Black Hills
That's me on the left (sitting backwards on the big tortoise) and my brother Mike on the right. I think the photographer is our mom. And the tortoises were residents at the Reptile Gardens in the Black Hills. Or maybe they were an attraction at Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota?
I am taking a bit of a break from my blog and so I thought I'd post a few of my favorites.
Here's a macro of a patch of green lichen growing on a birch tree in the Black Hills.
Here's one I took a few years ago and which I found yesterday in a quest to find a photo to "operate" on. By operate I mean "to rescue from relative mediocrity by using cool software." (Try finding that alternate definition in your dictionary!)The software is onOne's new Perfect Photo Suite 7 and the subject is a mossy branch I discovered deep in the shadowy woods along Iron Creek a few miles away from our cabin in the Black Hills.
My friend Jack H. asked me yesterday if teaching photography has helped make me a better photographer and he had barely finished the sentence when I said, "Yes." I then went on to say that in finding words to describe thought and physical processes that are the result of 10 years of fairly random reading/looking and endless practice based mainly on intuition has made me more aware of the complexities of finding, framing and capturing my subjects.Beyond that, I am much more sophisticated in how I use software. And this photo is an example. Frankly, I have posted a nearly identical shot of this place in this blog already. The difference is that I was "playing" with software that I didn't have a few years ago and with processes like sharpening, white balance, saturation and contrast that I didn't have as of understanding as I do now.Is this a better photo? Maybe not. In fact, the casual observer may not even see what is "right" about this photo. I would like to think that my second year photo students would because I see clear evidence that they "get it": that they see and understand the 10,000 minute differences between the simple and the sublime.Here's the previous version:
Well, how about another golden aspen tree? This photo was taken a few years ago near Center Lake in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
I make a photographic pilgrimage to this place in the Black Hills of South Dakota two or three times a year. I have taken countless pictures here but in 2009, when the photos for today's post were taken, I was experimenting with high dynamic range photography. HDR photos are often two or more photos that are exposed for specific parts of a scene and re then combined.In 2009 the only process I knew for combining two photos into one was a labor intensive task and so I never got around to playing with these pictures. Until yesterday.The process now involves using an automated process in Photoshop CS5 and then importing the composite into Aperture and doing the fine tuning there.Beneath today's post I am revealing the original files. I'm not sure that I should show these files because you might think I am doing something unnatural to the scene to make it look better. But I'm letting you in on a bit of the amazing HDR process. And did Iron Creek really look like the final result in this post? More or less. I say this because HDR processing allows for surrealism and I would say that there is a bit of that here. The result, given the two original files, is certainly intriguing.
It looks like I'm in to looking up trees' trunks given this and yesterday's post. And I guess I am. . .This is a tree that our family named "Big Boy" over three decades ago. It lives on our cabin's property line in the Black Hills. It was old all those years ago so it is now Old + 30, I guess.Recently, Deb and I made the pilgrimage up the hill to see this venerable giant, in part to see if there is any evidence that Big Boy had fallen victim to the tree beetles that are killing trees all over the Black Hills right now. His boughs are green and he stands tall, though there was sap leaking out a hole a few feet up his trunk.We walked down the hill hoping that this huge pine tree wouldn't let a few small bugs bring him down.
I was waiting for for a traffic light to change at a road construction site on the road between Hill City and Keystone. I rolled down the window and snapped this photo just as the light turned green. I'm a nature paparazzi.
Yes, it's Iron Creek again, which I call "the same old stream" in this post, though this capture tends to feature the same old rocks more than the stream.Frankly, I was surprised to see so much water flowing through the creek this late in the season (October 9). But even though there was pretty good flow, it took an 8 second exposure the get the smooth, fluid look that the water has.I love this place and will probably never stop photographing it, though I suspect I don't need to post any more photos of the place on this blog.And I should say that sometimes my photography has less to do with the result than it does with the act.(Watch the screencast on how I "made" this photo here.)
We happened to be driving from the Hill City, SD, back to our cabin and we encountered the second to last run of the Hill City to Keystone 1880 train. It wasn't a great day for photos as it was raining pretty hard but It was a good chance to try to get a photo of what might be the only passenger train in South Dakota.We intercepted the train four times as the tracks meandered through the Hills. My idea of a good shot involved curving tracks and billowing steam and this photo was the best I could do.
Of course, the saying is, "From tiny acorns mighty oaks do grow." Or something like that.But when you get down on your belly and point a macro lens at them, they seem plenty big.