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Hidden Gem

Mulholland road in Parrish, oddly enough, dead-ends at a bridge. Because of that, it feels remote, even though it’s in the middle of a housing boom.

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Hidden Gem
the scene along Mulholland Road in Parrish, Florida

Living in suburbia as I do, the trick to doing local landscape photography is finding gems tucked away in plain sight. Even though I think I’ve found most, I’m pretty sure there are more. They are, by their very nature, not easy to find.

more images with reflections from the gallery

I took this photo about five years ago, and today, as I drove by, the road is under construction. That means it’s probably going to get more traffic and, extend past the bridge; meaning no longer hidden. But I’ll keep searching for more spots like this in the suburban jungle.

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Bodacious Sky

I took this from the Green Bridge in Bradenton on a particularly bodacious evening. Does anyone use that word anymore?

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Bodacious Sky
The sunset over the Manatee River in Bradenton

Bodacious is a west coast word, but I’m from there, so I get a pass. For some reason, a lot of new words come from California. When I was ten, I made up the word “bad” to mean awesome. I actually thought I invented that. Imagine my surprise when I heard it on TV. Surely I picked it up subconsciously somewhere.

visit the sunset gallery for more like this

My vocabulary is not particularly great, enough to get by. But I do get impressed by words all the time. I love the dictionary feature in Kindle. Depending on the author, I might just spend a lot of time in there. It’s not as easy as making up my own words, though.

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Point Lobos Sky

When I was here, I went a little snap-happy and took way too many shots of the sky. But that’s a known hazard of watching the sunset in San Fran.

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Point Lobos Sky
The sky after sunset in San Francisco

As I look at this, I think if not for the photos, I would’ve forgotten all about it. These are not the kinds of things that stick in my memory very well. However, the picture brings back many details of that night, now nearly five years later.

more seascapes in the gallery

It may sound conceded, but I like looking at my own photos. In part, that’s because they bring back memories of the experience. Maybe it’s a sense of nostalgia because often the memory exceeds reality. I think we reconstruct memories to build a better story. I’m not sure that makes sense, but those are my thoughts.

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Multnomah Falls

No trip to the Portland area is complete without visiting Multnomah Falls. Here is a lie; there was nobody here when I took this shot.

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Multnomah Falls
The most iconic, Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge

In fact, to get this, I had to elbow my way through layers of Instagrammers holding phones aloft with their backs to the falls. I should have known better, it was July 4th, but I went anyway. I Photoshoped all the people off the bridge except for one. In the end, this edit is not far from the scene I imagined in my head.

see the European gallery

If I did have the place to myself, I would have taken more shots, but I like this shot, so maybe that would have been a waste. Anyhow, when I go back, even if it’s winter, I’ll come early to try my luck again. But it’s all good; I ended up hiking to the top to see even more waterfalls and a lot fewer people. It ended up being an excellent day, for Instagram and me.

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Gate at Dusk

I took this about five years ago on one of my visits back to where I grew up. But as they say, home is where the heart is.

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Gate at Dusk
The Golden Gate bridge from Point Lobos in San Francisco

Never in a million years would I have imagined I’d end up in Florida. But here I am, and the longer I’m out here, the more I need to go back to the Pacific for little trips to recharge. Maybe I miss the mountains and evergreens which we don’t have in the sunshine state.

more images from San Francisco

This image is my favorite from that trip, but I waited until now to process it. For whatever reason, it needed to age like a good California wine.

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Out With the Tide

Waves washed in on this remote stretch of beach. Then egressed, and wash back out into the oncoming storm.

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Out With the Tide
The tide at Crescent Beach in Oregon

My idea was to use a wide-angle and capture the motion. To do that I used a small aperture to get a long exposure; about one-quarter of a second to get this effect.

more images featuring waves

One little tip about shooting waves at the shore is tripod legs sink when the water washes over. So, if the exposure is too long, objects get blurred. Another tip is to wash off the tripod legs in freshwater as soon as possible. A couple of helpful pointers for you photo bugs.

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Venice on the Brain

I almost didn’t go down to Venice Beach because I knew if I did, I’d end up retaking pictures of the pier. But I went anyway, and I did it anyway.

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Venice on the Brain
Venice Beach in Central Florida

I have this internal dialog in my brain. One side plans, decides, and weighs; the other does the opposite. In the end, all the noise is just that, noise.

browse the beach gallery

So this is the pier in Venice, it’s a shot I’ve done before, but each time is a little different. This time I included only the sun’s edge, so its presence is felt without becoming the scene’s focus. At least that’s how my left brain explains what the right brain did without asking permission.

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Dee Wright Observatory

This spot is from a massive lava flow, surrounded by volcanoes on all sides. I wouldn’t want to be here when the next one blows.

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Dee Wright Observatory
Lava fields in Oregon

Living in Florida, it’s easy to forget there is a healthy amount of volcanic activity in the pacific northwest. It wasn’t my plan to visit volcanoes, but little did I realize, most of the mountains in Oregon are.

more images of mountains in the gallery

If I recall, Oregon and Hawaii are in the “ring of fire,” and we all know Hawaii is quite active. When I first arrived at this spot, I was struck by how fresh the flows looked; I thought maybe they were ten years old. It was more like fifteen-hundred years, which, as we all know, is just a blink of an eye in geological terms. As amazing as it was, I was still glad to leave before mother nature decided to blink again.

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Old Church

Here is a pro photographer that used only an iPhone for 6 months. I love this…

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I took a picture of this church along one of the lesser-known highways in Florida. I just thought it looked kind of old-school.

Old Church
An old church along state road 50 in central Florida

When driving in the country, I look for things that stand out, and this fit the bill. It was, in fact, a Sunday but late enough that it was empty. It doesn’t look to me like it has airconditioning so, on a summer day in Florida, it’s probably hotter than purgatory inside, give or take a few degrees.

more churches in the gallery

Not long after this stop, I started entering the suburbs of Orlando, and from that point on, everything is new-school. The only things that look old are facades made to look that way. So, getting out of the city to see throw-backs is pretty cool, even if it is hotter than the devil’s den.

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Dutchman Falls

The water from this fall runs year-round and is fed by a spring. I would have gotten closer, but Instagramers were posing in front.

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Dutchman Falls
A waterfall fed from a spring above the Columbia River

I Photoshopped out the Instagramers because I kind of like it without them, maybe it’s just me. Last year on the same day, I was at Mount Rushmore and encountered the same thing, hundreds of them. I need to start an Instagram of Instagrammers.

check out the gallery here

Nevertheless, it was quiet and pretty here, which was at the top of a steep hike from the Columbia River. I had water but too much heavy camera gear, but I didn’t realize I was going to climb the trail until I got there. As all of my hikes in Oregon, it was well worth it, and I’m looking forward to going back for more walks, Instagram notwithstanding.