Photography Journal

Deep Imnaha, a photo by Sean Bagshaw on Flickr.

The Imnaha River runs through a wild and rugged canyon in Oregon's Hell's Canyon country. I was absolutely taken by it's beauty. Hard to believe such a place is hiding in a corner of Oregon. It's a world apart from the popular Wallowa Lake area just 30 miles away.
5D Mark III, Polarizer, Handheld, 1/40 second @ f/16, ISO 200.

Sunrise Balloon Ride, Cappadocia, Turkey, a photo by Sean Bagshaw on Flickr.

Hot air ballooning over the Cappadocia region of central Turkey at sunrise is a life experience. It's an amazing place, geologically and historically. Give it a Google if you'd like to find out more. If you've never photographed from a balloon before it is quite a challenge. Everything is in motion so you have no control over the scene you will see and when something nice does line up it is gone within seconds.

Canon 5D III, 24-105mm lens @ 28mm, polarizer, 1/40 second @ f/13, ISO 400

Water, Stone and Sky, a photo by Sean Bagshaw on Flickr.

A brilliant sunrise at the classic Bonsai Rock at Lake Tahoe from a couple years ago. David Cobb and I were headed to Zion National park when the Millenium Falcon broke down in Reno. We were stranded for a couple days, but if you are going to be stranded, the eastern Sierra is as good as it gets. We rented a car and made good use of our time shooting at Lake Tahoe, Mono Lake and Bode Ghost Town. The light we had on this morning just about made me forget the $1500 repair bill. One the VW was fixed we were back on the road and had an epic time is Zion as well.

Waiting For The Night Train, a photo by Sean Bagshaw on Flickr.

I took this image on our urban night workshop in Portland last weekend during the super full moon. There was a lot of challenging light going on in this scene. I used layer masking techniques to combine five different exposures for the main scene in order to contain the high dynamic range. The moon was brought in from a 6th exposure. Using more than one exposure is the only way to get a properly exposed image of the moon within the landscape at night. The lighted side of the moon is always a daylight exposure because that's what it is...sun shining on dirt and rock.

Territory Of The Mind, a photo by Sean Bagshaw on Flickr.

In Vermilion Cliffs National Monument photographers tend to focus a lot of attention on The Wave and, more recently, White Pocket. In many ways I find the formations, light and particularly the variety of sandstone colors at Coyote Buttes South to be just as compelling. This was one of the final images I took during this sunset I shared with +Tony Kuyper. The colors in the rock, which are fantastic at any time of day, went absolutely wild in the deep post sunset salmon light. Long exposures in such conditions allow color and light to be captured in a way that our eyes can't perceive.

30 Seconds @ f/16, ISO 400.

The Mariner Remembers, a photo by Sean Bagshaw on Flickr.

The mariner remembers when a child,
on his first voyage, he saw it fade and sink
And when returning from adventures wild,
He saw it rise again o'er ocean's brink.

Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same,
Year after year, through all the silent night
Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame,
Shines on that inextinguishable light!

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -

f-stop is a company that makes camera packs and bags for active outdoor photographers. I am a member of their professional photographer Brigade Team, along with the rest of the Photo Cascadia crew, but I don't get paid to use their gear. I use their stuff because, better than any other camera bags I have tried, they fit my requirements for durability, comfort, features, innovation and versatility.

As one of their team of photographers they recently showcased my photography in their newsletter. I don't have design skills to create such a visually captivating newsletter layout so I decided I would take advantage of the nice work they did and share their newsletter here on my blog. If you are looking for a camera bag I would certainly give them a look. I have extensively used their Guru, Loka and Tilopa packs with several different size ICUs so I'm glad to do my best to answer any questions about their products you might have.

Have you seen the time lapse twilight and night photography of Terje Sorgjerd? In his film, The Arctic Light, he shares a gorgeous high speed chronology of extended magical twilight hours he finds in the far reaches of Norway. In the spring sunsets and sunrises at this latitude can last for many hours.

Not counting people who live in such extreme latitudes as northern Norway, I don't think we get frequent chances to carefully study a magnificent twilight sky show these days. Many of us aren't awake and outside early enough in the morning to witness the sunrise. Much of our day in these modern times is spent indoors or within an urban landscape which significantly reduces how much time we spend viewing the sky. I have often noticed a faint warm glow coming through my east facing living room windows only to find I was missing a brilliant sunset in the sky to the west. Additionally, opportunities to linger in the twilight are commonly sacrificed to the pace of life, rushing from office to car with heads down or eating dinner while reading an iPad, sorting through junk mail and sending texts. Many of us can only remember a handful of times when chance and circumstance have enabled us to be in the right place at the right time to look up at the sky and be amazed.

