Mt. Rainier, a place of endless wonders (and dramatically different weather patterns)

Sorry for the incredibly late post (or not if you don't know when I went to Mt. Rainier). But I've finally finished process all my Seattle trip photos, this includes the final batch of photos taken at Mt. Rainier (which is the first time I shot more RAW than JPEG). This is also marks the second time I've used Lightroom to process photos almost exclusively. While my poor laptop definitely cannot keep up with Lightroom, I am finally able to get through 200 photos in a reasonable amount of time (roughly half a week) which is much faster than the amount of time I spent on the portraits. This is partly because landscapes are easier to batch process, and also there are less things I can do, it's pretty standard... I mean I do want my landscape photos to still look like photos... so I kept most processing light. The biggest advantage Lightroom has over Picasa is the ability to adjust each color channels independently. For example, if I find a forest photo too "yellow", I can easily shift the yellow hue towards the green. Or if I find the sky too bright, I can easily darken just the blues in the photo. This fine-grained control allows me to have far more control over what "pops" and get rid of the distractions in a photo... I'm finally able to bring out key elements that I want in a way that Picasa could never let me do.

Anyways, back to the trip. Our second day at Mt. Rainier was dramatically different from the first day, the difference was night and day...  Our first day there was mostly raining, overcast, and even snowing. But the second day the sun really came out for a beautiful sunrise and kept clear for at least the most important parts of the day (when my camera was out).

Day One:

From Mt. Rainier National Park Day 1

This is now the Not-quite-1000-dollar photo :). It was for this photo that I swapped out my 24-105 lens (for a wider 10-22 so I can get more of the stream) and then immediately after this photo... proceeded to drop said lens. The original photo is gray, colorless and dull. At the time I didn't have Lightroom so I asked for Joe's help in post processing it. He added some graduated tint, brought up the green saturation and some hue shifts to make the greens come to life. While it's not $1000 (cost of the 24-105 lens) in my mind it is certainly worth $158 (the cost of repair) :).


I like the moodiness of the photo, and the natural frame created by the trees on either side. You see the valley in the middle? Yep, that's where I dropped my lens :).

One of the few highlights of the first day... gorgeous field of wild flowers. I'm a sucker for these kinds of prairie shots, just too bad the sun didn't come out otherwise it'd look amazing :).

Day Two (sorry for the number of photos...):

From Mt. Rainier National Park day 2

First Light. We got up around 5 AM and raced towards Sunrise Camp to catch first light on Mt. Rainier. The clouds started rolling in just as we reached it but I was lucky to get off a few snaps. Unfortunately I didn't really have time to explore and find a better position so I have to live with the trees in the foreground. This shot actually reminds of me post cards from Mt. Rainier, the beautiful pink/purple morning light hitting the fresh snow on Mt. Rainier, set against a deep dark blue sky...


This is now one of my favorite pictures from the day (one of many :p). It reminds me so much of traditional Chinese brush paintings (國畫). I love how the ridges just peak above the clouds, especially that line of mist in the foreground.


This was taken along an easy hike next to Sunrise Camp. It's only about 10-15 mins away from the parking lot where I took the first light photo. If only I had know, I would have ran up here as fast as I could... Oh well (it was icy, I probably would have slipped and broke my camera or something).


One of the stories from Joe McNally's The Moment It Clicks is "Don't pack up your camera until you've left the location". This is certainly true for this shot... I was already heading back to the car (after about 30 mins photographing Mt. Rainier in the cold -- I lost feeling in my hands about 15 mins ago at this point and was basically freezing to death). About half way down, the sun suddenly broke through the clouds lighting the entire scene, the grassy field and Mt. Rainier evenly. Luckily I still had my camera out and got 4 or 5 snaps in before the sun ducked back behind thick clouds and the shot was gone. This is now my favorite shot from the entire trip. Don't pack up until you are in the car, you'll have plenty of time anyways (and much much warmer).


