If you read my last posting, you will see that this weekend we decided to go to Mt. Rainier to shoot some waterfalls.  So it should be no surprise what this weeks photography topic is.

We visited three of the falls in Mt Rainier’s National Park picking ones that were relatively easy to get to.  Each fall offered us the opportunity to shoot the water from multiple locations offering different views each time, also each fall had upper and lower falls or moving water that you had to shoot separately.  The three we visited were: Christine Falls, Narada Falls and Myrtle Falls.

The picture I chose to post for the weekly shot was the bottom half of Christine Falls.  The bridge at the top that frames the falls is for cars and comfortably is two cars wide – this hopefully gives you some idea of the hight.

Great experience and loads of fun.

I was due a trip out with the camera so I discussed some locations with some of the guys at work. Originally we thought a trip to Mt Rainier for a sunset picture and maybe some star night shots would be cool.  I did some investigation and it sounded like the flowers on the mountain were in bloom and the night skies were clear and you could even shoot the Milky Way over the top of Rainier – all was looking great.  Then we heard that the mosquitos were out in force, someone said you need to go in long pants with shirt sleeves as they are vicious early evening.  We were also told to take mosquito spray as sleeves wouldn’t stop them!  Once I told people about this, numbers of interested parties started to drop.

Taking this into consideration along with the time it takes to get home off the mountain in the dark (probably around 4 hours) we figured we wouldn’t get home until very early morning.  Numbers went down again.

In the end it was just Adam and I – and to be completely truthful, neither of us fancied facing the mosquitos or the scary long drive home.  But we still wanted to go!  In the end we opted for a waterfall trip to the same location.  We could leave mid morning, get there early afternoon, shoot some waterfalls and be home before the sunset.  I tried to get others engaged but nobody wanted to come.

So Saturday morning at 11am I picked up Adam and off we went.  The journey there was very long – took about 3:30 hours which is way too long, coming home we did it in 2:30 hours which was much better.  Why so long getting there? Well you can blame my satellite navigation for that – it got us totally lost, but coming home I remembered a faster route and that saved us an hour.

When we got there it was around 72 degrees and packed with people, so parking was a pain, but we found some GREAT waterfalls and got LOTS of shots.  For most of the afternoon the sun was pretty strong and exposures were tough, so we shot lots of bracketed pictures, always with our neutral density filters fitted to the camera.  These gave us nice long exposures and gave the images that ribbony look as the water went over the fall.   This meant that all pictures had to be taken on tripods as the typical exposure was well over a second.

It was quite funny to see all these other people there with expensive cameras and lenses taking pictures.  None of them had tripods and you could see the frustration in their faces, and sometimes their jealousy when we set up next to them.

I think I used the same lens the whole time, I had my ultra wide 10-24mm lens with a 6 stop neutral density filter on the camera all day.  We shot at f/16 or smaller and had our cameras on the tripod being triggered by a cable release or timer.

When I got home I manually blended bracketed pictures together to get the image I wanted, that way I removed heavily shadowed areas and brought back blown out highlights.  I could of used HDR software for this but I usually find the produced images look really “HDRy” (if that’s a word), and I wanted very natural, realistic pics.  You can view the shots below and tell me if you think I achieved that goal.

Anyway I took LOTs of pictures, and ended up with a nice dozen or so I really liked.  Here are my favorites.

We’ve basically gone completely off the reservation now as each Friday we decide on the topic for the weekend 🙂 – No more list!  This is OK I think as the purpose of the Image a Week exercise was to get us to shoot and I’d rather shoot something I want than something I don’t (that I came up with months ago).

Anyway, this week the subject is reflection.  I had a great scene in mind on Thursday, I was going to shoot this house that’s not far from me that sit’s above a small lake.  Every morning I drive past it and it just looks beautiful.  But due to Abi being ill last night we didn’t get up early this morning – the whole house over slept.  I needed to get up early as I need to walk on someone else’s property to shoot the house – naughty I know, but I figured if I got there early Sunday morning I could grab the shot and get out without getting busted!  But as we had a late start no image.

So what to shoot?  In the end I set up a number of still life scenes and picked this one to post.  This was surprisingly easy to do, I got an old framed poster in the garage and took it apart grabbing the perspex sheet from the frame.  Placed that on the kitchen table and got some colored card for the background.  I set up two lights with big umbrellas on either side of the scene and then put a number of “things” in front of the card.  Every now and then I changed the card (for a difference color) and kept shooting different house hold items.

