I’m pushing my boundaries, leaving my comfort zone, by going soft and dreamy for this week’s post. Reducing clarity to create softness is a photographic technique I seldom (almost never) use. I’m one who is always going for more sharpness instead.
Soft and dreamy is a good way to go for some flower images.
It’s a technique, though, that I should probably use more often. Reducing clarity to make an image soft and dreamy is especially effective with some flower images.
I really like what reducing clarity did for this Joshua Tree blossom image.
Reducing clarity and using a mask to sharpen part of the image is great for changing depth of field, too.
Reducing clarity with a sharpening mask over the main subject can create a shallow depth of field.
Foggy conditions naturally reduce clarity without any additional processing.
Fog naturally softens images.
Trees
As I played around with reducing clarity, I discovered that I really love what this technique did to a few of my tree images.
Soft and dreamy maple tree
I was able to make some of my tree images soft and dreamy, giving them a painterly effect.
I love the painterly effect losing clarity had on this image.
The following image was always one of my favorites, but I could never get it as sharp as I needed to. It was always a little too busy, too. But reducing clarity gives it the look of an impressionist painting. I love it!
I love soft and dreamy on this image!
Waterfalls
One place where reducing clarity is especially impressive is in waterfall images.
I love what reducing clarity does for running water.
It makes the water silkier and fuller. You can see this effect in the following 2 images.
Reducing clarity can make running water silkier and fuller.
Perhaps you don’t want the whole image soft, though. In the following photo, I used a mask to soften the water but left the rest sharp.
Rustic Falls on Orcas Island
If you want to obscure a busy background by making the image soft and dreamy but also want to preserve some detail in the foreground, you can use a few different tricks to make that happen. I used a couple of techniques in the following series.
The first image is full clarity. The second is a soft mist filter. With the third, I painted the log with clarity and added a vignette.
Waves
Waves are also fun to make soft and dreamy. Here’s another series.
The 1st is original, 2nd is Soft Mist filter, 3rd is reducing clarity.
By reducing clarity, texture, and dehaze, I transformed this ocean sunset into an almost abstract watercolor.
Way soft and dreamy
Landscapes
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in Monochromes, I usually try to stay realistic with my photos. But this winter is all about getting out of my comfort zone, both physically and creatively. And actually, reducing clarity works particularly well with the Orcas Island landscape.
Reducing clarity works well with the Orcas Island landscape
Reducing clarity and going monochrome turned this flat, boring photo taken in terrible midday light into an image I can be proud of.
Quite a different mood from midday flat light.
Thank you to Bren of Brashley Photography for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Bringing Softness. You’ve helped me to stretch and learn a new technique!
North meets South annually in my life. I migrate. As beautiful as Alaska is in the winter, like the birds and the whales, I prefer to head for warmer climes when the days get shorter.
In the following pairs of flowers, can you tell which is North and which is South?
For years I worked in Death Valley National Park in the winter. People used to tell me, “Wow, you go from one extreme to the other! But I didn’t see it that way.
Death Valley or Denali?
Sure, there are big differences. In some years I was moving from a park that contained the highest point in North America, Denali, to a park that held the lowest point, the Badwater Basin. But I was actually avoiding the extremes through my travels- escaping the cold of winter in Alaska and dodging the heat of summer in Death Valley.
Plants in both places use many of the same strategies to survive.
The predominant colors were different, it’s true – shades of green in Denali and shades of brown in the desert. But the landscapes were surprisingly similar.
That’s why they look so similar.
In fact, there were far more similarities than there were differences. North meets South, sharing many of the same attributes. When I first applied for a job in Death Valley, an Alaskan friend told me that I’d find it more like home than anywhere else in the lower 48. He was right.
The landscapes aren’t all that different.
Immense, open panoramas abound in both. The vastness cannot be described, it needs to be experienced. They are landscapes that make you aware of your own insignificance. Death Valley is the largest park in the contiguous United States. Denali is even bigger. In most places, these landscapes seem endless because there are few to no trees. When I worked in Denali, I lived at the Toklat Road Camp, 50 miles into the park. I was surrounded by alpine tundra, not trees.
They’re both vast.
There are parallels in many of the geological features. Both contain rugged mountain ranges divided by wide valleys. Alluvial fans and glacial outwash plains look surprisingly similar. The raw, naked geology is exciting. The stories that the rocks tell are so much easier to understand in barren landscapes like these.
A nameless canyon in the Black Mountains
One aspect that delights me is that both parks are filled with countless nameless canyons to explore. These landscapes invite you to wander.
A nameless canyon on Polychrome Mountain
Sometimes you find similar treasures as you explore these canyons. Did these horns come from Death Valley or Denali?
Denali or Death Valley?
