How I Shot It - Architecture #1

I shot this from secret spot #58, but if you get out a map of San Francisco it wouldn't take you very long to figure out where this is from so I'll just tell you.  It was shot halfway up the road to Coit Tower.  This is one of my favorite areas of the city, just above North Beach, overlooking the entire city and if you're lucky you'll see the legendary parrots of telegraph hill.  They're unmistakably bright green and not quiet about there existence. I've been wanting to photograph San Francisco from here for quite some time and so after finishing another photo shoot that day, in the same area, I decided to hang out and wait for the light (both artificial and natural) to get good.  Watching the city electrify, as the night approaches, is a wonderfully meditative experience.  It happens gradually, individual windows turning on adding single squares of light, slowly filling the foreground with a mixture of tungsten, fluorescent and halogen light.  All the while the sky, depending on conditions, evolves through a color palette unique to that particular day.  On this warm March evening the typical sunset color failed to transpire and instead a rich hue of cyan painted the entire sky, slowly building richness as the natural light faded further.  This image is actually several vertical frames stitched together, and so to take 'multiple exposures' of the overall image you have to retake the entire series each time.  To keep these bracketed frames organized I shoot my hand over the lens at the beginning and end of each 'stitched' series so I know which frames belong together in the final image.  In a city-scape like this there is an exposure intersection when the sky exposure and city exposure (bathed in dim artificial light) match.  It's at this intersection when the best exposures are shot.  If the sky had been a traditional sunset, the best time to capture that color would be before the city was ready, and thus you would need to shoot separate series for the sky and city.  I was lucky in that the sky here was a cool soft cyan, not too bright and thus I could get both exposures in the same series of frames.  I'll sometimes use a split neutral density filter to drop the sky exposure by a few stops, but that wasn't needed either.  On top of this, by switching the color balance to Tungsten, it further extenuates the deep cyan color. 

How I Shot It - "Rialto Beach Study No.1"

The Olympic Coastline in Washington State has some of the most rugged and wild scenery along the entire length of the West Coast.  Little houses, no resorts, few access points, thick forests extending down to the high tide line, it's a landscape photographers paradise.  My good buddy Patrick (see his work here) and I had been photographing the parks interior for most of the day, along the Hoh River Valley, which is equally wild with the thickest vegetation outside the Brazilian Rainforest's.  Rialto Beach faces almost directly West, and we knew the Sun's setting angle and thus decided to head here over some of the other spots.  There are so many seastacks along this stretch of coastline I could get lost for months photographing them.  We jumped out of the car and knew we were in for a treat, the sun was 45 minutes from setting and we had to hike about two miles to get to the spot we wanted.  For those of you who have seen Washington's Coast you know how rocky it can get, this place was no exception.  None the less we strapped our gear and started humping it up the beach.  We rolled onto the scene and parted ways, as we usually do, which makes shooting together so enjoyable. We each have our own vision of what the scene can offer.  As the sun set I made several exposures of some surrounding seastacks, but wasn't satisfied.  As I walked further on this seastack, which from the side was shaped something like a huge upside down 'V', turned out to be quite narrow when viewed head on.  The sun had been set for over 30 minutes and so I was beginning to chase the last of the light.  I wanted the color to be soft and shift cyan and so loaded color negative instead of chrome film in my camera back.  I also wanted the water to soften quite a bit, to really focus all attention of the shape of the seastack.  I used a 3 stop ND filter to lengthen the exposure time which ended up being close to three minutes with reciprocity.  The sky was a nice surprise.  I didn't notice that it was flowing parallel to the shore, reinforcing the attention to the rocks.  This has consistently been one of my favorite images I've shot.  

How I Shot It - "Shack with Clouds"

I tried meditating, nothing.  I tried exercising, nothing.  So I turned to the one thing that calms me the most, photographing, and left.  I had to get out for a bit, had to disappear into my work and not talk to anyone.  I had about an hour and a half before I had to be back or there would be one very confused young lady.  So without a word I grabbed my camera bag and took off for the countryside.  It was early October and today I was getting married.  We were buried in the mountainous hills that lie between Bellingham and Mt Vernon in Northern Washington.  The clouds had been rolling in and out all morning, so it wasn't complete BDE out.  I decided instead of scouring for a scene I'd pick the first interesting spot and work it for awhile, I was more interested in losing myself in the process, a way to let my mind focus on something else other than the days events.  I quickly found this broken shack buried in the brambles and set up.  The clouds were visually moving fast, but I didn't want them to completely blur over yet still have some movement to have the viewer get some sense of the weather.  I added a Polarizer filter and a red #25 filter, which combined added 5 stops to the exposure.  I exposed it for 10 seconds.  I wrote a few post production notes about lightening up the shack facade and darkening the sky down.  I shot a few more with different filter combinations, and a few to completely stop all cloud movement, but in the end I liked my first exposure the best.  By the time I was packing up, and heading back I was totally calmed down and ready for the days festivities.  Photography isn't just my profession, my love and my creative it's also my source of meditation and source of spirit.

Cheers All!

How I Shot It - "1634"

There were skunks, four of them to be exact. It was late, around midnight and the entire town was dark and silent. I’m sure I would have looked a little strange walking around this little New England coastal town with a large backpack and equally large tripod tucked under my arm, but not a soul was wandering about as I was. Except that is for the four seemingly innocent skunks that decided to make their evening rounds in the one place that looked utterly amazing at midnight.

The sign at the entrance was a dilapidated ceremonial plaque dedicated in 1934 for the 300th anniversary of the cemetery. Within this place I saw an image I had had in my mind for years. This small cemetery, sitting by the ocean, had several small hills with dozens of headstones jetting out in all angles. Some were crumbling and unreadable, others new with textured wear. I found myself wandering in. Surrounding this colonial cemetery, were groves of hardwood trees, and behind them were streetlamps of all color temperatures pouring light into this place, creating mysterious shadows and highlights. Some of the headstones were completely black while others lit up in wonderful greens and blues.

I had my camera in my hand and had already set up my tripod without thinking. I set up slowly, methodically searching the angles, placing the shadows where I wanted them. I knew it was going to be a long exposure, so speed was not an issue. In the background was a simple colonial house, lit by an unseen light that made it stand out ever so subtly. It was in my West Coast eye, a New England I had envisioned all my life. And that’s when I saw them, all four of them.

It was going to be a long exposure, around an hour. There was nobody around and I was tucked in a dark corner of the cemetery so I figured the camera was safe. I turned to walk out, explore a little more of the town, and stopped dead. Staring at me with miniscule beady eyes was the one small creature that could make any grown man stop in his tracks, and it was staring directly at me. Not really sure how to handle this, I simply didn’t move. We stared at each other a few moments until it became disinterested and resumed its midnight feeding. Not wanting to draw its’ attention I stayed and waited for it to move on, but after it had gone I found myself enjoying the meditative night in this little cemetery by the sea.

Ingredients:
-Camera: Hasselblad
-Film: Kodak 160NC EI:160
-Exposure: F/11 @ 1hr15min
-Lens: 50mm
-Light: Streetlamps, Moonlight