New Release, "Panther at Play"

This is my new release entitled "Panther at Play"... pictured here are the beautiful Panther Falls in southern Washington's Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

This area is really super super wet much of the year as practically a true rain forest, so everything is extremely green and soft looking. Panther Falls are very powerful and have numerous cascades coming down about 100 foot cliff into a ravine below. There's a nice view from the top of the falls via a wooden observation deck. getting down to the deck is very easy once you find the trailhead, which is basically an unmarked trail from the road. The entrance to the trail is marked by spray painting on the pavement "PF -->" in blue...you gotta look really closely just to find it.

For me however, the vantage point from the deck doesn't really show the power of these majestic falls, so I wanted to make my way down the cliff to the base of the falls. Looking down, you could tell human traffic had been below in the canyon by the falls as the moss next to the stream was trampled a bit. So there had to be a way down somewhere, somehow. Of course, I found out that there's no easy or safe way down, at least not from the observation deck. I scouted the area and managed to find a treacherous little natural staircase winding down the cliff's face for about 20 feet to a more manageable slope that had a rough trail others have used. These super narrow little natural rock steps were very wet and mossy, but there were pretty good hand holds and foot holds using trees, roots, and rocks down this small portion of the cliff located south and above the observation deck. I muscled up some courage and told my self I could do this climb if I take my time. So when I did climb down, I made sure to maintain three points of contact at all times as I slowly make my way down with handholds and footholds that were slick but stable. This was a path that has been obviously used before, but probably not when its real wet like when I went down on this day.

With this being a short weekend flight to Portland, my dog and my muse, was unable to join me on this trip (and his presence was truly missed). This is one of those cases where if the Dude (my pup) had been with me, he would have moderated me as I would not have gone down this way because he would not have been able to follow me safely. I guess in this way, he sort of looks out for me...as I always look out for his safety, and in doing so, being safer comes back to me. Part of the way down this small cliff, I even had to throw down to the trail below my tripod and my waders that I was caring...I had them attached to my camera backpack and they were snagging things making the climb a bit more dangerous than it already was. By tossing them down, I was able to better balance out my pack and make myself a little bit more agile in the tight spaces.

So, I did make it down safely, however this was probably not the smartest and safest way with me being alone. Had something happen to me, who knows how long I would have been there before someone would have found me for this is a very remote area. Once I was down, I did manage to find a better way out that climbed up to the road about 2 tenths of a mile south of the "trailhead." Not exactly calming and safe, but definitely a much better way in and out...still quite steep and very sketchy, but much smarter and safer than scaling down a 20 foot cliff in the wilderness in the wet and so forth. I will visit these falls again in the future, and this will be the route I will choose, especially when the Dude is with me.

At the base of the falls, there was tons and tons of mist being thrown off from the falls. Extreme wetness in the air. So there was no way I would be able to do a long exposure here in the ravine at the base of these falls. I did some tests, and it seemed like no longer than about 10 seconds was possible with all the missed hitting my lens. So I opted for about a 3 second exposure, which is the time for the composition that you see here. I had to clean my lens after every shutter release, it was that wet out. This image is actually a composite of two images stitched together using Adobe Photoshop PhotoMerge since the area is impossible from the bottom to shoot with just one frame. So I had to shoot two frames and put it together and make a 1:2 ratio image which is what you see here.

This spot had rampant beautiful mossy greens everywhere, dotted with some fall color...and there was low light filtering in from Sun which was about an hour from setting. This made for real nice soft colors and allowed me to hold a three second exposure at f/22 using no filters whatsoever.

Camera Settings: ISO-100, 30mm at f/22 for 3 seconds taken at 5pm on Saturday 10-18-2014

peace,
D."Bodhi" Smith

Photography of Mine on Display through 02-01-2015 at the SD Natural History Museum

F.Y.I. for those interested: tomorrow (Saturday November 1, 2014) is the artists' reception of the Best of Nature show at the San Diego Natural History Museum.

The reception is free to the public from 11am-2pm tomorrow and is in the Abe Ordover Gallery on the 4th floor of the SD Natural History Museum.

Awards are going to be presented during the reception. I have been honored with three of my photos being selected to be on display in this international show. And no worries, If you cannot make the reception tomorrow afternoon, my work as well as the works of the other photographers in the show will run on display in the gallery through February 1st, 2015.

The three compositions of mine pictured here are the three works of mine juried into this show...

"Moody Three"

"Venturing Cobbles"

 "Formal Inequities"

Hope to see you there.

