Tag Archives: landscape photography

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Bringing Softness

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Bren of Brashley Photography is the guest host for this week’s challenge. She has an amazing studio aesthetic and creates beautifully dreamy photographs. She inspired me to find out what my very limited software can do. I don’t have Photoshop or Lightroom, just the editing software that came with my Canon and the Microsoft jpeg editor that’s on my laptop. I did discover a Clarity tool and a Vignette tool that I’ve never used before. I wish I had the spot focus tool that Bren mentioned because I can see how a little pop of clarity would greatly enhance my photos. Nevertheless, following her suggestions, I came up with a few new versions of flower and landscape favorites:

When I got my first Canon in 1979, there was a soft-focus style of photography that I learned could be achieved by smearing a filter with Vaseline or stretching a nylon stocking over the lens. I’m really glad I can play around with this affect without those measures!

Thank you, Bren, for the fun of this challenge and the invitation to Dreamland.

Lens-Artist Photo Challenge: Double Dipping and Community Building

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“Each Saturday the Lens-Artists team presents an opportunity for our followers and/or visitors to add their images and accompanying thoughts on a subject for all to see. This week we’re suggesting that in addition to our challenge, you explore and link to some of the other creative opportunities our friends and fellow challengers make available in the WP blogosphere (or any other sites where you post images).” – Tina Schell of Travels and Trifles

I think the greatest lesson that I’ve learned during this pandemic is that Community is essential to individual mental health and resilience and may be the key to understanding how to live in harmony with Life on a larger scale. So what better way to practice Community Building in my photo hobby than to check out and participate on other photo challenges and get to know new bloggers around the globe?

I followed the link on Tina’s page to find the Last Image on the Card challenge hosted by Bushboy (Brian). The last image I made with my Canon Rebel t3I was shot on December 27, in my driveway. This is what I saw:

It’s an historic photo, I guess, because this kind of snowfall is not typical for mid-Willamette Valley, Oregon. It’s a fitting reminder of how unusual 2021 was…and how unpredictable 2022 will be. Let’s keep our eyes open and our community growing!

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Going Wide

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“Look wide, and even when you think you are looking wide
– look wider still.”
Robert Baden-Powell (founder of the Scouting Movement)

  • Canyonlands National Park, Utah

“Cleverness is like a lens with a very sharp focus.
Wisdom is more like a wide-angle lens.”
Edward de Bono

  • Badlands National Park (Southern Unit), South Dakota

“Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.”
Jordan Peterson

  • North woods, Minnesota

I absolutely adore landscapes! I love to hike and have worked for a land trust protecting land. Just this morning, I was interviewed by a land trust in my new home state of Oregon for their annual appeal video. I was eager and honored to share my passion for an evolving land ethic to guide humanity into better harmony with the Earth and my gratitude for organizations that uphold those ethics.
This week’s challenge is about wide-angle photography. The truth is, however, I don’t own a wide-angle lens. I do have a Landscape setting on my Canon Rebel T3i, though. It provides a large depth of field and color saturation to enhance greens and blues. I use it extensively when I’m out in the wide open spaces of the USA.

  • Starved Rock State Park, Illinois

Maybe some day I will invest in additional lenses for my camera. I encourage you to visit Patti’s blog to see some stunning examples of wide-angle photography and learn more!

  • Lake Woodbury, Wisconsin

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Along Back Country Roads

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“Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

Far off the major highways, in deep woods and high mountain forests, lie some of my favorite back country roads.

Paved roads in remote places in the American West lead to canyons and deserts where the human population is minimal and natural landscapes stand out.

Sometimes a back country road is a little more than your vehicle can handle. Use caution!

My very favorite back country road is the gravel lane where my mailbox stands. I’m grateful to have a home far from the heavy thoroughfares where noise and stress oppress the environment.

Thank you to the Lens-Artists guest hosts this week, Wandering Dawgs, for inviting us to share our back road adventures. Happy travelling, all, and safe home again!

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Distance

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“God is watching us…from a distance.” ― Julie Gold

Tina is our host for this week’s photo challenge, and she takes up an appropriate theme: Distance, using quotes from a song by Julie Gold. Tina mentions that Bette Midler made the song famous, but my favorite version was recorded by Nanci Griffith. She sings it like an activist, as a protest song. It puts the responsibility for wars, poverty, disease, and hunger squarely on us. When you look at planet Earth from a distance, you don’t see these things. They are human inventions. 

You may argue with me about disease being a human invention. My point is simply that a virus or a bacteria is another organism in Nature. The value judgment on it is our concept.

