Over the last month or so, a few people have expressed curiosity about what I'd shot over the summer. I thought I'd wait until the fall-color shots died down, and that seems to have happened for the time being.
Here's a quick recap, although as I alluded to in my follow-up comments in the thread about the monthly shot from Chaco, I don't feel like I've done that much good work recently. One way or another, it doesn't feel like things are clicking for me right now. I'm still glad to be getting out, and hope to get out of the creative funk soon, but I'm not there yet. (It may, however, simply be a "down" year after a really good year last year, but I'd rather hope that I'm good rather than lucky...)
If you don't already know, I'm a high school physics teacher in my day job and take the summers to camp, backpack, travel, and photograph. Not in that order. I live in central Utah and (in the summers) split my time between chasing monsoon weather in the redrock country and backpacking the mountains.
Comments and critique are welcome. Comments about getting through a creative lull are also welcome, although I acknowledge that the best thing is to get out and work more.
In June I headed down to Zion to try to find some sweet light in the Narrows near the solstice. No success yet, but I'll be back down there next summer to try again.
I actually met up with Kane for this trip down to Moab in mid-July. It was great to hang out with a like-minded photographer, shoot, and talk shop. We both introduced each other to some new areas, and this morning was Kane's first time at Dead Horse... In subsequent threads, some people have said that Dead Horse isn't that great of a location (expensive and limited), but if you get the right conditions and light, it can't be beat.
I've never seen a sunset like this at Bryce before, and I doubt I'll see it again. I headed down there with my wife for a brief trip just to get away for the weekend; the first evening, I hadn't expected anything for sunset and so she and I hiked the rim trail over to Fairyland Point and saw some very nice light on the high plains to the north of the park. I was a little disappointed that I hadn't brought the camera for that hike, but the intent for that hike was to spend some time together, so it didn't bother me too much. My wife seemed more disappointed than me; Bryce is one of her favorite places.
The next evening, it looked like we were going to get skunked for the sunset since there was a solid line of clouds to the west. As it got closer and closer to sunset, though, I could see a small hole in the clouds near where the sun had set the day before. I told her I wanted to head out to Bryce Point just to see if anything would happen. Since it was drizzling cold rain and windy, I expected her to stay in camp, but she came out with me... to see an incredible sunset. We didn't get the gap lighting, but the setting sun backlit all of those rain clouds, giving some of the most "monsoon" colors I've ever seen. We headed in to Ruby's Inn for hot chocolate after that, and everyone was buzzing about the sunset.
So I guess a great sunset at Bryce isn't impossible...
Not too long after that, I headed up to Wyoming to do a backpack in the Wind Rivers, one of the great little-known mountain ranges in the West. I got a late start that day and checked out some back roads near Florissant National Monument, so I was late (very late) getting to Pinedale. I did stop off along the way to shoot the moonrise, just a short bit after sunset.
I guess I should have known what I was in for on the backpack given the color here, but I don't always pick up on the clues.
Cirque along the Continental Divide, Wind River Mountains.
After two days of hiking, I made it up to my destination near the Continental Divide. This was taken the first afternoon I arrived; shortly after that, it started getting hazy and the contrast and colors started to wash out.
Posted by David Kingham on October 17, 2012 at 11:58 PM
I've been in the same creative slump as well Mark, I was feeling pretty down on my fall color trip, I happened to bring the book 'The War of Art' with me. If you haven't read it, you must, now. I'm certainly not 'cured', but it helped me get off my ass to keep doing the work and eventually I started making better images. Good luck, it's a battle we have to fight everyday.
By the next morning, the haze and smoke from the forest fires in Idaho had cut almost any possibility of great images. Not only that, but on a day hike up to and over the divide, I could see active/fresh smoke about twelve to fifteen miles away to the North, on the East side of the range. I bailed. Packed up and hiked out.
Since I was so close to Jackson already, I headed up there for a few days. I thought I'd see if the Tetons were any better. They weren't. They were worse. This particular evening, though, we had enough rain during the afternoon to help settle some of the smoke and the remaining mist from the rainstorm was lit up as the sun descended behind the Tetons. Happy to have this one.
Rainbow over the "little grand canyon", San Rafael Swell, Utah.
