tags: purple flower floral macro macrophotography Pentax 6x7 Kodak 160VC film abstract color rich deep everyday flowers Portland Oregon Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera
© All Rights Reserved
Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
"Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it!" -- Apu
I admit I have become a bit jaded when it comes to the Fourth of July anymore. My feelings really are summed up by a combination of the Star Spangled Banner and Apu's quote from The Simpsons. It is not a lack of national pride, though I admit too that I am not overly proud of this country either. I take the good with the bad. But this holiday itself just seems to have lost a bit of its importance to most of the people I run into. It has become too much about drinking beer and lighting explosives. And I could tolerate that, to each their own. What really gets to me is the litter. There is nothing quite like getting up on the fifth of July and walking along streets where the gutters are lined with the burnt-out remains of fireworks. Or going down by the river or to the coast, and seeing all the discarded remnants of the previous night. My natural frustrations about litter aside, it is just so much worse to think of all the people out supposedly celebrating the independence of their country by trashing it. By making it just a bit dirtier and a bit more polluted. That is what makes me jaded, that of all the days of the year, so many people cannot take the few extra minutes to pick up after themselves and to help protect, in such a small way, this country. Shrug. But that is what freedom is all about right?
And to those who do celebrate responsibly, who spend the fourth remembering the importance of this day, who, gasp, know the words of the Star Spangled Banner beyond the first stanza, thank you. Thank you. And thank you.
Have a great holiday everyone. Celebrate safely. Stop for a moment to remind yourselves, and pick up your trash, please. Sorry for the rant, it is just something I feel a bit strongly about.
But enough with the cynicism. I do enjoy shooting fireworks. Not so much for the result as for the process. The way I tend to photograph fireworks, and hopefully this helps those out there wanting to try their hand at fireworks, is to set the camera up on a tripod and lock the shutter open on bulb mode, preferably with a cable release. Then I take a piece of cardboard along with me and use that to cover up the lens. Then I can uncover the lens for specific bursts and cover it back up between bursts or during those that I don't want. For some reason I always seem to equate it with putting together a bouquet. Instead of picking out flowers, I am picking out the bursts of fireworks that I like. You can skip this method and just do long exposures, but when you do an exposure for 15 or 30 seconds straight on, you sort of get whatever comes along. This way you sort of get to create your shot. And I like anything that involves a personal touch. In terms of other technicals, I usually shoot 100 speed color neg, at about f8 for anywhere from 15 seconds to 2 or 3 minutes. But that all depends on how often I cover and uncover the lens. Generally I would say at those settings, you should be getting roughly 30 seconds worth of exposure. One thing I would suggest keeping in mind, do not open your aperture up too much, doing so blows out the fireworks and you lose a lot of your color. Smaller apertures though will require more time to fill in exposure on the background or you will just have fireworks exploding over an extremely under-exposed cityscape. Good aperture choice is the key here, sort of like when shooting flash photography. Hope that helps.
Tags: fireworks Independence day Fourth of July Ft. Vancouver Washington Pacific Northwest Oregon red Columbia River holiday independence 232 years later Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera
© All Rights Reserved
This photo is the reason why I believe there is no such thing as bad light, just poor uses of it. I took this photo about 1 in the afternoon out exploring Beaver Creek Falls off of Highway 30 on my way to the coast with an old friend from high school. The light on the falls was pretty harsh with deep shadows and blown out highlights. About what I would expect on a clear, sunny day. In fact it is what a lot of photographers would expect, so like me most would have taken a few moments to glance at the falls, mark likely shooting spots for the next overcast day, then leave their gear packed into bags or untouched on shoulder straps and moved along.
I almost did all of this too. I stood and enjoyed the falls, pretty quickly determined I could not do any actual shooting of the falls with the light how it was and almost never even got my cameras out of the truck.
But then I started wandering up the creek a bit as my friend Tom was still playing around and snapping photos and I did not want to rush him. I came across this shady nook in the stream and the bright light reflecting off of the trees on the opposite bank bathed the surface of the water in this brilliant green. I then got down on my haunches and discovered the oblique angle of the lower perspective really stretched the green reflection out along the surface of the creek. So I hustled back up to the truck and pulled out my cameras afterall. The trick was that the reflections I wanted were about 20 feet out in the stream. I couldn't wade out there because my angle would then change. So I used my 200mm on my Pentax 6x7 to get in close for this shot.
I have mentioned before in earlier posts that I find myself using my telephoto lens for landscape photos more often. I like the intimate perspective it gives you on the details in nature. I like wide, sweeping, epic landscapes taken with wide angle lenses too, but I like the challenge of breaking from the wide angle approach now and then and using lenses I would not normally think of as landscape lenses.