I hope this message finds you well.

peace,
D. "Bodhi"

New Impressionist Photo: "Fall Four Ward"

This new image is an impressionist composition of mine entitled "Fall Four Ward"... this is a composite of two images and I created this image to compliment the green aspen, "Moody" series of images of mine created the same way. "Moody Three" in that series is currently on display at the San Diego Natural History Museum:

Anyway, this new fall scene composition, "Fall Four Ward" is actually a composite of two images taken back-to-back. A pan-head tripod mount is need for this technique. The first image is shot at f/8 and is as sharp in focus as I can get the camera to go; the second image begins at the same identical framed scene, but it is blurred by panning the camera upward (with moderate consistent speed) directly along the y-axis enough to cover the entire scene.

Next, the two images are layered together in a Adobe Photoshop document with the blurred layer on top with a layer mask. Using the dark brush, I bring through visible only the sharp points of the image that I want from the bottom layer. In the case with this image, only the four trees in the foreground were brought through...

This same effect can be achieved with some success by using the motion blur filter in Photoshop, but the problem with that is the entire program is linear and will not adjust for curves. Whereas my in-camera method will blur over curved shapes very nicely.

This composition was captured about two weeks ago during my trip to Portland. I drove out about three hours east  of Portland to a massive poplar tree farm near Boardman, Oregon and was able to catch a few nice shots.

The image title is another play-on-words around the term "Fall Forward" which is often wrongly confused as the saying for what we do with our clocks in the fall when practicing daylight savings time (we "Fall Back" of course). Anyway, is is an image of fall trees, four of them in clear focus, all forward in the foreground, all in a big ward of trees.

Camera settings: ISO-1250, 64mm at f/8 for 1/25th sec with both images taken back-to-back about 10 mins before the sunset under a canopy of orange glowing poplar back-lit by the setting sun

I hope you enjoy this unique photograph of mine.

peace,
D. "Bodhi"

Smooth Sunday Sunrise on Coronado Island: "Promise"

This is a new image entitled "Promise"... like Coronado Island where it was captured, this compositions has its own "Je ne sais quoi" (for those of you not well versed in French, this phrase means: "a quality that is hard to describe")

The image you see here is inspiring on many levels for me personally and hence the composition's title. Some of those are:

1. Sunrises at the beach always promise the start of another beautiful day here in SoCal...and I spent all day this past Sunday roaming the beaches of San Diego County with my dog--just does not get much better than that in my book.
2. This is my first released image taken on Coronado Island (San Diego, CA), so there is definitely a promise of more to come. This image may be the start of something beautiful.
3. A wonderful couple commissioned me about one month ago to create an image for them close to the spot this composition was captured. It is a special place for them on Coronado Island--they met, were engaged, and were married all at the same spot (pretty romantic, eh?). They know that is might take months for all of the conditions to be right for the composition I have envisioned in my mind for them; and on this morning all of the conditions (especially the tide) were not right for what I needed, however, I did manage to capture this marvelously peaceful composition. This showed the couple the promise of this area and gave them a taste of what I will create for them as soon as all the variables align to permit me to do so.
4. Scenes like this make me reaffirm the promise I mad to myself to be in as many spots (such as this) at the right time to be able to share my vision, emotions, and memories as I live my life and walk the path I must follow...

This image was taken on the rocky reef that protects the beach in front of the famous Hotel del Coronado here in San Diego. Coronado Island is one of the many neighborhoods that make up San Diego Metropolis, and this small community definitely has is own "Je ne sais quoi." It has beautiful beaches and a very nice dog beach as well. It is a bit more upscale and has some fine dining and shopping. However, up until recently with my commission, I have never had this location on my radar for my photography. So this image may be the start of something beautiful. :)

What caught my eye at this spot was way the ebb and flow of the waves were mixing the sea water in the small pool in front of me. The way the waves were crashing into the rocks out front, they would lose all of their force and back off into the ocean...but some of the sea water was still managing to just trickle through the cracks between the rocks and rapidly fill in this small pool in front of me and then recede back into the ocean with the waves. It would repeat this cycle in 15 second intervals, so I determined my exposure time should be around 2 minutes. Honestly, I cannot tell you definitively why 2 minutes and 22 secound was the time I selected for this image, and why not select 5mins? 10mins? (but my OCD creates the 2.22 from 142secs). Through my experiences, I just know and feel it with the effects I want to create in the scene before me. Many times, I can actually see the long exposure in my minds eye before I even capture it...