Growing up in Southern California certainly has it's benefits. Getting beautiful morning dew plant shots is not one of them. This was shot in a very overcast day, I popped the flash to give it more light and "pop". In post I shifted the originally yellow hue over to the green and brought out the reds to make this photo feel more peaceful and tranquil.








The above series of photos was taken at Snow Lake. Ironically we were originally going to skip Snow Lake due to limited time (and bad weather, it has been overcast the whole day since sunrise). About half way to Snow Lake is Bench Lake so the plan was to simply stop at Bench Lake and head back. Because JC and I were too busy taking photos along the way, his family and my mom walked ahead and for some reason went on to Snow Lake without waiting for us at Bench Lake (disappointing sight really). A bit confused, JC and I decided to keep going hoping to catch up to them. Another 20 mins or so later we bumped into my mom who has been to Snow lake and decided to walk back saying "Snow lake is so so, not very pretty" but JC's family is still there so we decided to continue on. As fate would have it, as soon as JC and I reached Snow Lake, the skies cleared up (really. like within 2 minutes) and it really felt like discovering paradise that is hidden in some remote location... That sense of wonder, amazement, joy... Since snow lake is hidden away in a valley, there was very little winds creating stunning reflections on its beautiful emerald surface. As if possessed, JC and I immediately picked up our camera and didn't dare take our eyes off the view finder. Click click click, shot after shot, we just couldn't take our fingers off the shutter, afraid the magic would disappear if we stopped (ok ok, we did hike around to see the different angles).  I double stacked 2 filters, 1 graduated ND (to darken the sky a bit) and 1 CPL (to add more saturation to the sky and lake or to increase the strength of the reflections). Within 30 mins, the clouds rolled back in, the sun disappeared along with the emerald color... the moment has passed. Thinking back, if we had walked any faster, we would be like my mom, missing this magical moment... the beauty, the peacefulness, the tranquility at Snow Lake was the most memorable thing for me. As we were leaving, I knew I got the shot, I got what I wanted out of this entire trip, but most importantly, I was happy.

Street photography

So street photography is one of those things people see all the time, but can have a profound emotional impact (at least I always thought so). It's one of those things that I've never tried, always wanted to, just never really forced myself to do it (I've done a few random candid snap shots of strangers before). To me, street photography is just to sort of sit there (or walk if you prefer) and try to catch candid photos of interesting people mostly strangers, but I guess some people prefer to actually talk to random people, ask for permission and try to build a personal connection - this is all great just... I'm too shy to try it. This is actually way harder than it sounds...

1. You should probably use a long lens... you don't want to walk up to the person and just start taking pictures (again, unless you are the type that goes and asks for permission...). Since I just got my 1.4x teleconverter, I decided to give it a shot. My equipment ended up being 20D + 70-200 f/2.8 IS + 1.4x TC so effectively I had like 440mm reach... perfect.
2. Since I didn't ask for permission... that means you probably shouldn't sit there and snap shots of the same person for 5-10 mins... even if you are far away... people tend to notice a giant white lens pointed at you... So I tend to snap 1 or 2 shots before moving on. If I got it, great. If not, oh well. This also meant that you can't sit there and think about composition too much... I usually just shot by instinct and if I think it might be interesting, I take a quick shot and move on.

