We arrived in Ocean Shores Washington a couple of days ago. On the first day we explored just a bit and yesterday we just rested, traveling can be tiring. Today we explored “North Jetty and Damon Point. What made this even better was the ocean was very active due to the storms that were coming and going.
Witnessing the power of the waves as they crashed into the rocks and beach was awe inspiring for us.
Apparently, we were not the only people that thought so as the beach was full of people, even though I could avoid them in the photographs I took.
One of the things we discovered in our visit to the “Tri-Cities” (Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick) Washington is Sundays many things are closed, hiking trails, like in many locations are crowded. Learning that we stayed near our room on Sunday. Yesterday, Monday September 18, we visited Badger Mountain. Badger mountain has an elevation of 1,593 feet which is 1,000 feet higher than the location of our room. The weather was very tolerable, 75 degrees, with a nice breeze and low humidity. We only climbed to approximately 1,100 feet before returning to the parking lot. It wasn’t because we were tired but the way the trail went due to the steep climb it would have added a couple more miles to our walk and we had anticipated visiting a local winery, one of the other reasons we visited this area.
We arrived back at our car a bit before the winery was scheduled to open so we drove to “Horse Heaven” mountains and learned there was a recent fire which burned all the native grasses off the mountains. It was interesting, to say the least to see the area completely baren of plants.
As a “reward” for “climbing” the mountain we treated ourselves to wines and a snack. While we didn’t discover a huge number of things to do aside from hiking and wine, we found the area interesting for a couple of days. Tomorrow, we head towards Seattle and Whidbey Island.
Yesterday, I read a social media post on a well-known photography store asking followers what their what was the dream photography location. As you can imagine the vast majority were the iconic locations. Yosemite, Iceland, Patagonia, Antarctic, and so forth. This got me to thinking, all those are awesome places and I’d love to photograph them but are any my dream locations. My answer was no. I’m not sure of my dream location but I am pondering it as a result of the question.
My dream location isn’t going to be the iconic area that has been photographed ad nauseam.
What about the back roads of Kansas, Missouri, or Nebraska? We rarely see the landscapes of those areas. We see loads of Yosemite, mountains, waterfalls, the ocean. We see lots of locations of what many of us think of as exotic.
All of this reminds me of a couple of trips. One my wife and I went to visit our son when he was stationed at Camp Lejeune. We were going to the beach one day. The bartender at the hotel where we were staying said she hadn’t been to the beach in years. The beach was only a mile away from our hotel. Then the time in Colorado where my wife was admiring a view of the mountains and the local said, “yeah it’s always there.”
My dream location is maybe my local area with time to spend just cruising the backroads finding what I can find.
One of the things I think about often is growing as an photographer. I frequently ask myself could you have created the same photograph 5 years ago? If I find myself saying yes I may not be growing as a photographer. Yesterday I heard a podcaster mention that some of the most iconic work from the masters of photography were created when they were over 50 or 60 years old.
Maybe there is still hope for me. August has been a very busy month for me with little opportunity to do photography things.
When planning or thinking about photography trips and locations we often think about going to the cliché locations. Places that have been photographed ad nauseam. Often we think of creating a copy of something someone else did before us. I’m in a mode of thinking about some of these types of trips and I am leaning more towards the lesser known places to create work that is more original.
I can art but that doesn’t mean I can envision art. It is much easier to photograph something or someone that already aesthetically looking. The true artist can see the aesthetic value of many ordinary everyday subjects. It is our vision to bring out the beauty in the ordinary. Look don’t just see.
I haven’t been in an antique store in a couple of years and the last time I was I wasn’t interested in any cameras. Yesterday I wandered into one and found two. The Wirgin Wiesbaden Edina and a Kodak DC 120 Zoom (1997 digital). The Wirgin Wiesbaden is a 1950s vintage 35mm film camera and it was loaded with film. The Kodak has a 10 mb memory card. Both cameras work. the display screen on the digital is not working properly but the camera works. I need to get the film developed out of curiosity. From what I can tell there doesn’t appear to be anything on the memory card but I will check when I get to my compact flash card reader.
Yesterday I wrote about challenging myself with older gear well now I have two more pieces of older gear to try out.
We went on a weekend trip to enjoy some quiet time, wine, and photography. During this trip my challenge to myself was to use my 16 year old Nikon D80 and it’s matching 16 year old 50 mm f/1.8 lens.
The featured photo was taken with just that, taken at sunrise (even on my off time I wake early). The room we rented over a wine bistro overlooks a lake. Early morning fog settled over the lake. The D80 is still a capable camera.
Don’t let others convince you that you have to have the best newest gear to create quality work. I am sure if I was using my 40 year old Canon AE-1 and film I could have created the same shot. Oh yeah, as a side note this was only very very slightly edited in Lightroom (not Lightroom CC ).
Let’s get out there and create beautiful photos and art!
Photography workshops, do you really need one or do you just need a guide? It has started to appear as if the workshops being offered are really just guided photography trips. To me, a workshop is an event that provides training. Merriam-Webster defines a workshop as; “a usually brief intensive educational program for a relatively small group of people that focuses especially on techniques and skills in a particular field.”
Years ago, I went on a photography trip that was billed as a workshop. While the guys who were the workshop hosts were nice guys and had scouted the locations well I didn’t believe either one was a much better photographer than I. The problem I often found was there were about 12 of us who paid for the workshop and in many of the shots I wanted to take there often appeared to be a photographer standing somewhere in the frame. The other problem I found was there were so many of us that when we all, or at least several of us, found a composition we liked we lined up like we were at the firing line of a shooting range. When we traveled between locations it was a convoy of vehicles. I’m almost certain that most of us all came away with a number of nearly identical images.
A few months ago, a friend and I went on another photography trip. It was just two of us. We had, as best as we could, scouted out locations virtually. We could also decide on the fly to try a location. We still got a decent number of photographs and this time we weren’t in each other’s way. At one time I saw there was a service that you could sign up to be or hire a local photographer to be a guide. You could offer your services as a guide to your area and if you were traveling to another area you could search for a guide. Maybe we need more guides and fewer group trips billed as a workshop.
Photographer Clay 