Wednesday Landscapes, 16 September 2020

You are invited to upload one or more of your landscape photos and, if you’d like, to accompany your image with some commentary: challenges you faced in making the image? your intent for the image? settings? post-processing decisions? why you did what you did? the place and time? or an aspect you’d like feedback on? And please feel free to ask questions of others who have posted images or to join the discussion. If you don’t feel like using words, that’s OK too—unaccompanied images (or unaccompanied words, for that matter) are also very much welcomed. As for the technicalities, the usual forum guidelines apply: files < 1 MB; image size <1000 px maximum dimension.

 

I suppose this counts as “documentary landscape photography”—a view of my local river at 9 am last Wednesday, almost 24 hr after Laura’s photo from last week and 300 miles south. The challenge here was to capture the light level as it actually was—metering wasn’t much help since nothing was as light as 18% gray, and if the camera was aspiring to an 18% gray average, it would have overexposed the image. I used -1EV for the original exposure, which turned out not to be enough. I then experimented at dusk a few days later to reconstruct the same exposure (which happened at 20 minutes after sundown on a cloudy/foggy/smoky day) and match the camera jpg to the actual view. It turns out I should have used about -1.75 EV, and that’s what this image now shows. It never got lighter than this that day, but conditions have improved since then, at least from the point of view of local air quality. My face-masks have been doing some serious multi-tasking. (ISO 3200, f7.1 at 1/40)

 

Storm Point, Yellowstone Lake

The only non-smokey day I had in Yachats

From a Workshop in Yosemite. Nikon D200, 24-85mm 3.5-4.5 Nikkor @35mm f19, .7sec, ISO 100

This image has many things in common with Leslie's opener. Same day, one hour later, high ISO, smokey environment, itchy eyes, probably many masks in the pocket. I was still about 300 miles north, in Newport, OR. I did some color correction by adjusting white balance as I also wanted to convey what my eyes saw, not what the camera sensor saw. The smoke around Yaquina Bay was probably not as dense that morning as on Leslie's river, but still quite thick. AQI varied mile by mile. I'll dance with fog all day, but smoke is not my friend. This was the last series I shot with the effects of smoke as the primary subject. Unfortunately the air quality put the nix on a day set aside for photography in Newport, a lovely town with many highly picturesque personalities. Many businesses of personal interest were closed by poor air quality after working hard to stay open during the pandemic. A front was coming through the morning that we left, so hopefully some relief in on the way.

 

Yaquina Bay Bridge in smoke

Smoky air gave these photos almost a sepia tone which I lightened to show the details of the masts' reflections at the Vallejo CA marina.

Apache Trail, near Roosevelt, Arizona.

Calm lake last month, before the smoke arrived.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Glenn McCreery