FARM ON THE HILL

Here is another photo from last week, taken at the farm in northwest Iowa. I love this neighbor farm on a hill to the west and have photographed it several times before. My brother and sister-in-law can see it from their house every day. They may look at this image and wonder, what is missing? Yeah, what is it? 😊

KNOWING WHAT THE SUBJECT IS

South of Remsen, Iowa

I could not let this cloud pass by without getting the camera out of the bag and make a few clicks. Family circumstances required our presence in northwest Iowa this week. The fields and farms around Remsen, Iowa are not exactly prime territory for landscape photography, but with weather like this the clouds become the subject and the rest is just about composition.

STOP FOR THE LIGHT

Chicago O'Hare International Airport (click on image for larger size)

 

I was flying back home from Dallas, TX with a stop-over in Chicago O’Hare very early today. Usually there isn’t much time between flights but when I saw the light unfolding, with “angel rays” over the skyline of downtown Chicago and some great reflections on the tarmac and the parked aircrafts, I couldn’t resist to get the camera out of the bag and make this shot through the glass of the terminal window…

SCALE AND PROPORTION

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South unit, North Dakota

If you follow my photography since a while already you may have recognized that I hardly ever have people in my landscape pictures. This is just my style and the way I like it. But sometimes I make an exception. The two young men are clearly not the subject of my photo but their presence and size helps to give some scale and proportion to my subject, the rock formations of this canyon, illuminated by the setting sun. I have the same image without the two guys but finally I like this one better for said reason.

On a side note, the two discussed having a wedding shoot between these rocks and how they wanted to do it. I thought it was a great idea and out of the ordinary.

CHANGING WEATHER

Nikon D750, Nikkor 16-35mm / f4

I followed the Mississippi River north to Guttenberg, Iowa today. Temperatures above freezing made the snow pretty slushy but the next blizzard is already on its way. The clouds tell the story of changing weather…

The photo was made from the overlook just south of Guttenberg and you can see that the ice on the main channel of the river is not very solid.

SUBTLE APPROACH

I really believe that sharing locations is one of the best things photographers, nature lovers, or anybody who goes out into nature, can do to their fellow outdoor enthusiasts. Much of my photography in the Black Hills, and in particular in Custer State Park, has benefit from articles in the BT Journal, the digital magazine about photography, published by famous photographer Moose Peterson an his wife Sharon. In addition many posts in his blog fueled my desire to visit the Black Hills again. http://www.moosepeterson.com/

The photo was made on the Wildlife Loop in Custer State Park, just east of the Custer State Park landing strip. I have seen amazing photos from Moose Peterson with breathtaking skies from almost the same location. As mentioned before in earlier blog posts, we were beaten with almost blue skies the whole time in the Black Hills but it didn’t stop us to get up before sunrise and stay late until after the sun had set. The trees in the background are a perfect set for any try to capture the light and the sky. The subtle painting of the light on the prairie in front of the trees makes this image special for me. It really tells the story how we have seen Custer State Park in South Dakota for several days during the time between night and day…

NOT SO FAMOUS LOCATIONS

Lake Carlos State Park, Minnesota

The chance that we can create a good nature photo increases dramatically if we go to an interesting location. Period! Well, we all know this is not always an option. Sometimes life stands in the way. So should we leave the camera in the bag or even at home any time we think the location is not worth any efforts? Of course not! Watching the light and colors, looking for interesting perspectives, or focussing on details can sometimes lead to a photograph at places that usually cannot compete with Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon.

On our way home from North Dakota last October we camped for one night at Lake Carlos State Park in Minnesota. Not a bad campsite, and at least at the end of the season there were not too many people. But every way I looked around, there wasn’t much I really wanted to photograph. It wasn’t until the sun had disappeared and left us with a nice glow on the shore, that I realized the potential for a shot. There was some “camping and boat clutter” between the trees in the background, which were cloned out for this image. The moon and the last light of the day made all the difference.

