Crashing wave, Oregon Coast. To get a sense of scale, click on the image to view it larger and see if you can spot the person in the frame. He’s just to the left of the wave between some trees. It looks like the wave would have soaked this photographer, but it probably didn’t; the wave is actually between that person and the camera, and the spot he was standing on usually stays dry. This wasn’t the tallest splash we saw that day, but the light at that moment, along with the shape of the wave, made this image the clear winner in my mind. 50mm, 1/500th of a second at f/11, ISO 160.
After spending some time along the Oregon Coast, Claudia and I headed up to Bellingham, Washington, to visit family.
But I kept my eye on the weather forecasts for Oregon. One day stood out in particular, when waves were predicted to reach heights of 20 feet or more. We planned to work our way back to Oregon in time to see those waves.
Claudia and I have been on the road again. We made our way up the Oregon Coast, then to Bellingham, Washington, to visit family, then back to Oregon again.
We’ve been enjoying some wild weather along the coast. While California has been mostly dry, we’ve encountered clouds, rain, fog, wind, and big waves – all fun stuff for a landscape photographer, despite sometimes having to dodge sheets of rain blowing sideways.
In a recent post I described how Claudia and I made a spur-of-the-moment detour to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We arrived in the afternoon, and spent the rest of the day checking out various viewpoints.
As sunset approached we had just enough light to check out one more spot. We made it there just after sunset, and in the gathering dusk I thought the light in the canyon to the west was exquisite: soft, with a beautiful backlit glow, and a slight haze to add atmosphere and depth.
Just a quick reminder that there’s still one day left to get a discount on my new Lightroom course, Landscapes in Lightroom: Advanced Techniques. Use the coupon code FALL2020 to get 20% off all my Lightroom course until midnight tomorrow (November 11th):
Morning sunlight from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Arizona. I used the “thumb technique” to reduce flare in this image; see the post for more details.
On our road trip last month Claudia and I found ourselves in Kanab, Utah. We cooked breakfast at a picnic table in a small park in town, and discussed our next move. There are a lot of options from Kanab. Should we head to Zion? Detour east toward the Paria River area? Drive the Cottonwood Canyon Road?
And then I thought, we’re pretty close to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. And neither of us had ever been there. So the North Rim it was.
I know many of you have purchased and used my original Lightroom course, Landscapes in Lightroom: The Essential Step-by-Step Guide. (I used to refer to this as an ebook, but it’s evolved into much more than that.) This new, advanced course takes you further, showing you how to add sophisticated touches to your images that you might have thought were only possible in Photoshop. Things like…
On October 20th Adobe released an update to Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and Adobe Camera Raw that included a new tool – the Color Grading panel. It replaces the old Split Toning panel.
What is color grading? I guess I have a broader definition of that term than Adobe does. To me, color grading includes a wide range of color adjustments that go beyond the basics of setting a white balance and adjusting saturation. Mainly I think about adjusting individual hues to either bring the colors of an image into better harmony, or to separate and differentiate hues to create more color contrast.
First light on aspens, Colorado. I waited for the sun to come up over a ridge and rake across this hillside, thinking that the first light catching the tops of the trees might be interesting. This turned out to be one of my favorite images from the trip. 297mm, 1/45th sec. at f/11, ISO 100.
As we were quickly discovering on this trip, the pandemic has made outdoor recreation especially popular this fall, so well-known spots were busier than usual, and campsites hard to come by.
But there are lots of aspens in Colorado. Millions of them. If you’re in Colorado at elevations between 8,000 and 10,000 feet, there are bound to be aspens nearby. We didn’t have a particular timetable, so we looked at maps, picked out some likely spots, and just went.
Sandstone formations, Dinosaur National Monument, Utah
After visiting northern Utah on our recent road trip, we headed toward Colorado, but on the spur of the moment we decided to make a detour to Dinosaur National Monument.
When our son Kevin was five years old we made a trip to Dinosaur. Kevin was totally into dinosaurs at that age, and was thrilled to visit a place where dinosaurs had once lived, and to see actual dinosaur fossils in place in the dinosaur quarry. It was a magical experience for him.
Claudia and I have been on a road trip for about two weeks now. It’s been a fun, relaxing journey. We don’t have any specific plans, so we’re exploring some out-of-the-way places we’ve never been to before, looking for fall color and anything else that seems interesting.
We started in northern Utah. where the maples weren’t as vibrant as last year, but we saw some nice patches of color. And then we ventured farther into the boonies and found beautiful mountains, aspens, and some moose.
I’ve been using Lightroom since Adobe released the beta version in 2006. Over the years I’ve learned many shortcuts, and in this video I share some of my favorite tips – things I use all the time to streamline my workflow:
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