Category Archives: Panning

What to Do When You Get Into a Rut

Waterfall Abstract
Heatherwood Japanese Garden

I was sitting by our pond having a morning cup of coffee with Mary. I had my camera in my lap and was looking up at our little waterfall. I have taken hundreds of images of the waterfall from every angle that I can think of. What could I do to create something different? I was working with long exposures and my hand slipped. I was getting ready to delete the image, when I thought maybe I could play around with a little in-camera motion. After a few tries, this is what I came up with.

Lesson learned: Stop, take the time to play. Something good usually comes out of it!

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Sea of Daffodils

“Daffodil Sea”
Heatherwood Spring

I am always trying to create an image that reflects what I see and feel when our sea of daffodils are in full bloom. This view is from the southeast corner of our property looking north to the surround hills and a couple of our neighbor’s homes. The daffodils are planted in a grove of crabapples. We still researching for a ground cover solution for the grove when the daffodils have expired.

As I walk around the daffodil bed and focus on the mass of blooms, I get a little dizzy. With a little help from my camera, my vision appears.

“Daffodil Dizziness”

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Experimenting

“Raindrops on Hana Matoi Abstract”
Heatherwood Spring

Yesterday, my post was of individual raindrops on our Hana Matoi Japanese maple. Today’s image is what happened when I added a little motion blur to the image. A little playful creativity can make magic.

Note: the little white curves are individual raindrops.

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Abstract Thinking

“Ornamental Grass Abstract”
Heatherwood Late Fall

How many ways can I look at something? They are infinite. This image is a 9-layer multiple-exposure, vertical pan of a clump of ornamental grasses in our garden. I enjoy looking at the world around us from multiple, sometimes abstract, perspectives. It helps me develop a balanced view of life that I would have never considered if I would have approached it from only one conventional angle. It also helps me come up with some creative images.

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Another Creation

“Meadow Pan #2”
Heatherwood, Summer

Continuing my exercise from yesterday, I picked a grouping of grasses and vertical spiked perennials for my subject. I was inspired to create the pans for today and yesterday’s post by Laura Zimmerman, a fellow workshop participant in a recent John Barclay workshop in the Palouse. Laura’s work takes in-camera motion to a much higher level than what I have previously seen. Thank you Laura!

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How Many Ways Can I Photograph Our Garden?


“Meadow Pan #1”
Heatherwood, Summer

How many ways can I photograph our garden? So many times I walk through the garden and create images with just a little different perspective that what I have done so many time before. I photograph in monochrome, infrared, color, macro, wide-angle, underexpose, overexpose, HDR, on my stomach, up on a ladder, time lapse, long exposure, and on and on. Today’s challenge was to make images using a soft diffuser-type filter. For this image, I picked a section in our meadow that was full of summer color and did a gentle vertical pan.

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Abstract Thinking

“Sunrise Through a Pear Tree”
Heatherwood Autumn

A walk through the garden on a autumn day is always full of color. Today, I was focusing on color and texture as I was walking around with my camera. Our flowering pear is at its peak of fall color. The early morning sun came out for a moment to backlight the tree in brilliant color. I decided to create an abstract texture using a nine-image multiple exposure.

Here’s to a bright and shiny new day!

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