When shooting long exposures as I do, waves crashing into things usually create a misty effect (which you can see evident here). However, it is really difficult to ever get any sort of a  reflection that transcends down into the mist. In this composition, I was able to capture the rocks reflecting in the mist because of the relative calmness of the water in the pool, even though it was all bubbled and constantly moving around from the force of the relentless waves hitting the reef. Combined with the soft morning light, this misty reflection really creates a soothing scene that I really dig...

Camera settings: ISO-64, 24mm at f/14 for 142 seconds (2 mins 22 seconds), captured about 45 mins after the sun had risen under a canopy of morning clouds on Sunday October 26th, 2014.

I hope you enjoy the tranquility of this smooth morning impression...

peace,
D. "Bodhi"

"Quietus" a new image taken in the Anza-Borrego Desert

This new composition is simply entitled, "Quietus." This term is often synonymous with "a release from life or death" but I have always associated with meaning "anything that eventually ends"... I apply this term to what happened to the dinosaurs and hence my choice for the title of this image...especially since the metal dinosaur sculptures pictured here under the Milky Way look to be in a firestorm.

The famous dinosaurs ruled this earth for over 100 million years before their reign eventually ended and they suddenly died off. Many theories exist as to why a massive extinction happened on earth about 65 million years ago that caused the demise of most life at the time.

The most popular theory rationalizes that a huge asteroid crashed into the earth causing a massive fire explosion that generated such a cloud of dust around the earth that sunlight was blocked out for almost a year, killing off plants that needed the sunlight to survive. A large scale domino effect of animals that lived off those plants subsequently could no longer survive and died off, followed by predators that lived off of those animals dying off, etc. The dinosaurs were so large that they needed the most food to survive, so their fate was sealed, and they all died off as a result. Smaller animals, such as the mammals and birds, made it through the tough times and exist as what wildlife we see around us today.

So, this is another new image captured in the Anza-Borrego desert last Saturday evening. It is highlighting two metal T-Rex sculptures by Ricardo Breceda that are facing off under eternal stars and the Milky Way that appears to be afire.

To tie in with my title of "Quietus" and the demise of the dinosaurs,I wanted the impression of fire to be in this image along with the emotion of the dinosaurs, so I took the artistic liberty of changing the colors of the Milky Way here to be more red-orange and flame-like. it was quite easy as the lower part of the capture was already yellow as a result of the light pollution from the San Diego Metropolis to the west.

I need to give Chip Morton a call out and thanks for helping me to light-paint the sculptures correctly in this image...to get the lighting just the way I wanted, it was a two person job, and I would not have been able to do it by myself.

And Chip paid a bit of a price of pain at this spot when we were originally setting up for the shoot. As it was dark, and as it was in the desert, by accident, he walked briskly into a cactus (close to the T-Rex sculpture on the left) hard enough to get his lower leg impaled with a numerous cactus spines. He was making all sorts of crazy noises of pain, so much so that originally, I honestly thought he was joking around. of course, he was not (for a change)...One of the quills drove in pretty deep, and I had to help pull it out extremely cautiously to make sure it did not break off in his ankle--which would have cause numerous complications that probably would have ended our evening early. So I guess you could accurately say on this night, Chip took one for the team...OUCH.

Camera settings: ISO-1250, 24mm at f/1.4 for 15 seconds captured at 8:45pm on Saturday 10-25-2014.

I hope this composition and message finds you well.

peace,
D. "Bodhi"

"Faith" an image captured in the Anza-Borrego Desert of Southern california

This is my newest image simply entitled, "Faith." I really wanted a simple name for this uncomplicated composition that would really describe the emotion depicted here...

So here is the skinny on this composition...Last Saturday night, fellow photog and good friend of mine, Chip Morton, and I headed out into the Anza-Borrego desert to capture some night scenes with the famous metal sculptures of Ricardo Breceda that dot the landscape all around Borrego Springs, CA....there are over 130 various scuptures by Breceda in the area: dinosaurs, birds of prey, horses, tortises, big horn sheep, a scorpion. a serpent, and numerous others including this Spanish friar.


However on Saturday night, the sky did not cooperate as I had planned and hoped. There was some strange film/inversion layer hanging over the valley which really cut down on the luminosity and clarity of the stars. And it seemed as if this strange hovering film got worse as the night rolled on instead of blowing away. Bummer, but as a landscape photographer who is at the mercy of the weather conditions, I have made do with the hand dealt to me by mother nature.


Heading out driving into the desert Saturday, I would never have thought that the first picture i would process from that night would be a metal friar carrying a huge cross and rosary....but something in the color range of this image really attracted me to finish and release it first over the other more obvious and dramatic compositions i made. Btw, I have maybe 2-3 more images that I will release from this same night over the next few days...


