Treetops

Whew, the last few nights have been pretty rough trying to catch up on all the work I didn’t do this past weekend. Here’s another pair of pictures from the trip to Odell Lake:

It’s not often I catch the moon close enough to the horizon during the day to get a shot of it with anything but sky in the picture. My moon photos usually don’t come out this clear either, so I’m happy on both counts.

This one was taken on one of the cross county ski trails around the lodge. I really like the way the clouds turned out in the top left corner. They contrast very nicely against the dark blue sky from the polarizing filter. I would have liked to have gotten the entire sky that dark, but it didn’t work out with the sun at the time. I also like how the dead tree left of center kinda matches up with the leading edge of the clouds in both shape and color.

-Ben

Experimenting (Take 2)

In my last post, I talked about playing around with my new graduated neutral density filter, but I didn’t have a great example of what the effect really was. However, this weekend, I went with a large group from the math department up to Odell Lake, up in the cascades. It was a gorgeous place, and it was nice to get away from Eugene and work for a few days (though I’m making up for all that missed time tonight…). Saturday afternoon, I went down to the docks at the lake at sunset, and had a chance to play some more with the filter. Below are two roughly identical shots, the first without the filter, and the second with it

Notice that the surface of the lake is exposed about the same in both shots. The difference between the two is the exposure of the sky, especially on the left side of the shot (where the sun was going down). Overall, I’d say it was a fairly large improvement in the shot.

I’ll post more about the weekend adventures (and some more photos) next time. But for now, it’s back to work…

-Ben

A Splash of Color

Tomorrow’s a big day for me here.  I’m both taking and giving my first exam at U of O.  It seems backwards, but I feel more worried about the test I’m giving in my precalculus class than the one I’m taking in abstract algebra.  I’ve put a lot of work into it over the past few days, trying to write questions that are both fair and challenging, and having to balance covering all of the material with writing something that most students will be able to finish in about 50 minutes.  Anyway, I thought I’d take a break from worrying about those and put a few more pictures up.

These are both from a hike near Sahalie Falls a few weekends ago.  One of the strangest things about driving through the mountains here as opposed to those that I’m used to on the east coast is that a lot of the trees here don’t change colors, or if they do, it’s not as spectacular.  It’s not to say that there aren’t some that do, you just have to hunt a little harder for them.

I really liked the red color in contrast to the green of the surrounding trees and the white of the falls behind.  I also really liked the narrower depth of field in this shot.

Again, I really liked this one for the sharp color contrasts between the red, green, and blue.

Well, back to work now.  Hopefully I’ll have time to go adventuring again this weekend and get some new pictures 🙂

-Ben

Fall Pictures

I know it’s been a while, but here are a few pictures that I’ve taken over the past few weeks.  I’ve been incredibly busy with school and other responsibilities here on campus, that I haven’t really had much time for photography.  I hope to put some more pictures up here in the next few weeks.

-Ben

Distant Hills

This picture comes from a trip I recently took to the summit of Mary’s Peak a little ways West of Corvallis.  We tried to time it so that we made it to the top around the time the sun was going down.  Unfortunately, however, the top of the mountain was shrouded in clouds when we got there, and you couldn’t really see the sun, or much of the surrounding countryside.  It was a really cool experience though, it’s not often that you find yourself inside a cloud.  After a quick picnic at the top, we decided to come back down to escape the surprisingly chilly winds.

I took this picture from the path as we were getting close to the parking lot.  I really loved the silhouette of the trees in the late evening light, and the fact that you could see through them at some points.  Wanting to get as much of the orange coloring as I could, I bumped the exposure down to -2EV.  It turned out really nicely, and I’m glad that I included a little bit of the cloud cover at the top of the picture.  I didn’t notice the hills in the background when I originally took the shot, but I really like the misty, distant look.

Sorry for the delay between posts here, a lot has been going on in the last week or so.  First of all, the pace of the research is really picking up as we all kinda figure out just what it is that we’re doing.  The long weekend of the 4th was great.  I found a place down in Eugene to go salsa dancing that Friday night, and plan to go back this week.  We went down to downtown Corvallis several times over the weekend, checking out the farmer’s market on Saturday and then live music and fireworks on Sunday.

There’s plenty more to tell, but it’s getting late, and I need some sleep…

-Ben