Spiral in fall – Three years of patience

I don’t know why…but I like leaves change more than flower season in spring. Maybe because of my personality? It is like after excitements of the short summer, trees set up climax with the perfect stage effect of yellow leaves. After the drama, long enduring winter is waiting. That’s is the reason I visit Lake O’Hara every year.

I tried this idea of flowing needles for 3 years, and eventually, I got a successful image. I used Lee big stopper neutral density filter and achieved 160 sec of shutter speed.

Fall photographic workshop by Jeff Bingham and Hiro in Kootenay Plains

In this year, many wonderful things have already happened to me. Pretty successful solo gallery show, winning 1st place of national photo competition, and 2nd place for image of Japan photo contest. Now, I would like to announce something big happening in this fall.

Jeff Bingham and myself will be hosting a Landscape Photography workshop in the Kootenay Plains on September 26-28. The workshop is titled “Golden Hour Golden Season” since Kootenay plains is covered by beautiful yellow leaves of aspen trees at the end of September. Also Abraham Lake is never be bluer. 

I like visiting Kootenay plains since scenery on Highway 11 from Saskatchewan River Crossing to the end of Abraham Lake is full of variety, from marsh along at eh beginning of  Saskatchewan river, forest renewal after old wildfire, (some areas have been totally destroyed by recent wild fire, we should not access these areas), dynamic cliff showing intriguing lines and curves of stratum. Then typical view of rocky mountains along the Abraham lake. I always find something new to photograph. I never be tired of Kootenay plains.   

In this workshop, Jeff and I will help develop your artistic vision. This is our main focus but also we will demonstrate HDR, long exposure photography, panorama and tilt and shift techniques. Also you can try out some high-end Nikon and Canon lenses including 300mm f2.8 and Tilt and shift lenses. Thank you for the Camera Store. Sheets are limited to only 8 people. If you are interested, please check out our webpage for more details and register. Hope see you in the gem of Canadian Rockies.

Golden Hour Golden Season workshop in Kootenay Plains

 

One of my winning images  – PPOC national photo competition 2014

It is not “beautiful” sunset but… – Overlapping Memories

As I mentioned before I sometimes have precise vision of final image before I press a shutter button at the scene, but also I often just capture a scenery without particular idea of final image. Occasionally, images are just only “beautiful” and did not speak to me regardless of how process the image, but occasionally my imagination grows while I am editing the image.

This is one of the such type of my photos. I took this photo in Jasper last year. I was shooting sunset on the mountains and reflection. While I was waiting for the sky turned to beautiful orange, this scene came to my eyes from the position I stood to different angle. I changed to long distance lens and took some shots. Even I did not use a tripod for this image.

I edited the “beautiful” sunset shot but it did not speak to me even though I took hours for processing. Then I looked at this image. It somehow appealed to me. Although I needed some trials and errors before I got an idea of editing map to the final image, I like this image much better than the sunset image….maybe because this reflect my personality? The sunset image is staying in a hard drive; this image was exhibited at my Wabi-sabi wanderlust show in February and sold.

 

 

By the way, I am on process of rebuilding my business and my business name will be changed to Wide Bright Sun photography from Wide Bright Pass Photography. I hope I can announce my new web site before long.

 

Fall trip to Kootenay Plains

Discovering a new location is always exciting for photographers. I visited Kootenay Plains first time in fall last year. Along Highway 11, I saw variety of sceneries. I am sure I can spend days to explore over there. In fall, aspen trees in prairies type of open land is beautiful and kind of unique to me. A difference from Jasper is I saw leaves of aspen trees turned to not only yellow but also orange in Kootenay plains. This year, i visited Kootenay Plains again. This year was wired. I saw both yellow and still green. Also some aspen trees had already lost their leaves.

Some people say not to visit the same place again and explore new places. But I like revisiting familiar locations. Things changes year by year; also something never changes. The picture on left is taken in 2012 and one on right is in 2013.

By the way, Kootenay Plains is known to be quite windy. When I see motions and nice cloud pattern, it is time to try Lee Big Stopper ND filter. This image was from the trip in 2012, last year.

