Giant 4-O'clock on Old 395

Here’s another one from my trip to Owens Valley taken on May 17. The exposure time was something over 30-seconds. The foreground flowers were light-painted from random angles over the exposure interval, using a high-CRI LED flashlight. This was another ‘wind challenged’ shoot. It took about ten exposures to get this one. It seemed Mr. Murphy would send a large gust of wind each time I opened the shutter (although the motion blur in some of those images are kinda interesting).

I believe this may be the exact location mentioned by Paul Duval in his post on May 9 (near the end of the Wildflower Reports sticky at the top of the CANP page). It’s a little difficult to know for sure as there are a number of outcroppings of lava rock near the road along that stretch of Old 395 between Black Rock Springs Rd and Aberdeen where the fence is down. I had to drive the road a couple times to find it. In case anyone else wants to find this spot, it is on Old 395, 0.4 miles south of the junction with Division Creek Rd on the west side of the road. As Paul mentioned, there were other small roads around this area that were also good (at that time) for Giant 4-O’clocks. Although this image was taken 2-weeks ago, the 4-O’clocks (about five bushes in this spot) were very fresh looking with a number of unopened buds…so considering the extended flower season this year from the cool spring weather, some may still blooming. If not, I’m sure there are still lupine and other wildflowers at higher elevations along Division Creek Rd that would be worth the trip.

Also, the wonderful oak grove beside Division Creek at the end of the little dirt, two-track spur road (going west from upper Division Creek Rd) was a beautiful place to have lunch. I took a few HDR series of the oaks pointing east with Owens Valley far below (broken sun and cumulous clouds over the valley). They have been a good test for comparing Photoshop CS5 to Photomatix with regard to ghost removal of the moving leaves and clouds. Based on early tests, I can say that neither de-ghosting algorithm is 100% effective. CS5 is somewhat better than Photomatix in this case. But I prefer the ‘fusion’ method in Photomatix for its much more natural look, which can’t be easily achieve with classic HDR tone mapping methods (Photoshop can not perform the fusion method).

If anyone has more recent wildflower information on this area, please post it here or in the Wildflower sticky up top.

Thanks,
Bob

Fantastic! Such beautiful light. It looks like a studio shot.

Thank you, John. I think the 'studio lighting' effect on the foreground flowers is due to the fact that I rapidly moved the flashlight around to illuminate the them from many angles during the long exposure. This resulted in a similar effect to using a large diffuser close to the subject, typically used in studio lighting. I also did some wide exposure bracketing of this scene without light painting. Unfortunately, the sky would blowout before the flowers and dark lava rock in the FG was properly exposed. I'm experimenting with combining these exposures with either HDR (fusion method) software. Or, maybe better in this case, blending them in Photoshop.

BTW, I'm also experimenting with different watermark methods for on-line images. Any opinions on the watermark appearance in this image...too obtrusive, opacity level, font size, position on page? I have changed to using the © symbol which reduces the footprint.

Thanks for any comments.

Dave great image and very creative use of light painting and if the group of lavav rock was within bottle thowing distance of the road you found the spot. Glad you did. The orange in the sky and the purple flowers are a fantastic combo.

PAul

Paul, thanks for the comments and the location info---it saved a lot of searching. I also followed your advice for the lupine on Whitney Portal Road (see earlier post). The Giant 4-O'clocks were one of the sunset shots I had pre-visualized while driving up 395.

In fact, the lava outcrop was about 20 ft from the road. The fence was 'mostly' down for about 50 ft in just that section. I say 'mostly' because the barbwire was about 3-inches off the ground when I tried to run back to the truck in the dark to get my flashlight. If anybody visits that spot, they may find bits of my pant leg and a little blood on the wire! Luckily, I wasn't carring the important thing...my camera!

BTW, the name is Bob.

Robert, I like this image better than your earlier post. I think the light painting works well with this image. Interesting contrast with the great colors in the sky. Best Regards.

Thanks for the kind words, MIchael. Concering the lupine image, that's why I posted it first...I had doubts about the processing.

This one just seemed to pop-out during post.

Bob

Bob,

Have you had you tetanus shot? I stepped on a nail in Goldfield Nevada and had to get one.. Just a thought.

Paul

Good point, Paul. I had one about three years ago and they're good for ten years. Thanks for asking.