Road Trips

My wife and I like to take road trips for our vacations. We have a small T@B trailer we hitch to our pickup. We pick a general area and direction and go explore. The past two weeks we explored more of eastern and central Washington state. This included the Palouse, Spokane, Rosevelt Lake, Leavenworth and Mt Rainier areas. As usual I get up early and photograph. I have found that my success in generating strong images on the road is mixed. Not knowing the areas well it takes sometime to find good subjects at the right time of day, etc. Sometimes I feel too much pressure when trying to photograph. This is especially true when I visit some photographic hot spot for first time (Glacier NP, Yellowstone, etc). I find this eases when I get to spend at least three days at a location. It is even better if I get to return another time altogether. So I have found that I actually enjoy my morning photo sessions better when I am just out exploring some obscure place.

Has this been your experience?

I have included a couple of my trip images. The top image is classic Palouse and the bottom is a Mt Rainier reflection.

A Tree Revisited

One of my favorite HDR nature images is one I took late last fall (early winter) of a tree surrounded by frosty blue-green grass. I have gone by that tree a couple times since. Finally I went by a couple weeks ago while the trees were blooming. The top blog image is a new HDR of that tree with spring colors all around. The second image is the original image shot in the fall. I find that I really like both of these images. As I noted before, good subjects are worth revisiting many times.

Sunrise

As you may have notice several of the image I shot in the orchards were shot at sunrise. Sunrise is an excellent time to find great images. Throw in a little fog or mist and you are in heaven. It is often this mist or fog that distinguishes sunrise from sunset shots. I have included a couple more images shot at sunrise in this blog. The top image shows the fairy tale look you can get with a little mist. In the second image the mist spreads the red glow from the sun all around. In the final image the fog highlights the morning sun rays.