Autumn Leaves

Well, every once and awhile I get the urge to make a video out of some of my photos.  This video is a collection of my photos from the Fall of 2011 which I converted over to Impasto art format for large prints.  Our area of California this fall had a fantastic display of Fall foliage and it really made for some beautiful scenes.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making the video. 

The Trees of Modesto California November 2011

What a spectacular view residents of Modesto received this year.  There was no need to fly to the East Coast or New England to see vibrant fall colored trees.  The Central Valley of California weather has been just perfect for creating the reds, oranges, rust, and yellow colors on the local trees.  I spent a recent afternoon just wandering the streets round my home and taking photos.  This is my favorite time of the year for tree color and this year I was not disappointed one bit. 

The picture at the top of this blog I converted from a regular photo to a watercolor.  With such great views I'm considering doing a calendar of converted photos for 2012.  Keep an eye out at: http://www.redbubble.com/explore/Images+by%20William%20Moore; or look for some of the converted pictures at: http://wacm3.redbubble.com/works.  
This is a great time of the year to get out and just take photos. 

One of the best photographers

OK... so this is a proud dad writing about one of the best photographers he knows.  Amber Grover of "Grover Style Photography" (along with her husband/partner Luke) are the best in the business.  I've been taking photos for well over 45 years (not as a professional though) and Amber (my youngest daughter) has far exceeded anything I could ever have hoped to accomplish.  Take a look at her photos at: http://www.groverstyle.com/ (and her blogs at:  http://www.groverstyleblog.com ).  She also conducts both beginning and advanced workshops (I've taken her classes and even after all the photos I've taken, I have learned a lot about taking people shots).  Each of her classes focuses on the needs of the photographers in her sessions (photographers meaning people wanting to know more on how to use their cameras to create images they would be proud of)..  Amber calls these classes: "SnapShot Saturdays - Photography Workshops" and she keeps the classes small so that each person will be able to receive her individual attention.  http://www.groverstyle.com/#/snapshots-home-page . 

Well, that is the end of my shameless plug for my wonderfully fantastic photographer daughter...  She'd be "wonderfully fantastic" even if she didn't take photos (just as my son (Will) and other daughter (Heather) are).
ENJOY......

Don't forget to check out my other photo sites:

My photos and blog are located at:

http://bmoore3photos.blogspot.com  (original photo web site)

http://poppie1945.blogspot.com  (new photo web site)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yInkr1soPVE  (my YouTube videos of photos with music)…  8 videos total (at this time) – Ireland, France, Amgen Tour California, places in the USA, and various other events…..

I have some also listed at http://wacm3.redbubble.com/works …

Looking back while looking ahead....

Every once and awhile I like to go back into my photo files and look at some of the photos I've taken and compare them with the work I do today.  As with so many photographers (those of us who just like taking photos all the time) I think about where I was at and what I was doing when I took some of these photos.  I try to recreate the process (the what, when, where, how, and most important... why).  Many of my photos are just a matter of luck... the right weather, light, being at the right place at the right time and I still am surprised by what I have managed to capture.  I look at the photos that I created with controlled lighting, special effects, props, and staging and again I find myself smiling at what I've been able to create just "goofing" around.

Much of my photographic skills are just plain luck... I can live with that.  It seems I do just as well relying on "luck" as I do when I spend countless hours planning and prepping only to have nature do just the opposite of what I thought would happen (you can't always rely on the whether report or "someone said" when it comes to landscape photography.  So I just go with what happens and make the best of it.  That attitude has forced me to look beyond what I expect and has opened my eyes to looking at the world in all its variables.  A planned trip to the city only to find heavy fog...  just another opportunity to take photos and challenge myself to think more creatively.  Flat sky?  No longer a problem!  Hazy views....  there is a solution.

The point is....  with every photo experience there is a challenge... it's what you do with that challenge that enables you to be more creative.  Best advice I can give a person who is just starting out taking photographs is to not be discouraged... just go out and shoot.  In no time you'll start to find ways to capture great shots in spite of the conditions.

Looking back at time... closing of my photos for sale.

For the past couple of years (or so) I have had a web site where I displayed and sold photos.  As of September 11, 2011 that site is closed and I no longer will sell photos on-line.  I saved a video I had made that was on that account and it gives a short overview of some of my work.  It's fun (for me) going back and looking at some of the photos I took two, three, five, even ten years ago.   Remembering were I was and the stories behind the photos.  I hope you enjoy this short video.

Looking back at time... closing of my photos for sale

For the past couple of years (or so) I have had a web site where I displayed and sold photos.  As of September 11, 2011 that site is closed and I no longer will sell photos on-line.  I saved a video I had made that was on that account and it gives a short overview of some of my work.  It's fun (for me) going back and looking at some of the photos I took two, three, five, even ten years ago.   Remembering were I was and the stories behind the photos.  I hope you enjoy this short video. 

