Tag Archives: Snow Mountain Ranch

The Clouds Came In

Snow Mountain Ranch – Dark Cloud Starkness

As the afternoon progressed, dark clouds started to come in.  The atmosphere of the day changed from bright wildflowers to stark dead sagebrush.  It was a sign to start heading back to the trail head.  It was a very special day, a day of seeing, a day of reflecting.  I look forward to future visits.

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See and Play

Sagebrush Swirl

As I look at things, an urge to play sometimes comes over me.  I couldn’t resist, the devil made me do it. I simply did a slow shutter speed circular swirl to capture this interesting abstract.  I tend to see these abstracts when I notice an object with at clear center point and things radiation out from the center.  This sagebrush provided an interesting opportunity.  The following is the sagebrush from a normal perspective.

Sagebrush – Normal Perspective

I enjoy play!

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Seeing the Beauty of the Little Things Around Us

Wildflowers – Snow Mountain Ranch

As I walked along the trail at Snow Mountain Ranch, I stopped frequently and just looked around enjoying the countryside.  Almost every time, something caught my eye.  This simple image of rocks and flowers was one of those moments.

Photography has taught me to see the beauty and interesting things around me.  Today, everywhere I look, I see something interesting that makes me step back and enjoy the moment.  When I become engrossed on a photographic subject, I feel like I become part of it.  I am no longer just an observer.

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Remnants of the Past

Remnant – Snow Mountain Ranch

Back to Snow Mountain Ranch.  Before it was a conservancy preserve, this beautiful countryside was a working ranch.  Throughout the preserve, remnants of the past history are scattered about:  watering tubs, barbed wire fences, barbed wire rolls, sheds, small corrals.  These remnants of the past add interest to the preserve as well as provide photo opportunities.

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Experimenting

Sagebrush – Straight Out of Camera

This is an experiment to try to create an image that was in my mind when I shot this photo.  The above image is the base image I captured.  The sagebrush seems to blend into the background. I lost the 3D feeling that I had when I saw this bush.  I first tried to add structure to the bush and delete structure from the background.  That did not achieve what I wanted.  I then tried black and white.  That merged the brush with the background even more.  I then tried to blur the background.  That looked to “fakey” to me.  I then blended the blurred B&W to the color image to come with the image below.

Sagebrush – Processed

This came the closest to what I saw  in my mind.

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Surrounded

Snow Mountain Ranch – Wildflowers

This little clump of white and pink wild flowers had a very interesting shape.  It kind of looked like a huge clover bloom.  The surrounding little yellow wildflowers highlighted the larger white/pink flowers.

Walking through the field of flowers, there were little vignettes everywhere.  I would walk a little way, stop, and look around.  Almost every time, something caught my eye.  No one was around, it was quiet and peaceful.  It was a great way to spend my time!

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Field of Wildflowers

Snow Mountain Ranch – Field of Wildflowers

Like I mentioned in my last post, my objective of this photo excursion was to first enjoy the beautiful day and wildflowers.  Then my photographic objective was to collect a series of images that captured the “Grand Landscape” of wildflowers and the area as well as smaller “Intimate Landscape” of flowers, rocks, sage brush, and other interesting objects.  This image is somewhere in between. I picked this image because it gave me a feeling of being amongst the wildflowers instead of being apart from them and viewing them against a distant background.  I actually was down on my elbows and knees when I took this image with a wide angle lens.

 

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A Day of Fun and Practice

Wildflowers – Snow Mountain Ranch, Cowiche, Washington

I took a day to explore and photograph wildflowers.  I tried to capture both the overall feel of the large masses of flowers and their place in the countryside as well as individual vignettes of little scenes of flowers and interesting subjects.

This image I attempted to capture the field of bright wildflowers set against the green hillsides covered with sage brush and bunch grass and the interesting clouds in the background.  My objective was to capture the feel of the beautiful, cloudy, peaceful day.

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A Day to Celebrate Life

Wildflowers – Snow Mountain Ranch, Cowiche, WA

Today is a special day.  It is a day to celebrate the wonderful life Karen and I had together.  What a better way to celebrate than to take a nice walk and enjoy the wildflowers of early Spring. It was a beautiful day.  The hills were covered with brilliant wildflowers … yellow, pink, purple, blue and the lush green of spring grasses.  Peace surrounded me.  It was a wonderful time to reflect on our lives and what is right in this world.

It was a day to CELEBRATE !!!

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