Printing the Image - 2018.08.28 Brandon Edition

As this post goes live, Brandon is probably sitting around at the San Francisco airport waiting for his flight home to Lauren and Puck, which marks the official end to our August adventure.  We’ll get to that story later.  But since Brandon and I took a hike yesterday (not that kind of hike) and because I not only took some photographs while we were out, I printed some images once I got home, I figured I should do a printing the image post.  And since Brandon had suggested making the images I wound up printing, it’s properly Brandon’s Edition.

I’ll save the story about how we wound up going to Sweet Creek Falls for the August Adventure blog post.  Let’s just say that things out in the Coast Range near Mapleton were a lot much better for our lungs than our original destination.  If you’ve followed us for awhile, you’re familiar with Sweet Creek even though we haven’t visited there for quite a while.  Even though it was summer and the creek was a bit low, it had rained the day before so it wasn’t as low as during previous summer visits.  

While there’s not many places to photograph there, what is there can be squite interesting so I had no problem finding things worth pulling the camera out for (more on the need to do that in the post to follow).  And lucky for me, we had arrived early enough so that most of the sun’s rays were blocked by the surrounding hills and trees.  That of course would change as the day wore on, but I had an opportunity to take advantage of good conditions while it lasted, so I did.

While at the area where Ann and I tend to prefer photographing (not at the main big falls), I became quickly enamored with the play of reflected light on a couple of short drops in a part of the creek that descends in a series of steps.  

When I was done with that series of images, I asked Brandon if he’d found anything interesting.  He then suggested I check out one of the lower drops, so we hopped on some rocks to get a view of a fall, and then we climbed back upstream a bit so he could show me a different view of the fall.  I suggested we try both images.

We started with the lower fall first and I asked him what he thought should be included in the image, and what should be excluded by the framing.  It didn’t take long to digest his ideas, and then I set about executing his direction.  This was the first image:

As noted above, we were in a shadow area, but on a rock to the left you can see a splash of yellow reflected light which came off the trees and rocks on the other side of the creek.  

We then moved off to the left and upward to make the other image of those falls.  I only had a limited supply of lenses with me so I couldn’t go as wide as I’d originally thought would be interesting, but I did have a moderate wide angle that allowed me to make a composition.  At one point Brandon asked what I had in the frame (I was perched somewhat precariously on a sloping rock, so it wasn’t easy for two people to look at the rear screen at one time - and it was too bright to see the screen from a distance) and when I pointed out the leaves in the upper right corner you could hear the joy in his response that he was hoping I could get them. 

So here’s Brandon’s second image.

The water was a bit difficult to handle well.  As I’d mentioned, the creek was, typically for summer, a bit low, but because of the previous day’s rains the flow was rather vigorous.  That made image-making difficult, but I made images at a range of shutter speeds and wound up with some good options to print from.

As we were making our way back towards the trail, I got distracted again with the small drop that first caught my attention and wound up making yet another image.  As I was packing up Brandon said, “Look at the way the light is filtering through those leaves!”  Which to me translated as, “Why don’t we see if we can photograph that?”  So out came the camera again.  And this is what came of it:

I think the image turned out well - the print certainly did.  

Now a question for you - did you see the Owl?

As usual, I made several exposures of this image.  It wasn’t until I was in Lightroom, flipping through the images to see if one was particularly better (or worse) than the others for printing, when a pair of eyes popped out at me in one of them.  A close inspection of the others revealed the owl’s ears in silhouette.  Yes, it’s an owl and not some reflected light aberration.  

And in case you didn’t find it, she’s sitting in the upper left corner of the image.  Probably wondering what the heck that guy with the three legged thing in front of him is doing.  Humans!?!

We hiked the trail a bit more, but it was getting distinctly warmer and the sun was starting to flood the creek with harsh light, so we didn’t make many more images.  We decided to hit the rather good coffee shop in Mapleton, only to find out that it’s closed on Tuesday.  So we called it day and headed home.   

For once I not only downloaded my images immediately, I processed Brandon’s images and printed them immediately so he had something to take home from his trip out here.

Not bad for a printing the image session.