This is almost my photographic "backyard"; it's only 1:45 from driveway to campsite and it's the closest redrock. I headed over here during faculty orientation when it looked like we had the (next) morning free of meetings. Drove over, enjoyed sunset, camped, shot sunrise and this rainbow, drove back to meetings in the afternoon. Sometimes you have to push it a little bit.
My last free weekend before starting teaching again, I headed down to Moab for one more try at a great image from Green River Overlook. I'm addicted to that location. Didn't get anything from there, but I liked this sunrise shot taken near Mesa Arch.
Before I headed home that afternoon, I took this shot of the approaching rains. It's not a great shot, but something about it calls to me. I feel like this shot and the Tetons shot have (similar?) potential, but I can't figure out what to do with the processing, or even what I want to do with the processing.
Thanks for the comment. I haven't yet read "The War of Art"; up until now, I've been reading and re-reading Ted Orland's "Art and Fear", which I think is similar. I've certainly heard of "The War of Art", though. It gets recommended with some regularity. I think I'll take that advice and head over to Amazon and pick it up.
It is a constant struggle to make images that are beautiful, true to both the location, and true to yourself. It sure is great when it works, though.
I love the image with the warm canyon walls and a bluish stream running through it and of course Dead Horse Point with the shadows. There are a lot of different images of a lot of different places on this page. I would consider concentrating on one area so you aren't spreading yourself around so much. This will allow you to really connect with the place and learn all of its nuances about light, form and texture. Spend some time there, or even a summer and really learn to love the place. I guarantee you it will show in your images and transform your photography. Also give yourself a break, this was a tough year for landscape photography . Nice work Mark!
Posted by Larry Douglas on October 18, 2012 at 11:39 AM
Very nice work Mark and thanks for sharing. I think Dean has a good idea. I met a family in the Indian Peaks area in Colorado a couple of summers ago. The parent were both school teachers and, with their two children, spent each summer in a different national park. That year they were back packing and camping in RMNP and the Indian Peaks Wilderness area. I fell in love with that idea and wished I could have joined the family on their summer journey.
About your funk .. I wish I could shoot photo like yours, funk or other wise. They are great!
Hi Mark, I think it’s been a very tough year for shooting grand scenic’s. You’re a grand scenic kind of guy, thus your addiction to the pano. There’s been too much wildfire smoke and basically zero clarity in the atmosphere to get clean shots. I personally don’t get any satisfaction whatsoever of a hazy atmosphere so I had to change the way I shoot this season. Your trip to the Wind Rivers is a huge commitment to show up in all that smoke. So I sympathize with you. If there’s a grand scenic place, its got to be the Wind Rivers!
I don’t know if you had to change plans this season because of the smoke but I changed plans over and over. That’s certainly something that we cannot control and I guarantee you that limited your “keepers” this season.
Looking at your latest images; your Bryce, Dead Horse Point shots are excellent. I think your Wind Rivers and Teton comps are excellent but as I alluded to earlier, I have trouble with the hazy conditions.
We still have Zion to shoot in a few weeks so let’s go out with a bang.
Posted by John Mumaw on October 18, 2012 at 9:04 PM
There are far too many images posted here to comment on each of them, but if these are an indication of a 'creative funk', then we should all be so funky!
Seriously, I think you had a very productive summer with some fine images to add to your portfolio.
'Sunset Behind The Tetons' could use a bit of a processing boost, but 'Rain Over The Desert' looks mighty fine as is (well...perhaps a small boost of Vibrance).
I used to shoot more intimate/small scenes and intellectually I know that I should work on them again, if only to maintain some flexibility. Most of my fall color shots are of that type. Kane's right, though, that once I started stitching panoramics, that's what's been calling to me and what I try to plan out.
Intellectually I know that there's some good work in there, but I'm left feeling disappointed because [1] other time-conflicts got in the way even though my career choice was designed to give me summers off, [2] I had specific shots I was looking for that I didn't get, and [3] I had an amazing summer last year that was hard to match/top. See this and this for the ridiculous awesomeness of last summer.
Dean and Larry, interesting that you should mention that. Most of the time I do think that my approach is to balance working areas that I know or am working on long-term with some new exploration. Perhaps I need to push that farther towards staying in one place longer or more often.
Kane, I just wanted to get in some backpacking in high mountains by that point in the summer. Had I though more about the smoke, I would have still gone but thought seriously about taking only a point-and-shoot and covered more miles in higher terrain. I do think I need to learn from Jack Brauer for some of his mountain compositions, though, to get more depth back into my images. We've got Zion coming up, I'm headed out to San Francisco and the coast for Thanksgiving, and then I've got some ideas for winter. I'm not stopping any time soon.