Since Santa Monica has a farmers market every Wednesdays next to our office, I decided to give it a try there (also to do my photo club assignment). I've walked past it many times and always thought there would be a lot of photo opportunities. There are just a lot of hard working everyday people there, people just trying to make a living, personable people who are more than happy to sell you their fresh produce... the type of people that would greet you warmly as if you are a friend rather than a customer. There is a lot of potential for personal stories at farmers market. Finally, this is Santa Monica... there are always homeless people and they almost always make great photography subjects due to the texture of their face and hair (this really depends on how you feel about photographing them). While I was there, I didn't think I got any usable shots. The colors didn't look right, and the exposure was off by a little bit. Composition was difficult with all the people around you... it just didn't click for me. When I got home and actually looked at the photos, I felt they were too plain. They didn't tell any stories, they didn't evoke any emotions.... they simply recorded reality. About half way through processing the photos, something just... clicked. I was processing a photo of a homeless person with a starbucks cup and decided to deepen the shadows a few notches (which really deepened the background, drown out some details in the shadows) and then bumped up the highlights ever so slightly (this to me seemed to make the subject stand out a little bit more, add more depth to the photo. Because I increased the shadow so much, everything naturally looked a lot more saturated and deeper colors which wasn't natural for a portrait so I decided to drop the saturation a few notches until it looked normal. Then I thought about dropping it even more so the colors look slightly faded out... almost worn and gave the photo a cold grim look to it. This is good since it is the exact type of feeling I wanted to convey for the person. I also noticed he had a very interesting rough beard and hair... his face was also a bit wrinkled and full of texture so I decided to try to bring that out with a layer of sharpen.

The original unaltered image	Deepened the shadow and slight increase in highlight
Desaturated it and washed out the colors	Final crop and sharpen. Also bumped up the brightness slightly

I really liked the resulting effect. It felt dark and gritty. I thought it showed off the toughness of life (and his toughness for surviving, he has that rough look after all) well so I decided to do pretty similar things for a lot of the other photos. The rest of the photos here:


I thought over all I did pretty well... granted most of it was done in post processing (all in Picasa). I am usually not a fan of post processing too much, but in this case I thought it really helped convey the emotion I wanted to capture so I don't mind too much. I just hope it doesn't look like Flickr images :p. In the end, I still don't really like street photography. It just feels weird taking photos of these people I have never met and will never meet again. Maybe next time I'll actually stop someone for a chat, ask for permissions and also just to build a more personal connection.

Where do you want to go?

So July 4th weekend just passed, and of course, the most asked question was "where do you want to go?" Whether it's for photos, for fireworks, or just for a day to get away, everyone wants to go somewhere. I wanted to go to the Salton Sea... but my friend thought that would be a bad idea... too hot out there in the desert. Instead, we decided to go to Point Mugu out in Malibu, at least we get the ocean breeze there. But the question I really wanted to ask is... "where do you want to go (in photography)?"... or more precisely, where do I want to go? What is my end goal, both in every picture I take, and as a photographer in general. What do I want my pictures to convey? What kind of photographer do I want to be? Majority of my pictures lack soul... lack the "wow" factor that takes a simple shot and transforms it into something of value, into "art". Maybe it's just because I don't think about what I want to capture most of the time. I sort of walk around haphazardly taking pictures... well ok that's not true. I do stop, and think about what I want to do at a scene, but recently I've been drawing a blank. And even when I do have a shot in mind, my execution usually falls far short (more on this in the coming days). I've heard the best way to improve your (landscape) photography skill is to actually love what you are photographing, you have to have a passion for it or else your photos will come out dead. You have to feel something in order for your image to convey SOME kind of emotion and maybe lately I'm just as dead as my images.

So anyways, the July 4th trip, my family and some friends went out to Malibu for a photo walk hike. We first stopped at Venice for some quick shots of the canals. Noon is the worst time for photography... but sometimes things just don't go the way you planned. Here is a shot straight out of the camera:
This is not a good image by any stretch of imagination. It is poorly composed, the colors are muted and it just looks flat. Here was the original intent.... I wanted to take a photo in portrait orientation to really make the canal feel longer and add more depth to it. In composing the image, I wanted the boat to be the center of focus so I placed it about 1/3 of the way from the bottom of the frame and leave plenty of space above it... unfortunately the space above it is quite boring and even have distracting buildings and power lines. The original intent was to make the boat seem lonely in this huge long canal... just kind of free floating there, barely tied to the docks. Ping... FAIL. At first, I was very tempted to delete the image and move on, it has no redeeming qualities and its not something I'd look at again but then I thought to try something different with it. I gave it a quick focal B&W filter in Picasa so that the entire image will be black and white except the area around the boat. Since the water is pretty colorless around it, it didn't matter if the focal radius wasn't perfect, it still just looked black and white except the boat. This made it better, at least something I'm willing to keep around. The focal B&W really helps you focus in on the boat and stay there without letting your attention wander around. B&W images typically are also moodier and just have a whole new feel to it, but the composition still wasn't good. That's when my friend suggested I crop it a bit, cut out the top to get rid of the distracting lines and also crop a bit off the bottom to keep it balanced and the boat at about 1/3rd of the way. This is the final result:


