“You don’t take a photograph, you ask quietly to borrow it”  author unknown

For me, everything I do as a nature photographer begins with the land.  It starts there and flows outward.  The land and then the plants and animals.  It isn’t that I favor the land.  I am an equal opportunity nature photographer.  It is simply that to me it is the foundation of everything else that I photograph.  It is also a more peaceful and thoughtful act than the other forms of nature photography.  Admittedly it is often not as exciting.

Autumn is here and I’m sticking to it.  At least for the first part of this post.

To me there is nothing better than a tree trunk and some colorful leaves.  When you think of it, that is all any of us really need to make a compelling image.  Even with just one tree trunk and some leaves, we still need to compose our pictures.  Note that the trunk does not run right down the middle of this image.More tree trunks means a more difficult composition.  Actually I spent a long time composing (making order) out of all these trunks.  Every time I would find a pleasing arrangement of trunks, the color (the leaves) became bothersome.  Finally I hit on this.  The good news was that it was not windy and the light was not going to change anytime soon.  That meant I could take my time an enjoy the process. There are a lot of different things we can do with a single tree trunk.  There is no written rule that I know of that  states that we have to show the whole trunk.  Who says that we can’t have those fall leaves below the trunk?  I looked for a more unusual perspective for this photo and found it.If there are several ways to look at a single tree trunk, then there must be even more ways to look at multiple trunks.  I broke as many “rules” as I could with this one.  In my opinion those silhouetted trunks are even more important to this image than the branches and leaves.I will bet you did not know that autumn photography is all about tree trunks.  That of course is an exaggeration but they are an important component.  The stars (trunks) of our final fall image are a group of Aspen trunks in the Jin Bridger Wilderness of Wyoming.  This time my picture does not show a leaf that is now or ever has been connected to our tree trunks.  I simply composed some trunks in front of a back drop of autumn foliage. 

My pal Ron and I were cruising along in northern New Mexico, doing what we both enjoy.  That would be wandering around looking for wildlife, plants and scenes.  We managed to stop every fifty miles or so and create a few landscapes.  We spotted the land forms below and were taken by their color, shape and texture. The top two pictures are of a sandstone formation that I found to be quite beautiful.  It was more horizontal than vertical, which was a pleasing departure from most that you find.  For the first shot I wanted a simple and traditional type of shot.  I wanted to show those greenish grasses in the image in order to offset the warm colored and heavily textured rock.  I also wanted to show the blue sky with all of those great clouds.  I made my simple image.  The light for this shot was too contrasty for any real shadow detail if I properly exposed for the highlights.  I decided to bracket several exposures.  This is something I never do but I thought after getting home I could work on the shadows and highlights independently and save the image.  No chance!  Since the time when this image was made HDR (High Dynamic Range)  software has come along.  I ran this though the HDR software over exposing the original and one copy, and slighty underexposing another copy.  When I sandwiched the three images it left the shadowed areas with the exposure values I had envisioned while I was in the field.  The second photo is not a crop of the first but was composed that way in camera.  I wanted all of that blue sky gone and mostly clouds above the rock.  I was also able to expose for the shadows in this scene and have a usable image from the very start.  The composition is simplistic and I do prefer this second shot to the first.  Our third image was made at the same general location.  Back to vertical. There was really only one true composition here.  Several man-made objects like signs etc. were trying their best to get their picture taken.  This meant there were very few choices for me to make.

I was in Colorado and I had been either driving or making pictures since well before sunrise.  It was late afternoon and I was a rather tired photographer.  I had stopped at mid-day at a grocery store and filled my cooler with food.  I decided to car sleep that night so I pulled off the small paved road and started up a dirt mountain road.  After a short distance I saw this little gem of a waterfall and knew where I would be spending the night.  There was still enough light to make some pictures, so I was at it again.  Above and below the area of this un-named falls that is showing in this picture, is pretty much a tangled mess of branches.  I took a couple of shots showing as much as possible and then settled down to the business of simplifying my composition.  This is the best of what I did. Despite being 9,000 feet up the side of a mountain and being quite alone, I slept like a baby that night.   I generally do when I have a river rapids or a waterfall to lull me to sleep.  Of course I was on my way again at 3:00a.m.

When I travel on photo trips I attempt to give somewhat equal importance to national parks, monuments, wildlife refuges and state parks and wildlife areas, as well as what I find along the road.  Along with Custer (wildlife) State Park in South Dakota I find Utah’s Valley of The Gods to be spectacular.  I know I have blogged about this place before but honestly,  all of that beauty in a wilderness setting.  Not another human being was seen during the time that we were there.  No park workers and no admission.  If this state park was in my native state there would be a staff of 50.  The rangers would be watching just in case you enjoyed yourself.  There would be a campground and a store.  There would be an exceptionally high admission price even if you were a resident and had already been charged several times via taxes and fees.  Oh just a little bit of humor.  I know, very little. Anyway this is an amazing place. 

The Earth Images Blog has turned out to be pretty typical of me.  I cover all of the subjects in nature and interject my opinion probably too often.  The blog has found a core group of loyal readers, and I am very appreciative of that. 

I was recently looking at a website that belong’s to a camera club.  A few times over the years I had the enjoyable experience of giving a slide show or speaking at camera clubs, but I have never actually joined one.  The old Groucho Marx quote of “I refuse to belong to any club that would have me for a member” comes to mind. 

“I saw the Angel in the marble and carved until I set him free” Michelangelo

I thank you very much and wildlife will be our next subject,

Wayne