John, I'd like to push the processing farther on both the Tetons and "Rain over the Desert", but the highlight tones are pretty delicate. If I take them any farther than I have, strange magenta and green hues start showing up. I'm not 100% sure that that's not an artifact of PhotoShop downsizing the image to screen size. But if it isn't, I need to learn some adjustments beyond simple curves.
To anyone else, don't feel like you have to comment on all of the images. I'd be happy to hear about individual ones as well.
Thanks for the kind comments.
Posted by Stan Rose on October 22, 2012 at 12:20 PM
Nice stuff, Mark. The deadhorse sunrise and tetons sunset are my favs, lots of drama there. Ive taken similar photos of rain showers; they look awesome in person, just don't translate well to photos and there's not much you can do about it. If you want some inspiration there, check out this from ex NPN'r Nic Wegner: http://vimeo.com/50774025
some great stuff at about the half way point.
I just bought a macro lens and im ready to spend some time away from the grand scenic stuff--too little time, too many photos!
Discussion
21 repliesHere's a quick recap, although as I alluded to in my follow-up comments in the thread about the monthly shot from Chaco, I don't feel like I've done that much good work recently. One way or another, it doesn't feel like things are clicking for me right now. I'm still glad to be getting out, and hope to get out of the creative funk soon, but I'm not there yet. (It may, however, simply be a "down" year after a really good year last year, but I'd rather hope that I'm good rather than lucky...)
If you don't already know, I'm a high school physics teacher in my day job and take the summers to camp, backpack, travel, and photograph. Not in that order. I live in central Utah and (in the summers) split my time between chasing monsoon weather in the redrock country and backpacking the mountains.
Comments and critique are welcome. Comments about getting through a creative lull are also welcome, although I acknowledge that the best thing is to get out and work more.
These are also available larger and with a black background at
http://markhespenheide.com/summer2012/summer.htm
In June I headed down to Zion to try to find some sweet light in the Narrows near the solstice. No success yet, but I'll be back down there next summer to try again.
I actually met up with Kane for this trip down to Moab in mid-July. It was great to hang out with a like-minded photographer, shoot, and talk shop. We both introduced each other to some new areas, and this morning was Kane's first time at Dead Horse... In subsequent threads, some people have said that Dead Horse isn't that great of a location (expensive and limited), but if you get the right conditions and light, it can't be beat.
Same trip. Still addicted to stitched panoramas...
I've never seen a sunset like this at Bryce before, and I doubt I'll see it again. I headed down there with my wife for a brief trip just to get away for the weekend; the first evening, I hadn't expected anything for sunset and so she and I hiked the rim trail over to Fairyland Point and saw some very nice light on the high plains to the north of the park. I was a little disappointed that I hadn't brought the camera for that hike, but the intent for that hike was to spend some time together, so it didn't bother me too much. My wife seemed more disappointed than me; Bryce is one of her favorite places.
The next evening, it looked like we were going to get skunked for the sunset since there was a solid line of clouds to the west. As it got closer and closer to sunset, though, I could see a small hole in the clouds near where the sun had set the day before. I told her I wanted to head out to Bryce Point just to see if anything would happen. Since it was drizzling cold rain and windy, I expected her to stay in camp, but she came out with me... to see an incredible sunset. We didn't get the gap lighting, but the setting sun backlit all of those rain clouds, giving some of the most "monsoon" colors I've ever seen. We headed in to Ruby's Inn for hot chocolate after that, and everyone was buzzing about the sunset.
So I guess a great sunset at Bryce isn't impossible...
Not too long after that, I headed up to Wyoming to do a backpack in the Wind Rivers, one of the great little-known mountain ranges in the West. I got a late start that day and checked out some back roads near Florissant National Monument, so I was late (very late) getting to Pinedale. I did stop off along the way to shoot the moonrise, just a short bit after sunset.
I guess I should have known what I was in for on the backpack given the color here, but I don't always pick up on the clues.
After two days of hiking, I made it up to my destination near the Continental Divide. This was taken the first afternoon I arrived; shortly after that, it started getting hazy and the contrast and colors started to wash out.