Is it a good image? Not by a long shot. Is it better than the original? I'd like to think so. The crop helps a lot and makes the boat the intended subject instead of just something there. While I am not a big fan of post processing, I think in this case it really helped me achieve the photo I *wanted* to take but couldn't... in the end, it helped me achieve my goals and convey my intentions. Even so, the photo still lacks feeling.... it is still missing a soul.

The rest of the day didn't go better... the photo walk at Point Mugu turned into a full hike that none of us were really prepared for and the weather wasn't exactly the best for photography... everything was just kind of hazy and colorless. The hill/mountain was mostly dead weeds/grass which certainly didn't help to inspire me. After we got to the top, there was this small field that reminded me of the intro sequence to Gladiator so I decided to try a few portraits...

I figured since I lugged the 70-200 up to the top, I might as well use it right? So I put the 70-200 on, walked far out infront of my friend and had her walk to me as naturally as she possibly could (with a large white lens pointed at her). Lucky for me she is a great model and super easy to work with so I had nothing to worry about. I just had to kneel down so I'm closer to the ground and allow me to capture of of the sky/background behind her and zoom in all the way. I didn't really have time to frame the shot since she was walking already and as easy going as she is... she would probably kill me if I made her do the walk too many times. I just wanted the blurred foreground and background and wasn't particularly picky about anything else. I had to fix up this shot a bit in Picasa (add a bit more contrast - increased shadow, highlight, slight fill) since the original came out very bleached out (It might have been because of my polarizer being on and not properly adjusted). Anyways, this seemed close enough to what I wanted to capture so I'm satisfied (tho I think my friend did most of the heavy lifting for me).

The other picture that I kind of liked from the trip was this shot:

I used Canon's super wide EF-S 10-22 lens for this shot (at 10mm). I wanted the super wide to really make the field seem endless and just make everything a bit more dramatic. Given how hazy the day was, I put on my polarizer to darken the sky and increase saturation. People always say becareful of using a CPL with a super wide lens like the 10-22, you'll get uneven effects (as can be seen with the gradation from deep blue to very light blue sky). I didn't mind, I actually kind of like that effect, especially for this picture. It makes the overall image seem darker and moodier. I think I touched up the shadows ever so slightly in Picasa but the polarizer did most of the work for me. I hope it can convey the vastness of the field... but what kind of emotion does it really evoke? I don't know. In the end, the photo hike was mostly just hiking and less photos... the full album can be found here. I still don't know how to make images with feeling... with passion, with some emotion. In the end, the photos are just some bits representing colors without anything pulling them together to form something bigger, something more meaningful than "oh I was there".

In the end, I pose the same question as I started with... "where do you want to go?"
Where do you want the photos to take your viewers?

One step closer....