One way North meets South is through the commonalities of their wildflowers. Both Denali and Death Valley can have phenomenal flower seasons. And plants in both parks use similar adaptations to survive in their harsh environments.
Both parks host an incredible variety of wildflower species.
Both Denali and Death Valley pose extremely difficult challenges for the plants and animals that live there. Although one place is scorching hot and the other bitterly cold, they share an element that amplifies the effects of both extremes – wind.
They’re not all belly flowers!
In both places, the growing season is short but intense. In both, you’ll also find that a lot of flowers grow low to the ground. Belly flowers. They often grow closely in mounds or in mats covering the ground, working together to avoid the drying effects of the relentless wind.
Growing low to the ground in a mound can protect the flowers from wind and conserve water.
Many plants in both places are covered with fine hairs, which keep Denali’s flowers a little warmer and protect Death Valley’s from the harsh sun.
Denali or Death Valley?
The biggest draw for me personally is that both Denali and Death Valley are incredibly wild, something I’m aching for on tame, benevolent Orcas Island this winter. There is something about the harshness of those landscapes that speaks to my soul. And of course, they’re also both awe-inspiringly beautiful.
My approach to photography has generally been pretty traditional. My photos are usually realistic, no frills or special effects except perhaps a little color saturation, which I’ve loved since the old-school film days when I used Velvia slide film and underexposed half a stop to get that rich kind of color.
Reflections on the McCarthy Road
But for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Patti asks us to share monochrome images with reflections or interesting shadows. I have a few monochrome images in my files, and found some that work well with this theme. But I’ve had a bit of fun re-imagining some of my polychrome images, too.
Seagull sunset at Beard’s Hollow, Cape Disappointment State Park
Here are a shadow (silhouette) and a reflection shot from Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula. They’re all about the birds.
Sanderling in black & white
You might have noticed that the seagull scenic wasn’t quite black & white, more of a blue. Monochrome means one color, not greyscale. Here are a couple of colorful monochrome images. Continuing on the bird theme…
a natural living sculpture
Christmas morning, 2021
Bandon Beach
I think the beach may be my favorite place to make monochrome images.
Secret Beach reflections
But there are so many nice reflections on the McCarthy Road, too.
One from the road, the McCarthy Road in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve.
Here are a couple of pond lily reflections from the McCarthy Road, one in infrared, one in standard greyscale, under different lighting, portraying very different moods.
Infrared in late afternoon light
Standard grey scale at midday
I transformed a pink dawn moonset at New Mexico’s Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge into a nighttime moonrise by going monochrome in this image.
B&W moonset on the Bosque looks like a moonrise.
As I look over my catalog, I see a lot of reflections and a lot of interesting silhouettes, but not that many interesting shadows. Shadows can accentuate texture and be quite dramatic in their own right, but I guess I don’t readily “see” their potential when out shooting. Too much of that polychrome mindset, instead of exploring the possibilities of monochrome. Something I’ll have to work on, now that I’m aware of it. But here is an image where strong shadows help to create an impression. In this phot of Jug Handle Arch near Moab, the shadows accentuate the texture and power of the rock as well as the harshness of the desert sun.
Jughandle Arch
My last image is a bit strange. I was exploring the ghost town of Goldfield, Nevada, which has an infamously haunted hotel. I peered into the window of the derelict building and spied an upright piano sitting amongst the rubble. I really wanted to capture a photo of the piano, but the glare from the midday sun and reflections from the brick wall obscured the view. The image I ended up with, though, looks uncannily like the piano is a reflection or even a mirage, oddly appropriate and haunting for a ghost town.
For this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, we’ve been invited to share our favorite images of 2022. I’ve been sharing this year’s favorite images in my last two posts, so I won’t be revisiting those images here. You can go back and look at those posts if you missed them!
The God rays are still one of my favorites!
But I would love to share some other favorites. A few of them I’ve published in earlier posts, but most are brand new. It seems my favorite images change weekly! Because of the scarcity of electricity and internet access during my summer months in Alaska, I have still not caught up with my image processing for the past year, and I discover new favorites every day.
This is becoming my favorite abstract image for 2022.
There are so many photos I haven’t even really looked at yet, including winter in Arches and most of my fall shots from Alaska and Washington State. It’s like Christmas every day for me as I continually find new favorite images.
I saw some amazing places in 2022. One that has been on my mind continually this week is the California Coast. Most winters I spend either January or February on the California Coast. I’m not there this year, which may be a blessing. My heart goes out to all the folks struggling with too much of a good thing, with the atmospheric river and torrential flooding.
Amethyst Tide
I spent the month of February 2022 housesitting in Pacific Grove on Monterey Bay. I was 4 blocks from the coast and made a point of doing photography nearly every day while I was there. That is also the batch of work I am currently processing, so a lot of my favorite images in this post are from that visit.
