In the Woods

Two more pictures from last weekend’s hike.  Only two more weeks til spring break…

Sweet Creek Falls (Revisited)

I had the chance to get away from work for a little while today and took the chance to drive out towards the coast.  Once I got over the mountains, the weather turned incredibly nice, and I decided to change plans and head back to Sweet Creek Falls. The water levels were much higher this time around, probably as a result of all the rain we’ve been getting over the past few weeks.  Here are a few pictures from the falls at the end of the trail.

The lighting was really cool here for this shot.  The sun was shining on the path in the foreground but the falls in the background were in the shadows.  I was able to use the neutral density filter to slow down the shutter speed for the water while still getting the vivid colors in the foreground.

This was from the “upper” section of the falls.  It was a little harder to take pictures here since the sun was directly behind the falls.  I had to position the shot to block out most of the sun, though the top left corner is still a little blown out.  It still turned out pretty well though.

-Ben

Balancing

I haven’t completely forgotten about the blog. It’s just taken a back seat for the past couple of days. I’ve been fairly loaded down with things from school: homework, readings, writing (and grading) a midterm for my precalculus class, and studying for my own exams.  I’ve also been pretty busy outside of school, dancing most nights of the week, either at lessons during the week or socially on the weekends. I’m still, as I always seem to be, struggling to find that perfect balance between work and play, school and hobbies, being serious and actually enjoying myself.

I count myself lucky that I’ve got several good friends here that always seem to be there to pick me up when I’m feeling a little down. I am feeling a little stir-crazy though. I think I’ve only left Eugene twice since getting back in January, once hiking at Kentucky falls the day after I got back, and then the trip to Odell Lake a few weekends ago. I’d love to get back out exploring the area, or even just driving through the mountains again, but I’ve either got too much to do over the weekend or the weather is being uncooperative (something I guess I should get used to this time of year here). Maybe it’s a good thing, and keeping me focused on getting things done, but sometimes I just feel full of restless energy telling me to get out and go somewhere.  At least there are only three and a half (admittedly difficult) weeks until spring break. Hopefully that week off will give me a chance to act on some of these restless impulses without too many pressures hanging over my head.  And, if not, then there’s always the summer I guess, though that seems like an eternity away.

Anyway, that’s enough of me rambling about my life for one post (I do feel a little better having written something a little more substantial than usual).  Here’s a picture from this past summer that fits with the theme of the rest of the post:

This was taken up in Acadia, at the end of the Wonderland trail where it opened up onto the beach. There were a number of rock piles like this one dotting the beach (which was a lot more rocky than I was used to seeing along the East coast). I remember trying to position myself so that the angle of the rocks matched that of the shore in the background, but this was the closest I was able to get. Anyway, I thought it was a neat shot. You can see the different colors that appear in the different rocks. I’m also glad I got a little bit of the (much) larger rock that this pile was sitting on in the foreground of the shot to give it a little additional depth.

-Ben

View from Above

One photographic “trick” that’s always sort of fascinated me was Miniature Faking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_faking). Using either special lenses or postprocessing, you can simulate the effect of looking at a miniature version of the scene you are photographing.  Unfortunately, one of the things that is usually required to generate this effect is to be looking down on your scene from above, as if you were standing above a model of the scene.  I’ve found that very few of the things that I generally photograph lend themselves to this kind of angle.  There have been a few shots that I’ve taken that work pretty well though.  Below is an example of one of them. First is the “before” or original photo that I took. Second is the product of some selective blurring and increased saturation in photoshop, not too difficult of a process surprisingly

So, maybe not the best example of this effect, but I still think it came out alright.

-Ben

Sunset Silhouettes

Well…another rough couple of days at school, but at least the weekend’s almost here! I’ve been going back through some of my older shots over the past few days and stumbled upon these. This is a series of shots I took back at Tech for my Photography colloquium in November 2010. The topic of the week was Silhouettes.  I think I posted another shot from this afternoon back in October, but these are pretty good ones as well.  The camera stayed in the same spot for all of these photos, but zooming in gives some pretty different effects to the shots.

I do miss having a place like the duck pond so close to wander around at all hours of the day and night.

-Ben