One of the things I like about the blogging process is that sometimes while working on one post, another blog idea arises.  Occasionally, an idea comes to mind that invokes previous images I’ve made and I get to revisit old friends.  That’s what the paragraph about “following the light” did from the Light and Water blog post.  So let’s take a stroll down memory lane!

“I am the adventurer on a voyage of discovery, ready to receive fresh impressions, eager for fresh horizons, not in the spirit of a militant conqueror to impose myself or my ideas, but identify myself in, and unify with, whatever I am able to recognize as significantly part of me: the “me” of universal rhythms.”

“Anything that excites me, for any reason, I will photograph[.]” - Edward Weston

Ann wanted to get out for Mother’s Day, so who was I to deny her a trip?  But as seems to be the case this year, our initial best-laid plans fell flat.  I was hoping to give her an adventure photographing sand dunes, which she has been asking about for a while now.  Fortunately (well, unfortunately), I checked the State Parks website to find out that the sand dunes have been closed for the snowy plover nesting season.  Given they’re an endangered species, I forgave them for ruining my plans; but I still had to figure out a place to go.  We settled on the Santiam River near Opal Creek.

There’s a saying in the creative community that there is no such thing as being the first at anything - it’s all been done before!  No idea is so creative or original that no one has thought of it yet.  If it seems new or original, it’s just that you haven’t found the person who’s already thought of it and done it.  So it didn’t come as much of a surprise when the other morning, while reading The Flame of Recognition Edward Weston, by Nancy Newhall (an excellent book by the way), I came across her version of shooting the shooter.  Of course it was first published in 1965, when I was 5 years old!

Sometimes you look at a scene and you immediately have an image burned into your mind.  You know exactly where to set the tripod, what lens you need, and you make the image.  Then, if you’re smart, you start working the image.  Questioning whether you, indeed, knew exactly where to stand.  Should you have been lower, higher?  Closer, a bit further away?  Maybe a bit to the left, or right?  Did you have the right focal length lens?  Because, the thing is, you never really know whether you got the best image possible on that first crack at it.  Sometimes you do; more often than not, one of the latter images is even better!

I’ve joked in the past that if Yosemite is photography’s Mecca, then Point Lobos is its Medina.  That’s thanks, in large part, to Edward Weston.  Even more so than Ansel Adams, Edward Weston grabbed my attention in a way no other photographer had when I just started photographing.  That was until I saw the work of his son, Brett.  Both were masters of the art and both have influenced me in more ways than I’ll probably ever know.  So imagine my joy during our afternoon at Ona Beach when I saw forms that reminded me of . . . Point Lobos!

As seems to be the case all too often when we stay home, Ann and I wound up having a busy weekend so I had to struggle to carve out time to print, and Ann didn’t quite make it.  As it was, I wound up working on only one image.  And given we’d been to Seal Rock last weekend, I decided to find an older image from the beach we didn’t make it to last Sunday morning.

This edition of shooting the shooter comes from our trip back from the Painted Hills along the dirt-paved Bridge Creek/NE Gosner Roads.    We were out exploring and, in the grandest of all photographic traditions, stopping to photograph whenever we found something interesting.

Ok, this was actually our third adventure in April but I didn’t figure that the Japanese Garden trip would be the only one last month, and I liked the Juniper for a Day title so much I didn’t want to ruin it with the “Adventure” label, so here we are bestowing that title on our trip to the coast!  Trip #3 for the month!  Given that our initial thought had been to go there before the weather has us look eastward to the Painted Hills, I guess it’s appropriate we held off on the designation.

“Dawn is always tantalizing: the nature of light that one has wished for may never materialize yet another unlooked for image may emerge in front of one’s eyes.  That is one of the most wonderful things about landscape photography that is rarely discussed: the element of surprise can be as joyful as it can be in photojournalism.”

Boy did I step in a pile with that one!  Do not, I repeat, do not take a picture of your rig and forget to include your interpreting dashboard gecko!  Yes, I know he’s a collard lizard, but when he gets like that I call Jack a gecko and he calls me any one of “fat man”, “bald dude” or “old guy”.  It’s how we know we’re not quite happy with each other.  Well, Mr. Gecko told me he wasn’t going to let me speak to Beast until I take a selfie of him!  And a good one too! So . . . .

It’s been busy days around here at the Terrell household. Between work and a slew of side projects/tasks, we’ve been pressed for time lately. Consequently, I’m way behind on post writing, although I do have a list of ideas sketched out that just need to be written and photographs worked on. So here’s something to help wet the whistle.

I love falling asleep to the smell of juniper.  Especially that intense presence you experience when you’ve been away from it for awhile and your body relaxes as you drift away into a deep sleep.  Last weekend Ann and I decided we needed to get out to photograph and, after a week of ever-changing weather forecasts had us continually recalculating where we could go to escape the rain, we wound up at one of our favorite places, nodding off to the fragrance of juniper - the Painted Hills.  We may have stayed there only for one night, but it gave us an incredible morning of photography!

Today’s answer:  To push yourself.

Since I’ve been back from my overseas adventures, one of the subjects that has captivated me the most has been water.  It certainly captured my creative thinking during our latest excursion to the Portland Japanese Gardens.  One of the issues I’ve discussed before is how critical the shutter speed is for how the water turns out in an image.  It was no different this time around.  Except, when developing the images for the trip blog post, I was faced with the question - which exposure time is better?