One little thing that will make this image capture you are now looking at much, much more memorable was actually a tiny little creature that was abundantly present this past weekend in the San Diego County desert: the scorpion. These nasty little buggers were everywhere, and they were freaking me and Chip out because you definitely do not want to get stung by these little guys.


We both carry Ultraviolet LED flashlights for just this reason of spotting scorpions when shooting in the desert and other arid places like the Owen's Valley. The UV flashlights are usually used by forensic specialists to help detect residual bodily fluids at crime scenes...but for a photographer out in the field, these things are the best equipment to spot scorpions from many feet away. A scorpion literally glows in the dark like a Whamo frisbee when even partial espied by a UV light. They very much stand out as there is nothing else that lights up except the scorpion. And to the naked eye, these wicked little beasts are almost undetectable, even in broad daylight. The are so well camouflaged that when we turned the UV lights off and instead shone a flashlight directly on the scorpion, we could not see it even though we knew it was there. Turn on the UV light and that little sucker becomes the brightest thing for 15 feet around. And dreaded scorpions were glowing everywhere Saturday night in Borrego Springs. So bad that the Dude was relegated to stay in the truck all night. He hated it, but it was for his own safety.


They usually sit there and look almost flat and lifeless, seldom moving or even showing any signs of life--but do not be fooled. I am a curious sort, and when we come upon this friar to shoot it, there was a pretty decent sized scorpion glowing right next to the sculpture. It really did not look like it was alive, so I threw dirt on it, enough to half bury it. It did not move or even flinch, so I threw more dirt on it to totally bury is and extinguish its glow. To be certain it was dead, I stepped hard down onto the spot it was buried...that damned thing came flying out FAST and started jutting and darting all over the place until it finally calmed down and came to rest in a spot back behind the friar...this tiny little bug scared the sh!t out of me and Chip. Those things move FAST. Luckily neither he nor I got stung by my stupidity, but I did learn the lesson never to "F" with these dangerous little arachnids. Assume they are alive and well and do not disturb them.


So because of the aforementioned scorpion still lingering in the shooting area around the padre here, I was nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking-chairs for the entire time I was shooting this friar...and truly uneasy for the rest of the night at other sculptures we would try to capture.


Partially because of the lack of deep clarity in the stars on this night and partly for the effect of creating a stronger emphasis to the friar, I tried something a bit different with this composition. Shooting at f/1.4, I decided to keep the friar is sharp focus and let the stars bokeh out a bit to bring more focus to the padre and less of a focus on the beauty of the sky in the backdrop. My favorite thing about the composition is the way the colors balance very pleasingly together, complimenting each other quite nicely...


Anyway, I hope you enjoy this composition, even though it is an image of a religious Christian monk taken by a long-haired Buddhist hippy. ;)


Camera Settings; ISO-1250, 24mm at f/1.4 for 15 seconds. Image was captured at 10 mins after 10pm on 10-25-2014.

I hope this composition and message find you well.

peace,

D."Bodhi"

New Release, "The Poplar Clique"

This is my newest image entitled, "The Poplar Clique."

This group of poplar trees is located about 3 hours east of Portland in Boardman, Oregon. This is an enormous tree farm spread over thousands of acres located just a few miles south of the I-84 freeway at the junction of US 730. If you find yourself visiting Portland, Oregon, then this place is WELL worth the drive. I just cranked up loud and jammed to some old late 80's tunes in my 2015 Nissan Altima rental car, sang along to U2, INXS, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Yes, the Scorpions, Van Halen, etc. as loud as I could to the steering wheel, and before I knew it, I was there...

I have been wanting to visit this place for the better part of 6 months now, and during my visit this last weekend, I only barely begun to scratch the surface of all the photo opps for this vast forest. So, you can bet this will be a spot I will be returning to many times over the course of the next couple of years...

I spent most of the late afternoon until about 1/2 hour past sunset roaming around scouting, making notes, and taking test shots. But at about 1 hour before sunset, the trees facing into the sun (backlit by the low angle of the sun) we just glowing yellow-orange-red under their canopy of fall colored foliage. I cannot really accurately describe how overwhelming this glow was for as far as my eyes could literally see...the best I can do is present this picture to give a bit of a semblance of what my eyes actually witnessed. And I hope you enjoy my efforts to try...

The title is another play-on-words using the similarity of the words "Popular" and this tree type of "Poplar" and the word "Clique" (meaning a tight group who hang out together) to create meaning paralleling the idiom, "The Popular Crowd."

Camera settings: ISO-75, 16mm at f/2.8 for 1/60sec

Peace,
D."Bodhi"