So back to light. Anyway, this type of shot needs a bright, cloudless day. Overcast days, great for the soft lighting, don't produce strong enough reflections like this. You can do this shot during magic hour too, granted that the lay of the land is just right. But my point is, light is a tool to be used by photographers, not the other way around. It is just like picking out a film or a camera or a lens. We choose our light too, and how we use it. I say that if you think the light is "bad" you are just not looking hard enough. Or at least looking too hard in the wrong places perhaps. Something I always try to remind myself when I am out shooting in the middle of the day. Use the light to your advantage.
Oh, I also like the color green. Good color. Maybe not quite as nice a color as the deep blue of twilight. But pretty darn close. ;-)
Taken with my Pentax 6x7 and Fuji Velvia 50 film.
Tags: green water blur Oregon landscape abstract color I love green sunny days Pentax 6x7 Velvia 50 rock stream creek Beaver Creek Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera
© All Rights Reserved
I figured since I just posted a green photo, in part because I like the color green so much, and in addition to green, I really like the color blue too, that I should then post a blue photo as well. Maybe I will keep this a long term series and slowly work my way through the spectrum with landscape photos.
Anyway, this is another of those images that looked so beautiful in slide form. It is amazing and vexing just how gorgeous a slide on a light table can be. Amazing in that, if you have never shot or seen a well exposed slide, well it is a treat. Being one step removed from the actual scene itself, they have a depth to their color that almost makes you feel like you are looking into a tiny window upon that same scene all over again. Vexing because pretty much any copy of that slide, be it in print or a digital scan, often loses some, if not most, of that magic.
It was that way with this shot. I have scanned it before, but the scan just paled so badly in comparison to the slide that I deleted it. Then I scanned it again. Fiddled with it, and at some point, deleted it again. I scanned it in again tonight, and with the practice I have had lately scanning slides, I was able to get this one closer to how the original slide looks, or feels perhaps.
This was a lovely dusky evening along Cannon Beach. By the way, see the cloud of moisture hovering over the surf in the distance? That is why you always put UV filters over your lenses and keep your cameras in their bags until you are actually ready to shoot them. This spray is so fine that you don't often realize it is coating all your equipment until it has built up a significant layer of salt deposit. Easy enough to clean off of lenses, but not very friendly to camera innards. This is one of the reasons I like wearing my glasses at the beach, I start to notice the accumulation of spray on their lenses and it reminds me to shelter my cameras and their lenses as much as possible. But really, UV filters are super inexpensive, there is little reason not to have one on every lens. But this is a big reason to have one. Just my tip for the night.
Tags: Fuji Velvia slide beach coast Oregon Pacific Northwest Cannon Beach blue twilight dusk Nikon FM2 slr ocean Pacific Ocean landscape color on blue Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera
© All Rights Reserved
Just posting this to keep everyone on their toes (myself included) in terms of what I post.
I am not sure my brain ever really turns off when it comes to seeing pictures, be I at a gorgeous waterfall or standing on top of the parking garage at the airport (where I found this shot enjoying a dusky evening)
I really enjoy the airport. I love going there, especially when it means I am departing for some other corner of the world. I love coming back to it too, because it means I am freshly arriving home, and Portland is a place I love coming home to, no matter how amazing where I have been was.
So whenever I go to the airport, I always keep a camera handy. I am a bit nervous about walking around and blatantly taking photos because of the post-9/11 induced paranoia. But nonetheless airports are such interesting places to shoot. For that matter, so are parking garages. As seen here. But this extends to most of the parking garages I have visited. I think mainly because we never think of going to the tops of them. Next time you are wandering around downtown (regardless of the city you live in) take the elevator briefly to the top of a nearby parking garage. I think you will be surprised by the view you find up there. I know I was the first time I started exploring the tops of the parking garages in downtown Portland. Whole new vistas were suddenly uncovered. And I could have smacked my forehead as I had never thought about these views previous to seeing another photographer's photos of Portland taken from parking garages.
Shrugging. Anyway, thought this one was interesting, so here you go. ;-)
Tags: blue lights Nikon FM2 urban Parking garages the view from the top beam me up Scotty Scotty beamed me last night sir Don't worry, just a random Spaceballs quote Scotty didn't really beam ME Fuji Velvia 50 PDX Portland airport Oregon Pacific Northwest dusk twilight sky skies clouds This is why I love my 50mm f1.4 Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera
© All Rights Reserved