"Do we manipulate each other?" He asked. And she responded, "Well, everything is manipulated. The moon affects the tides. The sun changes the winds. Rivers control where we build cities. And the ocean in front of us keeps you from going any further. Take this scene, the light affected where you stood, what you did. And what you did was full of manipulation. The lens you chose, the color film you exposed. Even your composition was a manipulated message" At this he scratched his head a moment, "But what about us? Do you manipulate me?"
"But, of course," was her only reply before turning back to the sunset.

Tags:   sunset color Rialto Beach Not sure what you would call this little guy But I will dub him Cairn Man even though he is a poor use of the word cairn Washington Olympic Peninsula Olympic National Forest Pacific Northwest Pentax 6x7 film landscape Blue Moon Camera

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I just posted this self portrait over on my 500px stream, and I have been trying to not overlap the two too much, but this one has grown on me and I wanted to post a pinhole image tonight, so I figured I would share this with my Flickr constituents sooner rather than later. So here you go. I do hope you enjoy it.

Tags:   pinhole coastal sunset Rialto Beach Olympic Peninsula Olympic National Park beach coast 6x12 Holga 120WPC self portrait me surf foam lines in the sand and shadows crossing them Blue Moon Camera

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I am not sure whether I want to start by talking about Neah Bay, my wonderful fascination with horizons or one of my bad habits as a photographer, but I guess the order I listed above is as good as any.

This is a shot of the horizon looking across the Pacific Ocean on the outskirts of Neah Bay. I took this not long after we had left the Shi Shi trailhead. Neah Bay is a hauntingly beautiful place. Not to mention one of the most lonesome spots I have ever visited in the Pacific Northwest. Even some of the towns in Eastern Oregon or Washington feel a bit more... connected with the outside world. I was only in the town for a short time, but I quickly picked up a mixed sense of both deep pride and sadness to the place. Geographically it is the most northwest settlement in the continental United States, located out at the far tip of the Olympic Peninsula. It is over an hour's drive along a windy highway just to get back to HWY 101, the closest major road. Plus Neah Bay is surrounded on two sides by vast amounts of water, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north. The other two sides are dense northern rain forests that are sporadically broken up by the Olympic mountain range.

Culturally it is the home of what is left of the Makah tribe of Native Americans. The Makah were once a large family of tribes that inhabited large areas of the Olympic Peninsula until European settlers passed on the gifts (sometimes unknowingly, but sometimes intentionally) of smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza and a few others for good measure. This influx of disease wiped out large portions of the Makah, as it did to indigenous people through North and South America. What was left of the Makah was further splintered and broken up by the U.S. government, in much the same way they treated other Native American tribes throughout the U.S. It is what is left that imparts that mix of great sadness mingled with a still very thriving sense of cultural pride. Couple that with the immense sense of isolation one encounters traveling the area and it was quite an experience. I most definitely want to travel back to Neah Bay eventually, and not just to see Shi Shi again.

Moving on, I am not quite sure where my fascination with Pacific horizons came from. I know when it started, with this shot here, taken out at Cape Meares one evening. I know there are a number of photographers who have done similar work, but I am not familiar with any of them, just now beginning to actually look some of them up. I am certainly not complaining though, the new perspective has added a significant amount of depth to what I see now when I look at the ocean (no pun intended). They make for fascinating studies, and pretty soon I am going to have to create a whole new set on Flickr here to accommodate all the shots I have been compiling, even though to date, I have only posted a few of them.

And then on to one of my bad habits as a photographer. This one comes and goes for me, sometimes I am really good about it, sometimes not. See, we almost did not stop for this shot. In fact we drove right by it and had to head down the road a mile or so before we decided to turn around and return. The rainbow had not happened yet, but the rest of the view was there. In fact I saw the shot I could take, but I was ... I guess tired. That was mostly it, having just hiked out from Shi Shi carrying close to a 50 pound pack full of camping supplies and camera gear. It is not so much that I pass on places to stop that merit exploring but rather sometimes I get fairly concentrated on where I want to go, even if I am not in that big of a hurry. You know how it is right? You just don't want to pull over and get everything out and set up for a couple of shots. You want to keep moving, make "progress" toward wherever you are going. It is an awful frame of mind to adopt, because, well you may miss shots like this. I am not always like this, I say about 30% of the time. That is too much though. I have plenty of stories where those spur-of-the-moment stops produced the most amazing moments of the entire trip. This shot being a superb example of that.

Anyway, that is all I have for tonight. Thanks for reading along and enjoy.

Tags:   Washington Pacific Northwest Canon 5D Mark II rainbow Pacific Ocean Strait of Juan de Fuca ocean horizon water clouds distance You show me a pot of gold And I will show you a drowned leprechaun simple landscape nature outdoors minimalist Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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If you find this image a bit haunting, that's quite alright, I do too. For some reason it makes me think of all the memorials to drowned sailors I have seen. Not meaning to be morbid, it was an utterly beautiful twilight, and the impending storm was creating a brisk wind that was invigorating, if not more than a bit finger-numbing. But still, something about this image just strikes me how dark, deep and vast the ocean is. And don't forget cold.

This was taken on a weekend trip up the Olympic Peninsula. This particular spot was Tongue Point, about 30 minutes west of Port Angeles. More on the trip to follow, but first sleep. ;-)

Tags:   Pacific Ocean Washington landscape Canon 5D Mark II Didn't the Germans designate tanks with Mark too? ocean coast outdoors Pacific Northwest Olympic Peninsula cold blue water horizon storm Best viewed big, life size in fact Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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Another shot from our Father's Day trip around the Olympic Peninsula, again at Rialto Beach for sunset.

All my best shots that evening came with my 200mm lens on my Pentax 6x7. I remember when this lens only ever got used when I needed to couple it with my 90mm to do my flower macro work. In fact, that was the only reason I bought it. I never used it for anything else, including landscapes. I always used to see my landscapes only in wide angle and only ever used my 24mm or my 28mm on my 35mm Nikon. Even my 50mm was often not quite wide enough. Over the last year and a half though, my 200mm has found new life. Now I find myself pulling it out nearly as often as my wide and standard focal lengths.

I find it pretty rewarding to look back on my growth as a photographer in this manner. Anyway, I mention it because I know a lot of other photographers who are naturally inclined towards wide angle lenses for their landscapes, and I can certainly understand this. I still prefer to shoot most of my landscapes with a wide lens. But for today the piece of advice I would offer photographers out shooting their favorite landscapes is to mix a telephoto into the equation. Try it out. At first you might not see anything with it, but that is ok, keep trying. It is a different way of viewing a landscape so it requires changing your mental gears in terms of viewing the landscape in front of you.

Give it a shot and see what you can find.

Tags:   beach coast Washington Rialto Beach warm and cool landscape Pacific Northwest Pacific Ocean surf wave sand Pentax 6x7 200mm f4 Kodak Portra 160VC film Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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