“Waterfall and Maple”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden
The Japanese maple shown in my last post shields a secondary waterfall from a walker on the garden path. The curious can leave the path, walk up close and peek through the tree to see the lower falls. Walking about ten yards more along the garden path, the falls are fully revealed. There is often a surprise as one turns a corner in the garden.
“The Waterfall”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden
I have posted several images of our Heatherwood Japanese garden waterfall over the last couple of years. This angle is one of my favorite perspectives. Last year, we built two stepping stone paths leading to this intersecting view point.
The sound of the falling water draws my attention up the hillside. My eyes stop and pause at the Kotoji lantern before they continue to move to the Mountain lantern where they pause again. After the pause, they move to the yellow Chief Joseph lodgepole pine and pink phlox and then back down to the lower waterfall. And then they start to make a counterclockwise move up and around the hill again.
“Waterfalls and Pond”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden
It’s a beautiful early spring morning. The sun came out and the clouds cooperated. Heatherwood beckoned me to come out and walk through the Japanese garden with my camera. I enjoy this perspective looking over the waterfalls up over the developing Japanese-style garden area. This area has been in place now for three years. The trees and shrubs are slowly growing along with the ground cover. Each year we have been and will continue to add ground covers, a few trees and shrubs, and other accent vegetation to enhance the garden. It will be a never ending evolution. Next week we start our spring planting!
“Kotoji, Waterfall, & Japanese Maple”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden
I keep coming back to this view in our Heatherwood Japanese garden. The Japanese maples continuously change in color, shape, and texture through the revolving seasons. In time they will flow over the stream’s edge becoming one with it. The Kotoji Japanese lantern acts like a guardian over the stream stabilizing the scene with its graceful legs .
The Guardian
A Japanese maple gently bends,
Shielding the flowing stream,
As the guarding Kotoji overlooks.
“Waterfall & Kotoji”
Heatherwood Japanese Garden
Spring brings out the energy of emerging new life. The sensitivity of infrared to the bright greens and yellows highlight spring’s energy. Springtime in Heatherwood is the time for me to explore with my infrared photography.
Yellowstone Lower Falls
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
There are so many things to see in Yellowstone. How do I choose what would be a good representative image? During this trip, my focus was on wildlife photography. The best light was in the early morning or late afternoon/early evening. These were also the best times for photographing wildlife. Thus, my landscape images took second priority in the middle of the day. It didn’t stop me though, as I did do a little exploring around the park. Yellowstone Falls was one of the highlights.
We were planning on going to Yellowstone again this year and made all the reservations. The Covid-19 pandemic put a stop to the trip. Maybe next year?
Japanese Garden Waterfall
Heatherwood
I wanted to practice my long exposure techniques. What a better place to work than our Japanese Garden waterfall. My target was to create a soothing feeling of a small segment of our stream as it falls into the pond. I liked how this section of the stream flowed over the edge and bounced off an intermediate rock before it scattered over a rock in the pond.
Over the years, I have visited the Hawaiian Tropical Gardens on the big island of Hawaii four times. Located near Hilo, it gets around 160 inches of rain a year. It is a tropical RAIN forest. Every visit has been on a brilliantly bright day, no clouds and no rain. This visit I was hoping for at least a cloud cover to help darken the gardens like it typically is … no such luck!
Onomea Falls is one of the special beautiful places in the garden that I enjoy most. My intent was to create an image of the falls in a dark setting as it typically is in. It was dark, but bright hot spots from open spots the canopy were located all around the area. I was not going to leave disappointed again. I took my time, worked my way around the area, played with filters and exposures and left with something I could work with. Back at home I combined images to reduce the hot spots and keep the shadow details. I converted to B&W (as was my intent when I took the images) and did a little selective dodging and burning.
The result to me was well worth the extra time!
Onomea Falls Water Color
I recently visited the Hawaiian Botanical Gardens, near Hilo, Hawaii. Â My mission was to photograph creatively. Â I did not focus on the overall beauty of the environment around me. Â My focus was on separate scenes, small vignettes, and macro detail while using creative photographic techniques.
For this image, I took multiple exposures covering the range from the bright water and sky to the dark shadows.  When I brought them together into an HDR, all the tonalities were captured. However, I lost the feeling of the dense tropical rainforest setting.  So I decided to play a little with Topaz’s new ‘Studio” software.  I used the watercolor effect to create this image.
I haven’t given up on the natural presentation of this image yet.  It will require a lot of luminance masking with layers to get the natural image that I saw in my mind.  I will do this at a future time when I am in a very patient mood.
During a recent trip to Bend, my wife and I did a little exploring around the area. Â We took a drive to Tumalo Falls during the middle of the day. Â The mid-day sun did not do this beautiful waterfall justice. Â To capture the bright greens without washing the bright water out, I blended two exposures together; one taken for the water and the other for the green trees.