In the end there were two I liked, this one below and one of three glasses of water.  In the end I opted for “Mr Egg”.

By now we’ve thrown the original list away and started making up new topics on Friday.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote the original list but we didn’t like the subjects anymore.  But carrying on we just needed a new topic for the week.  Week 8 we decided should be “Motion”.  We had a long conversation of what do we mean by motion and we talked about capturing something that looks like it’s moving.  Pretty straight forward really, but what to shoot?

Saturday afternoon it came to me.  What about an action shot of James on one of his skateboards?  That would be great?  Trouble is James isn’t big on action – too much like his dad.  But he does take the board out and go round the neighborhood.  So I came up with this cunning plan.  Lisa drives her car with me in the trunk with a camera and light.  The trunk is open and behind the car James is riding his skateboard – I mean how hard can this be?   The answer was actually pretty easy!

We discussed doing it Saturday evening, but James wanted to wash his hair first – which I should point out is crap coz he them put his beany hat on!  Go figure!  So Sunday was chosen as the day.

We needed to take the shot late evening as the sun was going down, as I needed to use a slower shutter speed so the background looked blurry showing James was moving.  If he was in bright sunlight the shutter would be quick and it would look like he was stationary on the board and I just took a shot – that wouldn’t be “motion” at all.

So 7pm Sunday night arrived and out we all go.  I jump in the trunk with Abi who’s my lighting assistant.  Lisa is behind the wheel and James is all clean in his beany 🙁 ready to go.  We found a road in our neighborhood that had a nice hill that wasn’t too busy or steep.  James and I tried the location the previous night and he reached almost 30 miles an hour.

So back we went to get the shot.

In total it took us three runs down the hill where I shot off around 40 shots a run – just pointing at James and holding the shutter button down.  The first run helped me get the exposure right, the second two helped me get the one in focus picture that looked great.  We quickly found out that shooting him while in Shade looked best, and every now and then his face would hit some sunlight coming through the trees to light him up.  If only I could time it right to get THAT shot!  Then I wouldn’t need any lights.

On the third run we nailed it and I got the picture below.  This has very little post processing.  It’s pretty much right out of the camera so we were lucky I guess.

I’m REALLY pleased with the shot and feel it does capture the feeling of motion – even James liked it.

OK confession time.  Week 7 wasn’t Macro / Close up.  It was “Summer”.  But we decided that this topic sucked and decided to change it.  Unfortunately we didn’t change it to Macro either, we selected “insect”.  You know the kind of thing, those close up macro shots of a bug so it fills the screen.  So you can see all the hairs on it’s head or it’s bug shaped eyes.  We thought that would be cool.

So Friday night I get home and it’s still super sunny outside, so I go out into the garden with my camera, macro lens, some lights and my tripod to take that perfect bug picture.  Guess what.  No bugs.  Nothing.  Couldn’t find a single thing!  Ok that’s not completely true, but the bloody ants wouldn’t stand still and the spider I found in the web was being blown all over the place by the wind.  After a couple of hours of not ONE picture I got board.

So Saturday comes.  Back out there again and again NOT ONE BUG.  I mean, what the hell is going on, where did all the bugs go?  Just two weeks ago I couldn’t take a step without swatting a bee out of the way!  But Saturday was a failure again.

Sunday arrives and I’m starting to think all the insects are dead – is this the beginning of the end???  Then Kathryn, a friend calls me up and tells me she needs my photography services urgently.  I got all excited thinking, YES here comes my first boudoir shoot 🙂 but I get to her house and she wants me to shoot some bloody flowers!  Talk about disappointed.

Anyway, these flowers originally belonged to her mother (or Cameron’s mother – I can’t remember I was too upset about the no boudoir) and Kathryn’s daughter Danielle got them when her grandmother passed away.  They were old, very delicate and had sentimental value (and Kathryn wanted them gone).  So she thought I could photograph them for Danielle so she could keep those as a keep sake instead of the flowers.

Immediate I realized I’d brought the wrong gear.  I needed a macro lens and didn’t have one with me.  So I grabbed the flowers and took them home and spent an hour working on a number of nice compositions.  As this was a macro shot – and that’s very similar to shooting a bug (ok it’s not that similar but go with me on this one), I submitted this picture for week 7.

As I was the only person to submit a picture this week I felt pretty good.