Windy day in Kootenay Plains
by
Hiroaki Kobayashi

Please click the image for larger size.

A new image form the gallery show

When I publish a new photo, I occasionally feel not sure what kind of responses to the photo I will get from viewers. Currently, my gallery show is going at the Higher Ground cafe in Kensington in Calgary, Alberta. This is the first time to showcase this image takne in Lake O’Hara in Yoho National park, BC in 2012. I was not quite confident since it is a little different from what I have mostly done before. Its mood is so different from my other photos. I guess that is why I was a little anxious to exhibit this photo. However, this image was one of two photos my friends picked as their favorite photos. When reviewing my album, I noticed my style is constantly changing; images from 2012 are somewhat different from 2011 even I traveled to the same places.

For larger size, please click the photo.

 

Another reason people like this photo would be thye may see quality of the presentation o of the photo. I asked Resolve Photo to print and Framed on Fifth to frame as usual. They do great job.

By the way. the gallery show is going until the end of April. The map to the Higher Ground Cafe is here.

Autumn landscape in Lake O’Hara – Large format slide film

Another photo from film, but this time is 4×5 color slide. This image was taken at my last autumn trip. When I visisted lake O’Hara, peak of larch trees was a little passed. But I still got some good… actually, some great shots. I will post them in future posts. For this post, I respect the media so I kept the digital processing minimum and only global adjustments were applied. It is nature of slide film. I heard large format sizes of Fuji Velvia had been discountinued in Europe. I hope the supply of the such a legendary film will last longer in Canada.

Lake McArthur area in Autumn by Hiroaki Kobayashi

More large format stuff here:

• Evening with Large Format Cameras (1)
• Evening with Large Format Cameras (2)
• Panorama by 4×5 camera
• A Socky Sock – Worth it!
• Gallery show at Mount Royal University – Size matters, but be gentle (man)

 

Film is not dead (3) – Borrowing someone’s eyes

It’s been long time since the last blog. This is the last episode from “Film is not dead” and this time is not quite about film, more toward to a topic about style making . When we had the film development session, Samantha Chrysanthou did not have film to develop so she tried one of my film. I have just picked up the film randomly so I did not know when and where the film was taken.

One morning, while I was JUST photographing the sunrise at lake Louise, Alberta, I saw one guy carrying large tripod and Hasselblad was looking for an open spot. Yes, it was FILM Hassel, one of the most prestigious cameras.  The location was quite busy with photographers. The best time of the morning passed and I started packing my gear. He approached to my spot and IMPATIENTLY waiting for me leaving. Then as soon as I moved my tripod, he set his tripod on the completely same spot and raised it to the same height. I shacked my head. The hundreds of similar images of the location can be found in Google images and more importantly the best moment was long gone. I spoke to myself his Hassey would cry.

So after the film was developed by Sam, I found that the images on the roll were ones I took in Jasper, Alberta last autumn. The trip was hard since I was out of luck of the weather. I visited Pyramid lake in the morning, aiming to shoot the gorgeous sunrise and orange color on the Pyramid mountain but weather quickly turned to gray. I know Photographer’s saying “No bad light”, but also it is true overcastted sky with no cloud pattern is not encouraging. Anyway, I had to change my strategy. Then I was thinking of Sam’s images. Her subtle, soft, calm images with a kind of melancholic feel, rather than gougeous and powerful typical landscapes. That motivated me to try something in the difficult situation. The result is, I think, pretty good. The funny part of this anecdote is Sam herself developed the film accidently.

Please click for the larger size.

Do you see the huge difference in the creative approach between the photographer at the lake Louise and myself. I believe the process of developing creative eyes and learning music is not so different. At first, being interested in someone’s works, then we try the same things but usually did not work. Start pursuing the artist’s works more seriously,…sometimes thoroughly analyze their works. Try at the field again and see the some sort of the achievement . After this long process, the artist’s style blends into own style, becomes own flesh. In my case of Jasper, I used Sam’s influence more consciously. It is not stealing. I call this approach “Borrowing someone’s eyes”. Accepting influences is also important, I think. Mick Jaggar stated that ‘You can’t always get what you want” was inspired by “Hey Jude”. I guess that is cool.

