Printing the Image - Old Work Part 2

It had been a long morning of printing and the last blog post was just the beginning of our output.  Ann’s next image came from our stint at Capitol Reef National Park last fall, just before the hurricane rains came.

With rains coming by late afternoon the next day, we had to do a mad dash around the Cathedral Valley Loop.  While heading up the west side of the loop, we took a side trip to the Lower South Desert Overlook even though the mid-day light conditions weren’t ideal for photography.  

Amazingly, Ann was able to time the cloud patterns so the shadows covered most of the image, yet still retain the lightness of the environment in her development of the image.  The print retains a soft, delicate feel, yet is full of detail that seems to suit the desert environment. 

Given the difficulty of the lighting conditions, the print is a gem to behold.

Ann didn’t have the same problem with her next image, from one of our trips to Redwoods National Park.  The lighting conditions were spectacular.  We had timed one of our trips to a lagoon to approach sunset.  While we had thought we might try photographing at the beach, the rocks there were frankly not too interesting (and chock full of people), so we turned our eyes inland.

With a bit of walking away from the parking area, and some exploration (read: occasionally soaked boot) to make our way to a suitable photographing vantage point along the marshy lagoon, we managed to photograph pre-sunset light that filtered through clouds on the horizon (which eventually cut the lovely light well before sunset).  

Ann’s print, particularly the reflections in the water, simply glow with light.  Ann’s right - she needs to print this one larger!

My images all came from last fall’s trip.  Since I was playing catch-up, my goal was to find a diversity of images to work with.  Which meant that I would inevitably end up with one of my compositions. 

I can’t tell you why I’m so captivated by them, or what it is that grabs my eye for one particular spot over another.  All I can say is that something grabs my eye and I become excited, and then it becomes an intuitive process of finding the right composition.  “Right” is defined by my eye and my gut, and it’s a process based entirely on feelings.  Nonetheless, I tend to know when it’s right or when I’ve settled my standards and just made the shot.  There was no question with this one - I worked on it in color and in black and white.  And I was just as excited working the one as the other, and was as excited as I was at the time of making the image.  I don’t know if anyone else finds them appealing, but this is one area where I just don’t care.  I do.  And the print lived up to my hopes for it.

My next image was from just after sunset at Goblin Valley State Park, taken a couple of days before Ann’s first image above.  Sunset was interesting that afternoon, transitioning from stark sunset light, to a stunning red-skied glow, to the soft pastel light captured here, and eventually leading to that mysterious blue light you get some time after sunset - if you’re lucky.

We were lucky this time, although much like Bandon, it seems like the light at Goblin Valley is something special pretty much every day.  I had my choice of lighting to choose from in my image selection but, perhaps because I’d seen Ann’s Captiol Reef image, I decided to go for an image with softer lighting.  And it looks good in print too!

My last image came from the last photography day of our trip - Yosemite National Park.  Of my images that day, this is the one that really seems to capture the place as Ann and I have come to love it.  Sure, there are the iconic features like Half-Dome in the distance, but it’s the sheer beauty of the everywhere landscape of Yosemite that just blows us away.  And nothing says Yosemite more than granite!

The image took a lot more work than I’d thought it would, and I’m pleased that it’s not readily evident in either the on-screen or printed image.  Oddly enough, the one thing I did not touch is the tonal values of the sky.  It was that beautiful!  Helped I guess by late season fires.

That’s it for now.  Ann and I have more images we’re ready to print (I think) and hopefully we’ll be able to get to themsooner rather than later.  Which, of course, means that more posts will follow.