Earlier I tried to take some pictures of these Pied-billed Grebes on the lake. At that time the reflections on the water were just to bright and I didn’t get a shot that I liked. Ten minutes after the photo with the moon was shot I saw still the colors of the sky reflected on the water. Suddenly it wasn’t about a detailed shot of the birds anymore, it was just all about color and positioning the silhouettes of the grebes in the frame...

WORKING AGAINST THE GRAY

Is there still some story telling in a photo if nothing but a gray overcast with fog, and as a result snow that looks gray, dominate the scene? At least I gave it a try last weekend during our annual ice fishing event with friends up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. I was hoping for some great light moments, but they never came this time. One way to suppress the overall gray is to find some colors. The nicely stacked fire wood beside the cabin and a little bit of fresh snow draw the attention away from the gray sky.

In the second image negative space was used to depict the contour of the lake shore. In addition the dark spots of the slushy snow on the ice of Fay Lake tell the story of a gray and relativ warm winter day.

AGAIN AND AGAIN

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota

I hope you had a good start into the new year. May it be a good one for all of you!

For many photographers the period between Christmas and a new year is often time to reflect on the work of the previous twelve months, by naming maybe personal favorites, or by looking back into the archive and finding pictures that may have been overlooked.

I kinda do the latter and open my first blog post in 2016 with an image that has clouds and sky as its subject. This was something I wanted to do more in 2015 and I did. It didn’t always work out the way I thought it would. Sometimes you may come across a great sky but have no foreground or interesting skyline. Other times you think you are in the right place, at the right time, and then the clouds dissolve or the light suddenly becomes crappy. The only way to do it is being out there and try it again and again...

SUN IS OUT, FINALLY

Nikon D750, Nikkor 16-35mm / f4

A very chilly morning today after a relative warm Christmas but for the first time this weekend the sun came out and the sky cleared. We are in Cherokee in northwest Iowa and spent the weekend with our family. A daily habit is a walk around Spring Lake, located in a nice park of the city. 

The Nikkor 16-35, f/4 was on camera and choosing f/16 created the sunburst effect and depth of field throughout the whole image. The photo doesn’t have a clear subject but the long shadows of the trees on the ice triggered my desire to make this picture.

THERE ARE REASONS

Missouri River, near Bismarck, North Dakota

The photo was made on our way home, just southwest of Bismarck, the capitol of North Dakota. There are reasons why getting up early in the morning may lead to a desired image. Pitching the tent next to the Missouri River made it a lot easier to be on site before sunrise. A few minutes later a beaver swam down the river. Those are the moments when you realize, being in the right place, at the right time, is not solely due to just having a lucky day…

CANONBALL CONCRETIONS

A few days ago I “bothered” you with a black and white photo from a small part of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, called “Canonball Concretions”. I considered to post another picture of this wonderful geological formation sometime. So here it is, color contrast and interesting shapes! Stopping down to f/10 helped to get a decent sharpness for the foreground and the rock walls in the back. Don’t take me wrong, we loved the light on those eroded formations but a few clouds would have made it perfect. As always, we have to work with what is in front of the lens, not what we wish it would be with...

For those of you who like to know more about how the “cannonballs” are created, here is the link that will give you the answers much better than I can do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concretion

SPARSE FALL COLORS

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North unit

The grasslands of the Dakotas are not a prime destination if you want to shoot nothing but fall colors. However, any time we saw a Cottonwood or any other tree that had some fall colors we stopped and tried to integrate it in a landscape photo. Nothing tells the story of fall season more powerful than the changing colors of leaves.

EXTRACTING THE SUBJECT

South unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota

Sometimes it needs a different approach to extract a subject from its surroundings. Here it is clearly the cloud that is my subject, but by using a mid-range or wide angle lens this was not obvious. The cloud would have been a small band above the horizon. I zoomed in at 500 mm with the Sigma 50-500, usually my workhorse for wildlife photography, and suddenly the cloud really became the story telling element in the photo. Sure, this photo is about a mood, but without the interesting cloud it would have been just another plain sunset picture.