Pacific Grove
Another fantastic roadtrip was driving the Cottonwood Canyon Road in Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument. It was on my bucket list for years, but usually this is a road that requires 4-wheel drive. I called the ranger station to see if it would be safe to drive in just a couple of miles to do some dispersed camping and the ranger told me the road was in great shape and my little Toyota truck would make it end-to-end just fine! Quick change of plans for me, I could not miss that opportunity. The highlight was visiting Grosvenor Arch, and it was every bit as beautiful as I had imagined it would be.
Grosvenor Arch
I’ve also spent a lot of time in Olympic National Park this year. I haven’t processed the fall images yet, but I’ve included a spring sunset in this collection.
Rainbow sunset
My last post included a lot of my favorites from the time I spent at home in Alaska, but I am revisiting my favorite flower photo from this summer.
I love the pattern displayed by the flowers and their shadows in this image.
My best sunset/sunrise of the year was traveling south down Canada’s Cassiar Highway. Every image in the series is so rich and so different. That sunset went through every shade a sunset could possibly have. Intense. I did a series on Instagram last week with a few of these images, 7 Shades of Sunset.
This image looks like I tweaked the color in LightRoom, but honest, it was really that red. I did not saturate the color, I even used Adobe Neutral as my color profile. I published a different swatch from that evening’s palette of hues in last week’s post, ‘cuz this one looked too over the top to me. But now I think it is my favorite.
Cassiar Highway Sunset
I traveled the Mt. Baker Highway for the first time this fall. Although the conditions were less than ideal due to wildfire smoke, I was amazed at the astounding views and the easy access to hiking in the alpine. I can only imagine how stunning it must be when there’s no smoke. A new favorite place, I will definitely be checking that road out again!
Mt. Shuksan
And of course now, I’m on Orcas Island for the winter, where there are some lovely waterfalls. This image is a favorite.
Rustic Falls
I look forward to seeing what favorite images 2023 will bring. If you have been following my travels on Facebook, though, it seems that Facebook has not been circulating my posts much lately. I urge you to subscribe to my blog instead, so that you won’t miss a post.
Well, I couldn’t do it. This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is Last Chance, when we’re invited to show off some of our favorite 2022 images that have not been published in a post yet this year. Since I took such a long hiatus from my blog this year, I have plenty! Too many, in fact. I can’t narrow my unpublished favorites down to one post.
Oregon beach sunset
I’ve been trying, but I have lots of sweet images I’d love to share. Because I have too many, and since the Lens-Artists are taking a week off for the holidays and won’t be putting out a prompt next week, I’ve decided to divide my favorites into 2 parts. This week will be my favorites from below the 49th parallel, and next week will be my Northland favorites.
Tallest trees in the world
Last Winter’s Travels
One suggestion was to include images that would probably never be included in one of our typical posts. I pet sit in the winter but I very, very seldom include photos of my charges in my posts. Here is a favorite shot of a kitty I took care of last January.
This kitty used to chew holes in my clothes!
I spent the month of February on a housesit in Pacific Grove, California. I envisioned this shot and was so excited, especially in post-processing when I realized I’d captured exactly what I’d envisioned!
I love the layers in this sunset silhouette.
I love visiting the redwood forest, and I love capturing abstracts. This is my favorite abstract shot for 2022. Charred bark from a previous fire and living green moss and lichens contributed to hues as bright as a peacock’s tail when looked at closely in this image.
Rainbow Redwood
Check out this cool tree. It’s in Olympic National Park’s coastal forest, and with a burly head, fungus features, and a crown of fern leaves, it’s a people tree! I stop by and say Hello! and give it a hug every time I pass that way.
Tree Person
(Yawn) Another sublime Olympic sunset… The Feature is one, too. I captured this image on Rialto Beach. I love the dreamy feel of this image. The Feature shot is from First Beach. I had so many great shots from First Beach it was hard to pick just one.
Rialto Beach
This Winter’s Travels
My final image from Olympic is fall colors, maples along the Sol Duc Hot Springs Road. Olympic had by far the best fall colors I found in Washington this year.
Maples on the Sol Duc Hot Springs Road
Now I’m on Orcas Island, and I have especially enjoyed the waterfalls here. This one is called Rustic Falls.
Rustic Falls
For my final image, while hiking a local trail I saw this Big Leaf Maple leaf standing, still attached, on a tree branch – perfectly upright and all by itself, beautifully backlit. It’s getting a bit ragged, but mostly green, even though it’s December. It hasn’t let go, just keeps hanging on. This is a great inspiration for those times when I’m feeling a little raggedy! I underexposed the background because it was a bit busy and distracting. Doing this helped me to capture the way this leaf looked to me and made me feel.
Getting a little raggedy, but still hanging in there!
Hope you, too, are still hanging in there and I wish you all a Happy Holiday season!
