The Timeless Traveler

Cosmos – Light and Shadow

At first glance, you would not know how tricky this shot actually is.

In the first place, you never want to photograph flowers in the direct sun. Harsh sunlight always burns out white flowers and causes red, yellow, and orange to bleed (look like they are not in focus and lose detail because of glare). Since those are the colors of most flowers, it’s a pretty good rule to wait for softer, diffused light.

But I lucked out here, There was just enough of a wispy cloud cover to filter and soften the sunlight, but leave enough strength to make a shadow, Shadow can be a killer in a photo – creating all sorts of shapes and designs that obscure the subject and busy-up the image.

But here the shadows are subtle enough to create another round of petals in this flower. It almost looks like cut paper, doesn’t it? Another rare and lucky light moment. You have to be ready for those, and pounce when they happen!

Tulip

My Advanced Photography students are studying flowers this week, so I have been going through my own stash for examples.

This shot was taken last Spring in my Garden Room.

It seems that, because they are so beautiful, flowers should be the easiest thing to photograph, but we can be fooled by that. There are lots of hurdles to overcome and red, orange, and yellow flowers offer the biggest challenge to the photographer. They want to hide their detail behind glare and often look like they are blurred or bleeding in a photograph because of that.

But, as with most things. you can learn to solve the problems, and then red, orange, or yellow flowers make the most amazing subjects.

This is the first time I have ever  used the word “creamy” to describe an image, but that’s how I feel about this Tulip. It looks luscious and creamy to me.

Rowry

July, 1992

I brought a new kitten home. Found her on a road trip to Portland, OR – a funny story you will hear about in the Fur Family blog a little later.

She had the most beautiful aqua blue eyes and a strange name – more about that later too.

I had just bought new Southwestern throw pillows and arranged them on the bed. The kitty was helping as kittens always do and I thought I better grab the camera. When she emerged to sit for this portrait, I was blessed indeed!

An Apple Day

Good photography, like any other form of art, requires that you be able to see.

Most of us can see, but I guess this is more like “notice”.

Training in photography is about learning the quality of light, how it behaves, and how it effects the way we see anything. The second part of that is being vigilant enough to notice when a wonderful light event is happening.

Many people think they can’t be photographers because they do not have the where-with-all to travel to exotic locations, but great photos ops are around you all the time no matter where you are.

This is one of my favorite photos and it was even published in a national photography magazine.

It was entirely un-staged and happened next to my kitchen sink. The kitchen has lots of windows and a large skylight. All of those light sources conspired, while I was making a favorite snack, to present the perfect lighting for this apple.

All I had to do was notice. Oh yeah . . . and get the camera in a big hurry. Snacks can wait. Great photos cannot.