I paid a quick visit to the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society yesterday. Their locomotive, Nickel Plate 765, traveled by my house when I was growing up and I always like to see it when I can. On this day they were working on the frames that support the wheels of the locomotive’s tender. I walked away with two shots that I really liked of the work being done, although the depth of field could have been bigger. It’s always challenging to shoot pictures in their shop since it is very dark. You can see some of my other shots of 765 and other trains by clicking here.
Sparks flying
These two gentleman were grinding bits of steel that they had welded onto the trailer trucks. The steel they were adding was of greater strength than the original steel in the trucks. This will hopefully be more resistant to wear and tear. In these pictures they are grinding down the welded on pieces.
Recently I was up in the area near Redmond, Washington for a friend’s wedding. On the last day of the trip, we stopped in on Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery to walk around the grounds and take a tour of the bottling facility. Fortunately I had my camera with me and took some shots of the beautiful surroundings as well as inside the winery itself.
The tour mentioned that the original owners of the winery had a fondness for planting exotic plants and trees on the grounds. This tree caught my eye almost immediately.
I loved the views looking up at its trunk and branches.
Beautiful colors in the leaves
Just a gorgeous tree
And here’s a quick not very exciting look at the tree from afar:
The copper beech from afar
This tree was not the only sight that caught my eye.
Mushrooms and green
Beautiful lawn and garden
Soon it was time to go on the tour of the winery. Since we were there on a holiday, no one was working to bottle any wine that day. This made for some fun shots of the empty industrial apparatus that makes up the winery’s bottling operations.
Wine tanks
Wine tanks detail
We later encountered a series of tanks which I think were steel but reflected the copper colored lighting and maroon walls in spectacular fashion. The rivets made really awesome patterns.
Three years ago a fire swept through parts of Griffith Park in the heart of Los Angeles. On this day for whatever reason I had brought my camera in to work. I was glad I did. From the rooftop of my workplace, we could see this during the day:
Griffith Park fire from a rooftop in Santa Monica
This looked big, and it was the first time I had seen a fire this close. Usually area fires had been far away in the San Gabriel Mountains or elsewhere away from the center of the city. Borrowing a telephoto lens for the night, the view became much more dramatic. Tragically the buildings and smoke are slightly out of focus in the series of shots I took from the rooftop at night.
Griffith Park fire gives an apocalyptic glow behind the buildings of Century City
Having seen this, and knowing that the park was surrounded by the city, I decided that this would probably be the safest fire I could chase with my camera that I’ll probably ever see. So, with a friend of mine along for the ride, we set out to check out this crazy sight.
A surreal alien firey landscape
What we saw blew our minds. I had seen fires in the past on TV but to see one with my own eyes was something else. It was insane. Whole hillsides right behind residential neighborhoods were black with glowing red embers. It looked like a mountain of lava with dark alien trees growing from it (where there were some left).
A neighborhood's light and power silhouetted against the firey landscape
Hotspot in a forest of embers
View of a red planet
It was just surreal.
The fire and the freeway
Our last stop was on the bridge of Los Feliz blvd over the 5 freeway. Here thousands of people were just driving on by the burning hillsides going about their business. Dozens of local Angelino’s were hanging out on the bridge under a rain of ash watching the action unfold and taking pictures. Everyone was super friendly. In fact, I noticed during the Station Fire last year that everyone I encountered was super friendly and helpful, giving me tips on where to shoot from safely.
As we get into the hot summer months I am sincerely hoping that we don’t have a repeat of last years devastating fire season.
I’ve been searching for some time for a simple solution for presenting a web store for selling prints. The closest thing I’ve yet found is the service from bigcartel. I’ve set up a basic store with them. Basically, you select the size of print you want and it will set up the transaction through Paypal. You need to specify which picture you would like printed, and then I will carefully and personally print the requested picture and send it to you. Check it out and tell me what you think!
While a planned trip to Anza-Borrego State Park was a last minute bust, and the trip to Anacapa was a (not complete) disaster, I did manage do one shoot of California wildflowers while they were near their peak. The morning after the failed Anacapa trip fellow photographers Robert Mance, Dwight Blemker and myself headed up to the Tejon Pass to shoot some wildflowers. The weather seemed less than ideal as we set out early in the morning, but the weather would turn out to be magnificent for shooting. Up around 4000 feet, the wind was cold and blowing hard, but the flowers were open and the sun was dancing with the crazy fast moving clouds (See the video I at the end of this post). It was as if time was going fast forward for the clouds. At first when we arrived the clouds were hiding the sun completely and we weren’t sure what we were going to get. We drove around for a bit before deciding on an area to shoot and then waited for the light. I got out of the truck to get set up and then this beam of light shot out from the clouds like a spotlight or a UFO shining its beam down. In a panic I fired off a few shots and as luck would have it, I caught it.
Wild Spotlight
What looked like patches of yellow and gold painted onto the hillsides were revealed to be clumps of surprisingly diverse flowers up close. The flowers were yellow and white mostly with clumps of California Poppies and purple flowers as well. In some places the purple flowers were entire patches themselves.
Sunbeams and wildflowers I
Which one of these two images from the same spot do you prefer?
Sunbeams and wildflowers II
Layers of color
The flowers were really stunning, the hills rolling and the light dancing.
Horseplay in the hills
At one point we looked over and some horses came up over the hill and for a brief moment were playing with each other. It was really quite a sight. You could almost imagine that the horses were wild.
Photonic symphony
When we started are trek, we began with a spot where Robert had shot his awesome picture of 78 snowy white egrets hanging out at this little lake. When we arrived there were three of them and the light was dull as the sun was not yet escaping from behind the clouds’ veil. However when we went back later in the morning, the light was rapidly changing and the wind was blowing quite hard here. Sunlight was racing through the landscape in sections (as can be seen in the video at the end of this post). Studying the scene I realized that a wonderful opportunity was presented by the light. At certain times the foreground trees would light up in a blaze of direct sunlight while the hills immediately beyond were dark in the cloud shadow still. I waited and fired of more than 100 frames trying to capture what I had in mind with the fast changing light. In the end the third try was the winner and produced the image above. I envisioned it as black and white from the start, and it is really one of my all time favorite pictures I have ever had the pleasure of capturing.
Three snowy white egrets
When we arrived in the morning there did turn out to be three egrets at the lake. It was quite dark and they would later fly off.
Gold and green, sun and shade
Layers of color
Gold in the hills
Poppies and gold
Here by the side of the road was a nice little colony of poppies. It’s hardly surprising to see poppies around here as we were not far from the Antelope Valley Poppy Preserve. Another photographer who we encountered described the poppies as being “retina-searing orange” at the preserve, a phrase that has proven memorable. All in all it was an amazing morning and I walked away with a lot of amazing images. Next year I hope to tackle wildflower season with trips to Anza Borrego State Park, Anacapa Island, the Poppy Preserve and other places, though it might not be as wet a year as 2010 has been.
Check out this video shot with my 5DII of the crazy changing light we experienced.
by Kurt