This week I’d like to share with you all some of my favorite places, ones I will miss this winter as I practice The Middle Way on Orcas Island. This week’s Lens-Artist’s Photo Challenge is Home Sweet Home. Tina Schell of Travels and Trifles asks us, ” If a foreigner were to spend a week or a month traveling your home country with you, where would you take them? What sights would you tell them to be sure to see? Where have you found some of your own favorite images? What is it you truly love about where you live, or places you’ve seen in your home country? ”
First snow in the Colorado mountains
Well, they would need at LEAST a month for all MY favorite places. Although I grew up in Colorado and now live in Alaska, I feel at home throughout the West. I’ll start with Colorado. I was raised in Colorado, and lived there for many, many years after I went out on my own. It’s probably where I’ll end up when I get too old to live deep in the wilderness in Alaska. My family is there. Colorado is always close to my heart.
Petrified Forest National Park
Although I’m at home throughout the West, I do have a few favorite places that I try to visit whenever I have the chance. One is the Colorado Plateau. This region covers big chunks of 4 different states: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. I can’t narrow my favorite down to just one or two places in this area, it’s all so amazing. My advice to a foreign visitor might be to check out a few places that are not as well-known as iconic parks like Arches and Zion. Although I love them, too, they ARE getting loved to death and it might be good to try to spread that impact out a little. Lesser-known places such as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Petrified Forest National Park contain wonders, too.
Grosvenor Arch in Grand Staircase-Escalante
Another favorite place is Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico. This is the best place I’ve ever been for birds. It is the winter home for vast flocks of Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes. Over 340 different species of birds live there. It is an incredible place to observe wildlife.
Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge
I spent 8 winters working as a ranger in Death Valley National Park. It is another desert that has captured my heart. The great thing about Death Valley is that because the altitude on the valley floor is so low (the lowest elevation in North America), the nights are seldom cold, even during the deepest darkest months of winter. Makes for great camping, and the rattlesnakes sleep in the winter! It’s an incredibly diverse park, with elevations ranging from below sea level to over 11,000 feet.
I did a little playing with LightRoom on this image. It was a daytime image and the background of bare dirt desert ground was a bit meh so I darkened it until it resembled the night sky, and tried to give a nighttime feel to the dunes, too. Since Death Valley is famed as a night sky park, and since one of my favorite things to do is to walk through the sand dunes under the full moon, I wanted to capture the feel of that experience in this image.
I love to hike the sand dunes in the moonlight.
And then there’s the bloom. If there is rain in the desert, and if it is timed right, the wildflowers will rock your world. If it seems like it might be a good year for the flowers, I try to make a circuit that starts near the Mexican border in Anza-Borrego State Park, moving through Joshua Tree and Mojave National Preserve until I end up in Death Valley.
Love those desert wildflowers!
Further west on the California coast you will find another great wildlife phenomenon, the elephant seals at Piedras Blancas near San Simeon. Although you can find a few seals there at any time of year, December through February are the best months. Thousands of seals converge on the beaches, with the big strange-looking bulls battling it out for the right to own a piece of the beach, and all the females on it. The cows are birthing and raising their babies then, too. It’s an extraordinary spot to witness wildlife drama, so close you don’t even need binoculars to see it.
Sex on the Beach
From the campground at San Simeon I can walk to the beach and see some fantastic bird action on the sea stack that looms just offshore there. It’s an awesome place to catch the sunset.
Farther north along the California coast is Mendocino County. It’s my favorite part of the California Coast. I think the scenery is even more dramatic than Big Sur, and without the crowds. It’s got big trees, too.
The beaches in Mendo are wild and uncrowded.
Speaking of big trees, I’ve really fallen in love with the tallest trees in the world, the redwoods, over the last few years.
Tall Trees
Sometimes I go straight up the coast into Oregon. Other times I head for the Siskiyou country near Grants Pass and Williams. The trees there are incredibly graceful and beautiful and it’s my last chance to see wildflowers as I head north.
Oregon has some incredible trees!
But no matter which way I go, I try to hit the coast at Bandon. It is so much fun to shoot the sea stacks there!
Sea stacks at Bandon
The Olympic Peninsula is my next favorite place. The old-growth forests redefine green and the wild beaches are phenomenal.
Ferns and feathers
And then there’s Alaska. It’s where my heart is, my community, my job, my life. My first love in Alaska was Denali National Park and I try to go there whenever I get a chance.
I love Denali!
But home is McCarthy, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. I truly believe it’s the most spectacular place in North America. Case in point – check out my daily commute! And the feature image was taken while I was standing on my front porch! It doesn’t get much better than this.
My daily commute to work
I hope you’ve enjoyed some of my favorite places. As Jim Morrison of the Doors said, the West is the best!
