Author: Scott Shephard

01-12-16 Photographer At Work

What shoes do you wear when you go out to take photos? (read more)

By Scott Shephard

You may know our youngest son Jon as the captain of the Un-Cruise Adventures ship Wilderness Adventurer. But when he is on hiatus, as he is this winter, he spends some of his time in Hawaii. This year it gave Deb and me a good reason to go to Hawaii, too.

Here Jon is setting up for a photo at the Hawaiian Tropical Botanical Garden, where the orchid photo I posted a couple of days ago was taken. Like many good photographers in Hawaii, he is properly equipped: good camera and lens, solid tripod and fashionable flip flops.

Canon 5DIII 1/30s f/4.0 ISO400 55mm

01-11-16 Big Island Morning

Do you visit the Photo A Day blog once and a while? Thanks is you do. (read more)

By Scott Shephard

First, if you subscribe to this blog via email, thanks. It turns out that I have been sending the daily posts to the wrong group so I think I am welcoming some of you back. I hope you stay. Of course, if un-cluttering your life is a 2016 resolution, you can easily unsubscribe to this blog. But how about attacking that bloated junk drawer in your kitchen first? Or your sock and underwear drawer? Or you car’s glove compartment.

Second, those who are my friends on Facebook will have seen this photo already. Sorry to repeat myself. 

But what about the photo? Well, it’s really 5 photos layered and processed as an HDR. And you’d never know it, but the sun was about 20 minutes from coming up. I shot this in twilight and needed a flashlight to see the camera settings! The longest exposure was 30 seconds and it looks almost like mid-day. There I go bending reality again. 🙂

I will also mention that the waves were crashing onto the rocks but the long exposure makes the water look relatively flat. The only evidence of the waves is the spray, which looks like low fog in this picture. More bent reality!

Finally, look closely and you will see two people in this photo sitting on the far shore by the palm trees. They are waiting for the sunrise, not for me to finish the 1 minute photo sequence. Because they are pretty sharply focused, they obviously sat very still for those 60 seconds.

Hawaiian sunrises will do that to you.

Canon 5DIII f/16.0 ISO200 40mm (5 shot HDR sequence)

01-08-16 Life Returns. Slowly.

After the volcano erupts, life returns. (read more)

Scott Shephard

One of the things that is striking about the so-called Big Island of Hawaii is that it is the “youngest” of all of the Hawaiian islands. What that means is that it is only 500,000 years old. On a human scale, that is really old, of course. But compare that number with the age of the rocks in the Black Hills in my home state of South Dakota – geologists say that they are around 2 billion years old. On a human scale that’s almost unimaginable.

But compare either the age of the Black Hills or that of Hawaii with the fact that the moss covered rocks you are looking at bubbled out of the depths of the earth in 1960. And a few miles from where I took this photo, you can walk on parts of the earth that were formed an hour ago. (The walk is imaginary given that the stones would melt your shoes.)

For me, the paradox of Hawaii is the lushness of so many parts of the island juxtaposed with the seeming bareness of places pictured here. But in the 55 years since the eruption that formed this ground, if you look closely, you will see that life is abundant. Give this area another half million years and watch out! It will be a jungle. Maybe.

Isn’t it odd that the “maybe” in that last statement is up to us and the choices we make today about preserving our planet? What took billions of years to form might be destroyed by 200 years of human inattention.

Canon 5DIII 1/15s f/16.0 ISO200 100mm

01-07-16 Into the Woods

Dark and mysterious? That’s how I saw it. You may have seen something else. (read more)

By Scott Shephard

Not too far from the place I captured in yesterday’s photo, I found this location. And, like many things I see in Hawaii, it is amazingly photogenic. This road is called Pohoiki Road and runs for a few miles though trees that arch over and shade the road.

I am fascinated by this place and suspect that the locals who drive this road every day don’t even notice its mystery and beauty. That leaves me wondering what we in the Northern Plains see every day that a person born and raised on the Big Island would be impressed with? Miles of flatland, covered in wheat, corn and sunflowers? Frozen lakes that you can walk on? Thunder and lightning? Lingering twilight that seems to last for hours in midsummer? All of these and many more are bound to impress.

Canon 5DIII 2s f/16.0 ISO400 24mm

01-06-6 So Many Textures

Can you call yourself a photographer when you don’t take your camera out of the bag? (read more)

By Scott Shephard

The most important part of getting a decent photo is getting the camera out of the bag. For me, believe it or not, that hasn’t been a regular thing for the two weeks we’ve been on the Big Island in Hawaii.

And so this morning just before sunrise I told Deb I was going out to look for photos. She asked, “Where?” and I said, “I don’t know. Maybe the lava fields nearby.” But the lava fields didn’t call me. Instead, I ended up at a place called Isaac Hale Park. I got out of the car (without my camera) walked out onto the rocky shore and watched the surf roll in.

I was actually back in the car with the motor running when my inner photographer voice, which I had put on mute weeks ago, asked, “Really?! You’re too lazy to take a photo of this?” I ended up taking many more here but this is the first one I processed.

There’s a lot going on in this photo – maybe too much. But at least I took my camera out of the bag . . . 

Canon 5DIII f/16.0 ISO100 28mm (3 bracketed exposures combined in HDR Efex 2)

 

04-24-14 Peace and Quiet

The candid camera captures a man lost in a work of art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC . . . .

By Scott Shephard

Other than distant voices, the sound of my camera’s shutter was the only thing to break the silence of this wonderful room in the National Gallery of Art. But the man in the photograph was oblivious to all of that. Such is the power of art . . . .

Canon 5DIII 1/40s f/2.8 ISO1000 16mm

04-23-14 Variations On a Tree

It’s no secret that I like the look of bare trees. . . 

By Scott Shephard

I guess I can’t help it. I like to photograph bare trees – whether dying, dead or, as in the case of this massive oak in Maryland, about to leaf out. It’s that brachiation that enthralls me. ( I just used two fancy words to pay homage to all of the English teachers that helped shape me. 🙂  )

Canon 5DIII 1/60s f/8.0 ISO200 35mm

04-22-14 A Great Place To Study (HDR)

Good architectural design involves good furniture. . . . 

By Scott Shephard

An ongoing project of mine is to photograph various places at Lake Area Technical Institute where a local office store (Office Peeps) has provided furniture. The LATI library is featured in today’s post and as far as I’m concerned everyone involved in the design did a brilliant job.

Years ago, when Watertown High School added a large new wing, there was an open house to show off the new space. One of the taxpayer complaints was, “Why did we waste so much money on color?” The thinking must have been that institutions should be gray and drab since gray and drab is cheaper. Color, light and space have huge impact on how we feel. And as I life-long teacher I can tell you that all of the senses play a significant role in learning.

Canon 5DIII 1/10s f/7.1 ISO320 19mm

 

A few more from the photo shoot: