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Wednesday
Jul062011

July Print of the Month

Autumn, Lake Sherburne

In honor of my upcoming trip to Glacier, I'm offering unmatted, unframed 8x12 prints of this Glacier image for $90 and 12x18 prints for $190 (+tax/shipping).  Enjoy!

Tuesday
Jun282011

Avalanche Lake

Fall color at Glacier's beautiful Avalanche Lake. Relatively uninteresting clouds in a mixed sky left my attention with the autumn color (mostly near the shore on the other side of the water) and in the lake itself. The trick was finding a way to work with the foreground that created some interest and structure. I'm delighted by the tall waterfalls, almost inconsequentially placed as a footnote in the upper-right, establishing the grand scale of this beautiful scene.

Sunday
Jun262011

St. Mary Falls


St. Mary's Falls is one of my favorite short hikes at Glacier, delightful rock terraces and this wonderful cove at the bottom of the fall.  Careful exposure control was necessary to avoid burning out the detail in the few tiny sunlit highlights right of the fall, and careful processing afterward recovered the "real" sense of light that I enjoyed in person. This image rewards viewing large.

Friday
Jun242011

Misty Morning Mountain, Glacier National Park

I've talked before about the difficulty of communicating the often enormous scale of nature, mountains compressed into an image often lose their grandiose sense of scale--a topic I devote an entire section to in my upcoming book on photo composition. 

This image seems to work, I can identify at least three ideas that help communicate scale. The contrast between the sharp burnt trees foreground and the soft, mist-covered mountain cues distance and scale. The snow-caps on the mountain also provide a hint. Finally, the scale of the lake on the right helps us to read the scale of the lake, and (by comparison) the mountain. It's not enough to hope that a large object will 'feel" large in an image, it's important instead to think about the sorts of signals we can use to help our viewers "read' the intent of our images more clearly.

Thursday
Jun232011

Stream Jewels

From the same stream where I originally shot my image Burble years before, a different direction of light, different water conditions and different color of light conspire to produce an entirely different take on the colors of Glacier's glorious geology.

Images like this are delicate compositionally, trying to find a composition that pulls the eye in rather than allowing it to wander out can be challenging. I worked through dozens of images within a few yards of this location, and spent a fair bit of time editing through them to find the image that I thought really pulled the eye most effectively.

Wednesday
Jun222011

Clearing Mists, Glacier National Park


Clearing Mists, Glacier National Park

Heading up Going-to-the-Sun road I was taken by the brilliant display of fall color on the far side of the river, and I stopped just as the fog along the river began to break. A wide-angle perspective helped me convey the breadth of the foilage along the river, and the line of trees on the near bank helped provide excellent framing.