Please visit oopoomoo.com to find Sam’s appealing photos.

• Related article: Ethereal Photographic Art Show (6) – Samantha Chrysanthou

Stampede Wstern Gallery show – need a little help from my friends

Since I have to stay in town for this long weekend in Canada, I am (re)- post processing images for the exhibition at the Western Photo Gallery at the Stampede. These images were taken in Lake O’Hara area last year at the same time, and each image is stitched with 5 images by Photoshop CS5.  The first one shows reflection of mountain in the pond. The 2^nd one does not show such a static reflection due to wind and wavy surface of the water. But reflection of trees has a more painterly charactor and impressionism kind of feeling. Interestingly, I did not notice this, until comparing the two images side by side, that the top image is more contrasty and more saturated. The top image, itself has a kind of strong character so it may lead me to add more contrast and saturation unconsciously. On the other hand, the bottom image a little more subtle so it may have made me process the image toward more soft side. What does this tell ya? Although we use many techniques to control conditions of light at a scene, the images opened on a computer monitor first time is kind dull. So we take a lot of time to make photos more attractive. To me, it is not different from wet dark room. My point is this process is strongly affected by mood of image as well as one of a photographer at the location and on a computer. It can be consciously or unconsciously. Don’t you think this is really artistic process?

Actually, I am supposed to submit the 2^nd image since it is the one accepted by the gallery. I do not know which image I like, more precisely to say I do not know which one appeal to viewers. If you were me, which would you pick? Any comments are appreciated.

RELATED POST:

Impact of Photography, and Tone – Lisa Mercer

Roll over the rule of thirds!

Eaug^(9)(11), this truly unusual chord is the one that a famous British rock group used in one of their songs. I wrote about consideration of Rhythm and Light in my previous post. This time let me take the occasion to talk about composition since there was a discussion about composition in one of my photos.

As you may know, the Rule of Thirds is considered to be rule of thumb for composition in photography. I do not have to explain what the rule of thirds here since I think readers already know what it is. About one and half years ago, I traveled to Jasper and was taking pictures at Patricia lake. The water was very quiet and smooth. It was perfect condition to shoot reflection images of Mt. Pyramid. And below is the image I got in the morning. Typical landscape photo based on the rule of third composition.

Then I had a little conversation with a lady who was a professional photographer from Sweden. She showed to me her images which had just taken at the same location with her Nikon D3x. Her image taken by her fisheye lens had Mt. Pyramid on very bottom of the frame and majority of the frame were occupied by interesting shapes of clouds lighten by beautiful morning light. I would say it is rule of tenths composition. It was eye-opening for me. I had not thought about such a way to compose images.

Unfortunately, the moment was gone at the location so I wrapped up the morning shoot. But while I was driving after breakfast, I saw an interesting cloud pattern on the lake. I picked up the widest angle lens, 21mm, and attached polarizer to the lens. This is the photo.

I used layering technique to control contrast, which is the same technique  used for multigrade paper in darkroom.

So what was the discussion about this photo? Some people think the clouds were too dominant in the image, on the other hand other people think it was fine since
the clouds pattern was main subject in this photo. What do you think? Do you think bottom image is more interesting, or do you prefer top one?

My point is the rule of thirds does not make an image interesting. It may be safer to get ribbons at contests, though. I personally do not think about the rule of thirds; I tend think about leading lines and combinations of the shapes in a frame. For a power point, I use golden ratio rather than the rule of thirds. Darwin Wiggett wrote an very useful article “Break the rules” in Outdoor Photography Canada issue 12 Winter 2010.

By the way, which rock group used the wired chord Eaug^(9)(11)? It is The Beatles. The song is “All I’ve got to do” in Album “With the Beatles”. Beatles music is full of unusualness and surprises. Roll over the rule of thirds!

Botany or Landscape photography

This is the photo I took in lake O’Hara in early September. It was my first snow this year. I do not take botany photography since my camera is not capable to take macro lenses.  But still I take pictures of flowers. I think that this image of mine is more like landscape photography rather than botany. 

 

Western Anemone - Lake O'Hara

Now I am waiting for ice and snow covering mountains.