As an outdoor photographer I have learned to revel in the light at the edges of day. I devote many mornings and evenings to searching for the conditions that will allow me to have an exhilarating sunrise or sunset experience just one more time. The process of photographing at the edges of day motivates me to watch with great interest and concentration. Some sky shows last for mere seconds, while others will linger for many minutes, colors changing and moving around the sky. I can only imagine witnessing a twilight that lasts for many hours, such as the ones Terje records in Norway.

Recently I came across a series of photographs I took during a spectacular sunrise in North Cascades National Park in Washington in the fall of 2010. It was one of those rare occasions in which the event played out over many minutes, allowing me to photograph it several times from slightly different vantage points. While I worked on each image individually I didn't notice how, as a series, they illustrate the anatomy and progression of light, color and pattern in a way that is hard to share any other way.

This is how that morning unfolded. Chip Phillips, David Cobb and I had camped in a dense wood below Cascade Pass near Sahalie and Pelton peaks and the stunning Sahalie Arm trail. The night before we had been dismayed at the sight of a fallen climber's body being lifted out of the mountains on the end of a rope beneath a rescue helicopter. It was still replaying in my dreams when Chip rose at 3:00 AM with the intent of hiking high above the pass before sunrise. David left camp second, about an hour later. I was last out of camp and wasn't far up the trail when the sunrise light began to show itself.

Cursing myself for sleeping too long, I made this photograph along the trail still low in the valley in near darkness. The first light was just beginning to illuminate the clouds and the dark features of the land. A long 15 second exposure at f/13 and ISO 640 recorded the dim landscape much brighter than it appeared to the eye. A second exposure of just 4 seconds captured a good exposure for the sky and the properly exposed areas of each were blended together using layer masking techniques.

Aware that the best light would come rapidly and that I wasn't in the ideal location, I ran up the trail, stumbling in the dark and breathing hard. The color intensified and I frantically searched for something to anchor the foreground of my next photo. I found a small mountain ash tree turning red with the coming autumn. At the same time I noticed the stream in the valley beginning to reflect the red-orange of the warming sky. Radiant light reflecting off the undulating under surface of the clouds back lit the foliage making it appear to be glowing from within. This wide angle, vertical composition turned out to be my favorite from that morning. I titled it Unforgettable Fire and it is now part of my print collection.

Satisfied that I had managed to take a good photo despite my late start I relaxed a bit. However, to my surprise, the color showed no signs of abating. I continued up the trail looking for other perspectives from which to photograph the scene. I scrambled around, struggling to find a composition as compelling as the last. While I didn't find another that felt as good, I kept stopping to shoot because the color in the sky continued to spread and intensify, accentuating the shapes in the clouds. In this image the brilliant reds and oranges overpower the rest of the scene.

Further along my ascent of the pass the colors began to shift from deep reds to lighter oranges and yellows and cool light began to filter through the cloud layer from above.

Finally, as the day brightened, the sun rose above the cloud layer. The under-lighting faded along with the color, leaving the clouds flat and gray from below but giving a glimpse of blue sky and higher clouds above.

That morning, as well as many others, have become important and indelible parts of my consciousness. Through photography I have become better at being acutely present and attentive during such magical twilight events, making them that much richer, meaningful and memorable. Having the photographs as keepsakes gives me the opportunity to relive the experience and see it again in ways I wasn't able to as I witnessed it.

Wow, I have really neglected my blog this summer. I put it down to a combination of focus on other projects, writing for other blogs and the opportunity to spend some quality time with my family during summer school holidays. I have plenty of great photography content to share so I just need to get back in the groove.

I can start out by sharing a podcast interview I did this summer with the talented and insightful Alister Benn at Available Light Images. Alister hails from Scotland, lives in Spain and travels the world with his wife from China making stunning photographs. Alister's photographic talent combined with his enthusiasm for adventure, natural beauty and ambitious photography related projects make him one of the most intriguing new voices in contemporary photography. Add to that his really cool Scottish accent and he's the full package. In July we sat down over a Skype connection and had a great chat in which Alister interviewed me about everything from artistic philosophy to cutting edge digital image developing techniques. I had a great time talking with him and appreciated his thorough and insightful questions.

You can listen to my conversation with Alister here.

He also has podcasts of interviews with two other talented photographers:

Guy Tal is one of my favorite contemporary photographers and writers from the American west. Few people speak on the topic of fine art photography as well as Guy. You can listen to Guy's podcast here.

David Clapp is a British Photographer with a great reputation for superb images of many diverse subjects from Architecture, Travel & Culture, and of course, contemporary Landscapes. You can listen to David's podcast here.

My most recent article on the Photo Cascadia blog explores the challenge photographers face in translating experience, inner vision and "voice" in a way that they still resonate within the static, two dimensional photograph. Ansel Adams' advice to look beyond what is literally there and instead identify something from within you that draws you to the scene has been very helpful to me. To make our photographs more than just pictures of things it helps to identify the qualities of a scene that stimulate us and allow that information to guide what the photograph should really be about.

You are invited to read the entire article on the PhotoCascadia blog.