Waterfall Zion National Park - Utah and beyond

This has been a fun summer.  Spent three weeks going through eleven states and visiting parks, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, canyons and high Rocky peaks.  The first photo is of a composition of six photos of a very tall waterfall in Zion National Park in Utah.  Because of the narrow canyon I was in, it was impossible to capture this photo with a super-wide angle lens (unless you like distortion and some very strange optics) so I positioned myself at a point where I could capture the photos in sequence without loosing prospective, then when I got back to my computer, stitched the photos together into a panoramic image.  Thank goodness there are digital programs that make this process easier.  In the "old days" this would have taken a lot of work in the darkroom, today, well, about 20 minutes on the computer. 

This second photo is from Bryce Canyon Utah... 

Jumping a few states (which I'll be posting more on later) is a shot in New London, Minnesota.  It is a spillway on the Crow River.  It's a small town with lots of charm and things to do.  Clean and with a sense of community pride (you can tell by the shops, the parks, and just the way people treat each other)...The spillway forms a lake on the edge of town and the colors are what you get...   It's located in Minnesota's western lake country...

Now, heading west again from Minnesota we stopped to look at the Presidents at Mt. Rushmore (over the past 35 (plus years) my wife Jeanne and I (and many times our children) have visited this site.  Never seem to tire of it.  I've shot at Rushmore with film and digital, from far away to very upclose... early morning, in the rain, on hot summer days, and at night...  No, never get tired of this view. 

 

Well.... I'll be adding more over then next few weeks.  Please come back and take a look at some of the newer changes.  http://bmoore3photos.blogspot.com

Moon shot December 20-21, 2010

After a couple of months I finally decided that it was time to go back and look at some of the photos I shot back in December 2010.  This photo was taken late on the night of December 20, 2010 (the eclipse lasted into the early hours of the 21st; full eclipse was around 12:15 a.m.).  That night was just one of those nights that comes along (as they say) once in a blue moon (even though the full moon was orangish).  It was the first total lunar eclipse in almost three years and the first to happen in a long time as a full moon and coinciding with the date of the December solstice (Winter solstice).  I didn't stay up for the total eclipse as it went on for close to six hours (and it was really cold out), but this photo (a composite) was shot over a one-half hour time span (camera on my tripod and set at about three minute intervals - manually timed so the exact time is not exactly three minutes between each shot).  I like to try different styles of photography and from time to time I set my eyes to the sky and try to catch what nature presents.  I'll be out in the night sky (weather allowing) during the next two lunar eclipses (which will also be total) and occurring on June 15, 2011 and again next December on the 10th (2011).  It will be interesting to do a comparison between summer and winter lunar eclipses.  Stay tuned.

There is just something about panorama

January 22, 2011… it should be cold and it just was not.  Well, not unless you were in the Central Valley of California enduring the very thick and frigid fog.  After days of seeing fog, the call to the warm sun was just too hard to resist. 

Early in the morning it was off to the Sierra’s.  Taking my wife and my two oldest grandchildren to Dodge Ridge for a day of snowboarding, I dropped them off and headed back down to Pinecrest Lake for a quick few shots. 

The lake was semi-frozen (with a very thin crust of ice on the top and dozens of signs warning people to stay off the unstable ice). Ignoring the fact that the sun was directly over the south side of the lake, I spent a couple of hours walking the north shore from the west.  This panoramic shot was from the western edge of the lake at the Pinecrest beach area. 

The warning sign said it all: “WARNING: Unstable Ice & Snow – KEEP OFF”.  With that kind of a warning, and the fact that you could visibly see cracks in the ice, you would think that people would pay more attention to the warm conditions and how the affected the thin ice.  On my shoreline trek I saw people walking their dogs and following the rules of “Keep Off the ice”…  Just before I left there was a young couple with their three small (very small) dogs… Suddenly, SPLASH!  In went one of the dogs.  Yelp! Yelp! Then a second and a third SPLASH!!!  I was about thirty feet away when I heard the young woman screaming to her dogs to get out of the water.  The man kept shouting “Where did he go?”  As I got closer, one, then two, then all three appeared between the rocks… shivering and shaking.  I’m sure glad the small dogs got out when they did as the air may have been warm, the water was not.  The guy was just seconds away from trying to reach into the freezing water to get them…  I think he saw the water was deeper than he expected and chose not to chance it.  

It was an exciting few moments at Pinecrest Lake that day.  The warning signs said it all:  “Unstable Ice & Snow – KEEP OFF”.   Well, all’s well that ends well.  The views were fantastic.