That being said, what I’m thinking about distance right now is that it’s difficult. Last night, through the technology of Zoom, I spent two hours with my kids, my sister, and my niece who live a couple of thousand miles away on the West Coast. Yesterday was my middle daughter’s birthday; today is my niece’s; tomorrow is my daughter-in-law’s. We were trying to celebrate our life connection while social distancing. My plane tickets for the West Coast must be converted to credit, and I will miss seeing them for an indefinite time.

Distance, however, is just distance. It is part of the perspective of life and allows us to understand connection and proximity. I am hoping that we learn many valuable things during this time. I am hoping that I learn to appreciate and accept distance even while I long for closeness.

Here is a gallery of photos of my “Safer At Home” housemate. We’ve always sought out open spaces. 

And here’s a gallery of my West Coast kids, to whom I’m working on getting closer. My plan is to move to Oregon at the end of June.

As you navigate the space of this interesting situation, may you be safe and well, holding close what you deem most dear while appreciating the vastness of this wonderful world.  

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Change Your Perspective

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“I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.” ― Stephen Hawking

“Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.” ― Steven Wright

“Distance lends enchantment to the view.” ― Mark Twain

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is — infinite.” ― William Blake

“Look at everything as though you are seeing it either for the first or last time, then your time on earth will be filled with glory.” ― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Thank you, Patti, for challenging us this week to change our perspective as we photograph our subjects and for reminding us that Ansel Adams said,

“A good photograph is knowing where to stand.”

 

 

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Leading Lines

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This week’s challenge host, Tina, says, 

Leading lines carry our eye through a photograph. They help to tell a story, to place emphasis, and to draw a connection between objects. They create a visual journey from one part of an image to another and can be  helpful for creating depth as well.

I’ve never had any formal instruction in photography, but I think I have a pretty good natural eye for composition…sometimes. Let’s see if I’ve intuitively used Leading Lines in any of my pictures. 

Okay, wow. That one was obvious. You could argue that Lake Shore Drive and the street lights all lead to the Chicago skyline in that shot. 

The rustic fence and the gravel road take your eye to the Schottler farmhouse.

These two seem like they follow a reverse leading line…a receding line, or a vanishing point.

I think these last three are my favorites, though. They draw my eye to the horizon, which I long to explore.  

 

Anyone want to come with me? 

Lens-Artists Challenge: Pick a Place

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Tina at Travels and Trifles hosts this week’s challenge with an invitation for us to pick a place to which we’ve traveled and feature it in our post.
I have not traveled abroad since the death of my husband 11 years ago, but I have done a bit of traveling throughout the western portion of the United States. I am particularly fascinated by canyon country, places where the geology of the place takes center stage an overwhelms the senses, leaving you awestruck.

“When your spirit cries for peace, come to a world of canyons deep in the old land, feel the exultation of high plateaus, the strength of moving waters, the simplicity of sand and grass, the silence of growth.” — August Frugé 

 

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.” — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross 

Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Sand Canyon, Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, Colorado

Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, Colorado

“Beauty in front of me, Beauty behind me,
Beauty Above me, Beauty below me,
Beauty all around me,
I walk in Beauty…” — Navaho prayer

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado

Gunnison River, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Favorite Place

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You might as well ask me, “Which is your favorite child?”
How can I choose between woodland lakes…

…and desert canyons……or even my own front yard? 

I will just say that this place called Earth is my favorite and my home, and I will defend her to my dying day. I will take her as a whole and not state a preference for certain parts. She is a mosaic of interdependent cells, a Being of utter complexity and uniqueness. 

Coastal redwoods – taller but not as big around as sequoia gigantea
The Green River flows through Dinosaur National Monument
Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, Colorado

Favorite Place

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Horizon

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Wisconsin horizon

Wisconsin horizon

Ever since I was a young girl, I have been enamored of “rolling hills” and farmland.  My third grade class studied farm machinery and went out to the plains of Illinois to see a farm.  It was nice, but when I caught a glimpse of Kentucky and Iowa on a family trip that summer, I raved about the “rolling hills”.   Now I am living up in Wisconsin, where ice age glaciers left deposits across most of the state in landforms known as moraines, kames, drumlins, and eskers.  I am in heaven when I venture west from the city of Milwaukee and wind my way around farms nestled between these ancient hills.   I am planning to aim toward this horizon more intentionally in the future.  Steve & I are hoping to move next year to a more rural village and live a simpler, slower life.  May we all reach our desired horizons before the darkness comes!

P.S. to enjoy this horizon in a wider view, just click on the picture!