By the next morning, the haze and smoke from the forest fires in Idaho had cut almost any possibility of great images. Not only that, but on a day hike up to and over the divide, I could see active/fresh smoke about twelve to fifteen miles away to the North, on the East side of the range. I bailed. Packed up and hiked out.
Since I was so close to Jackson already, I headed up there for a few days. I thought I'd see if the Tetons were any better. They weren't. They were worse. This particular evening, though, we had enough rain during the afternoon to help settle some of the smoke and the remaining mist from the rainstorm was lit up as the sun descended behind the Tetons. Happy to have this one.
This is almost my photographic "backyard"; it's only 1:45 from driveway to campsite and it's the closest redrock. I headed over here during faculty orientation when it looked like we had the (next) morning free of meetings. Drove over, enjoyed sunset, camped, shot sunrise and this rainbow, drove back to meetings in the afternoon. Sometimes you have to push it a little bit.
My last free weekend before starting teaching again, I headed down to Moab for one more try at a great image from Green River Overlook. I'm addicted to that location. Didn't get anything from there, but I liked this sunrise shot taken near Mesa Arch.
Before I headed home that afternoon, I took this shot of the approaching rains. It's not a great shot, but something about it calls to me. I feel like this shot and the Tetons shot have (similar?) potential, but I can't figure out what to do with the processing, or even what I want to do with the processing.
Again, larger images are over at http://markhespenheide.com/summer2012/summer.htm if you like.
Thanks for looking.
Thanks for the comment. I haven't yet read "The War of Art"; up until now, I've been reading and re-reading Ted Orland's "Art and Fear", which I think is similar. I've certainly heard of "The War of Art", though. It gets recommended with some regularity. I think I'll take that advice and head over to Amazon and pick it up.
It is a constant struggle to make images that are beautiful, true to both the location, and true to yourself. It sure is great when it works, though.
About your funk .. I wish I could shoot photo like yours, funk or other wise. They are great!
I don’t know if you had to change plans this season because of the smoke but I changed plans over and over. That’s certainly something that we cannot control and I guarantee you that limited your “keepers” this season.
Looking at your latest images; your Bryce, Dead Horse Point shots are excellent. I think your Wind Rivers and Teton comps are excellent but as I alluded to earlier, I have trouble with the hazy conditions.
We still have Zion to shoot in a few weeks so let’s go out with a bang.
Seriously, I think you had a very productive summer with some fine images to add to your portfolio.
'Sunset Behind The Tetons' could use a bit of a processing boost, but 'Rain Over The Desert' looks mighty fine as is (well...perhaps a small boost of Vibrance).
I used to shoot more intimate/small scenes and intellectually I know that I should work on them again, if only to maintain some flexibility. Most of my fall color shots are of that type. Kane's right, though, that once I started stitching panoramics, that's what's been calling to me and what I try to plan out.
Intellectually I know that there's some good work in there, but I'm left feeling disappointed because [1] other time-conflicts got in the way even though my career choice was designed to give me summers off, [2] I had specific shots I was looking for that I didn't get, and [3] I had an amazing summer last year that was hard to match/top. See this and this for the ridiculous awesomeness of last summer.
Dean and Larry, interesting that you should mention that. Most of the time I do think that my approach is to balance working areas that I know or am working on long-term with some new exploration. Perhaps I need to push that farther towards staying in one place longer or more often.
Kane, I just wanted to get in some backpacking in high mountains by that point in the summer. Had I though more about the smoke, I would have still gone but thought seriously about taking only a point-and-shoot and covered more miles in higher terrain. I do think I need to learn from Jack Brauer for some of his mountain compositions, though, to get more depth back into my images. We've got Zion coming up, I'm headed out to San Francisco and the coast for Thanksgiving, and then I've got some ideas for winter. I'm not stopping any time soon.
John, I'd like to push the processing farther on both the Tetons and "Rain over the Desert", but the highlight tones are pretty delicate. If I take them any farther than I have, strange magenta and green hues start showing up. I'm not 100% sure that that's not an artifact of PhotoShop downsizing the image to screen size. But if it isn't, I need to learn some adjustments beyond simple curves.
To anyone else, don't feel like you have to comment on all of the images. I'd be happy to hear about individual ones as well.
Thanks for the kind comments.
http://vimeo.com/50774025
some great stuff at about the half way point.
I just bought a macro lens and im ready to spend some time away from the grand scenic stuff--too little time, too many photos!