Fuji X-T1, XF18-135mm @ 62mm, f/11, 1/350 sec, ISO 400
Driving up to Oregon’s Painted Hills, I saw this pastoral scene and stopped to capture the feeling. It was “high noon” and the sun was bright, but I still wanted to give it a try. To recreate the feeling I had, I processed the image in Topaz’s Impression and added a little texture in Photoshop. Who say’s you can’t make good images in bright noon day sun!
To get an overall feeling of the Painted Hills, I decided to try to take some hand-held panos. I used my left elbow as a pivot point to rotate the camera around my body. I used Lightroom’s pano function to merge the individual images. They did not turned out too bad.
Fuji X-T1, XF 18-135mm @ 37mm, f/22, 1/180 sec, ISO 400
I have heard many people comment on the beauty of the Painted Hills of NE Oregon. Being from central Washington, I had never taken the 2-3 hour drive to see them. So on a recent trip to central Oregon, I thought I would go exploring. My purpose was more of a scouting trip than specifically to take images. I was there mid day on a very bright warm summer day. Even in this bright light, the colors of the hills radiated out. I look forward to coming back during the late afternoon sunlight.
Painted Hills is one of the three units of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, located in Wheeler County, Oregon.[1] It totals 3,132 acres (1,267 ha) and is located 9 miles (14 km) northwest of Mitchell, Oregon. The Painted Hills are listed as one of the Seven Wonders of Oregon.[2] Painted Hills is named after the colorful layers of its hills corresponding to various geological eras, formed when the area was an ancient river floodplain.
The black soil is lignite that was vegetative matter that grew along the floodplain. The grey coloring is mudstone, siltstone, and shale.[3] The red coloring is laterite soil that formed by floodplain deposits when the area was warm and humid.[
Canon 5D MkII, EF24-70mm f/2.8L @ 60mm, f/11, 1/20 sec, ISO 200
Fallen cherry blossoms covered the ground beneath the trees. I was able to get a few images before the lawn mowing gang cut the grass and swept away the beautiful blooms. The past few weeks are typically my favorite weeks in the garden each year. For a few days we are lucky to have the flowering pears, flowering plum, flowering crab apple, and flowering cherries all in bloom at the same time. It is peaceful and beautiful in the garden.
The image below is a new perspective using multiple exposures while zooming out.
A different look is achieved by a long exposure and a zoom pan as seen below.
Which one catches your eye? I like them all.
Impressionistic Cherry Blossoms.
I was having a lot of fun creating multiple exposures and just experimenting with various artistic ways of processing images when I came up with this combination. I first started out taking individual images of fallen cherry blossoms. I then experimented with multiple exposures (5 exposures in this case). I then further experimented with different artistic presets in Topaz Impression (Georgia O’Keefe II) to arrive at this image.
For reference, below is the 5 image multiple exposure:
Canon 5D MkIII, EF24-70mm f/2.8L @ 70mm, f/8, 1/30 sec, ISO 200 (5 exposures)
Lesson Learned: Enjoy experimenting, you can never tell what you can come up with!
Canon 5D MkIII, EF24-70mm f2.8L @ 35mm, f/11, 1/13 sec, ISO 200
When I saw this scene of our front porch, I felt like it was an impressionistic garden painting with all the pink and light green color. So, I post-processed the image that way using Topaz Impression plugin.
Canon 5D MkIII, EF24-70mm f/2.8L @ 70mm, f/8, 1/1000 sec, ISO 200 (Multiple Exposure)
When things are working, keep the ball rolling. I was happy with the multiple exposure showed in my last post, so I thought I would try another as the wind was blowing the branches around. The multiple exposure feature of the 5D MkIII allowed me to see the combined image rather than waiting for post processing.
Canon 5D MkIII, EF24-70mm f/2.8L @ 70mm, f/8, 1/1000, ISO 200 (Multiple Exposure)
I was taking images of our flowering Bradford pear. I could not get anything that really caught my eye. Then the wind started blowing, the moving blossoms created a surrealistic image in my mind. How to capture this … why not try a multiple exposure. I took a 5 image multiple exposure slightly moving my camera, the wind took care of the rest.
Lesson Learned: Don’t give up. Work the image. Visualize and try something else.
Canon 7D MkII, EF 100mm f/2.8 IS Macro @ f/8.0, 1/640 sec, ISO 400
As I was coming in from my morning shoot of our garden, I saw these two blooms intermingled in a clump of white and yellow daffodils. They reminded me of two close friends , one whispering in the other’s ear.
I cannot recall how many times that I have been getting ready to put my camera away for the shoot when that one last image pops up in front of me. It seems to be one of my most alert times. On multiple occasions, this last image is my select from the whole shoot.
Lesson Learned: Always be ready for the image to come to you!
Canon 5D MkIII, EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro @ f/5.6, 1/400 sec, ISO 400
Out in our “Back 40” we have several bunches of bright yellow daffodils. Ah ha … great background opportunity. Now I just needed to find something to put in front. A few emerging Japanese Maple leaf buds caught my eye. So I put them together. The challenge was to get an interesting composition while the branch was moving in the wind. A relative open f-stop and a moderate shutter speed gave me the best balance.