Sun Rays Through Forest

Photography is great, you get to interpret beautiful scenes for all the world to see. However, photography also has a bad side—if you strive to better your skills constantly.

You have to learn to ignore the very beautiful in hopes of capturing the best or to bypass the ordinary in order to attain the elusive perspective.

Here is a beautiful scene made even more so by the evening sun as it descends through the forest canopy. This would make a great background for a compilation with other images, perhaps for a book cover but it lacks a good subject. This is the kind of picture anyone walking by here at this time of day would take but it can't ascend to the ranks of "printable" simply because it isn't interesting enough.

I took this because I hadn't found anything else on this day to capture with my camera and I was getting a bit "trigger happy". It happens and I'm not ashamed of the resulting image but I have to be honest with myself and realize it's just an ordinary picture, nothing to see here, time to move along.

Skull Ranch

File under "Americana". I came across this awesome, uh, "collection"  while driving the back roads of Clackamas County Oregon. Right at a 90 degree corner in the road I set up in the middle of the street and rushed this image as traffic was coming my way. 

This is art, not the picture but this ranch. I almost titled this shot "Welcome Bigfoot" as this part of the ranch not only shows the aesthetic of the owner but some of their personality as well.

Fun to find such expressions in unexpected places.

Row of Bikes

I captured this image during the Cripple Creek Veteran's Bike Rally this last August. I liked how it turned out a lot except for one thing, that mural in the upper right corner needs a bit more breathing space on the top and right. It used to have more breathing space but due to me being set up in the middle of the street on a steep slope and not having time to adjust properly by the time I adjusted for level in photoshop and cropped accordingly there was nothing left. This may be more "frontiery" than the yellow bike image but still doesn't fit my usual theme.

Bulls Fighting

This picture has become a popular one and I have been asked why it isn't for sale, simple, even though all the elements have come together for this image, a good story, lighting, context, etc. there is one major problem—this image is heavily cropped. These elk were so far away from me that even at a full 300mm zoom (450mm equivalent) I had to crop out most of the picture to get what you see here and as such I can't "embiggen" it. I will work on it some more and see what else can be done but for now it remains a smaller image that I quite enjoy.

From the Simpsons—

"A noble spirit enbiggens  the smallest man" 
- Jebediah Springfield 

Edna Krabappel: "Embiggens"? I never heard that word before I came to Springfield. 
Miss Hoover: I don't know why. It's a perfectly cromulent word.

Elk in Fall Aspen

Who doesn't love the Aspen in all their Fall glory?

Every time I'm driving or walking by a grove like this I'm always looking for wildlife. It's amazing to me how many times I've been close to elk or deer like this and other people going by never even look, their eyes fixed on the black pavement ahead. I've seen road "hunters", their trucks filled to the brim with people, going slow and looking for game and they go right on by never knowing that a herd of elk is just a few yards off the road. The elk just keep on eating, only waiting to see if the vehicle stops and then they'll move away.

I like this picture because of the memories it holds for me but the only story here is that a herd of elk is happy and eating—a nice story to be sure but not one that excites the imagination. Oh well, I'll keep looking through the trees trying to find that elusive photo where all the elements come together and I can make a print out of it.