Over the past 2 years, I've strived to improve my photography. There was always something about landscape photos that I never got right... I could never produce a landscape photo that had any kind of... feeling it in. Not even gorgeous sunsets or sun rises out in Death Valley... I guess the photos never told a story, there was no connection. People always say you have to "feel" the environment, and love for what you are photographing to produce powerful images. While I certainly enjoyed all the beautiful vistas I've seen... I still wasn't able to quite capture the mood of the scene. This is one reason landscape photography has never been my favorite....
So a few weeks ago I was up in Mountain View for a training course and decided to go out on a photo walk with some friends after work one day. They picked Half Moon bay saying the cloud cover of the coast will provide stunning sunsets, and who can say no to that. I had my doubts as we headed out... the cloud cover looked really thick over the ocean and I figured we wouldn't see much of anything. We made a few quick stops along the way on PCH. I didn't get much out of those stops, a few so so images, but mostly I wasn't feeling very inspired. I did, however, get a nice portrait of myself by one of my friends, an heroic portrait as he calls it.

From Photo Walk at San Gregorio State Beach

We made our final stop at San Gregorio state beach, just south of Half Moon Bay. The sun was quickly descending towards the horizon by this point and we really only had about 10 mins to get ready before the "golden hour". Since both of my companions shoot RAW, I decided to start shooting RAW for some of the photos as well, figured I'd give it another try. Most of my previous RAW photos turned out well, I just didn't have the time (or desire) to do that much post processing to play around with the RAW files. Heck, how often do I get to come to Half Moon Bay to view a potentially stunning sunset? Almost never right... time to bite the bullet and shoot RAW :).

While the sun hasn't quite gotten to the horizon yet, it was behind a thick layer of clouds (but it was perfectly clear overhead) so I figured I'd change the white balance to tungsten or fluorescent to give the clear part of the sky a nice deep blue look. A lot of the beach goers have packed up and started going home when I snapped this shot

From Photo Walk at San Gregorio State Beach

This was shot in RAW so I did a little bit of post on it, making the blue stand out a bit more. I really like the story of this photo... and how lonely it feels. Just a lone silhouette along the beach, walking home. From a more technical perspective, I am not sure if I should have cropped out the log on the bottom. The original photo actually had even more space along the bottom and top and I wanted to crop it a little so its tighter and focus on the silhouette more. I didn't want to cut out the logs because I was worried the composition would become too symmetrical and too boring, but as it stands now, the log is a little distracting so maybe it would be best to cut it out but keep rule of thirds or something. I think I just didn't want to cut out the bottom because I like the color of the water reflection.

From Photo Walk at San Gregorio State Beach

This was also shot in RAW. I set the picture style to "landscape" (Canon thing) and it seemed to really add more punch to the blue. I also manually adjusted the RGB a little and added more contrast. The end result looks very post processed, almost "flickr" like I think. But at the same time, I love the darkness and the texture of the clouds, adds a bit of drama to the photo. The blue feel also makes it feel that much more surreal. I'm usually not much on post processing, but I really like the result for this photo.

From Photo Walk at San Gregorio State Beach

In addition to playing with RAW, I actually gave HDR a try. I've never been a big fan of HDR... almost thought it was "fake"... but it definitely can produce stunning images. At this point, the sunset was just so amazing... the sun was right on the horizon where the clouds were a bit thinner and made the entire horizon bright yellow/orange. The wind swept the clouds towards land creating long beautiful strands. It also thinned the clouds just enough for the sun to light up patches of the sky... the lagoon in front of me was perfectly still forming this beautiful mirror reflecting all the beauty above. It was such a serene and breath-taking view... I just thought what the heck... I have to try HDR now. The dynamic range in the scene wasn't that great, but HDR could certainly help enhance the details in both the sky and the darker reflection. I hope the end result doesn't look too fake... I honestly can't tell anymore since this is all I can remember... in my mind's eye, the sunset really just looked like that and was really THAT stunning and dramatic.

I finally felt like I'm one step closer in the search for the perfect photo... one step closer in taking photos that evoke some kind of emotional response. It is unfortunate that I used HDR to make that step, but it's all part of the learning process. As long as I don't depend on HDR, it should be fine :). The journey is just beginning and I have the rest of my life to explore photography and hopefully find that one shot I can define myself with... that one perfect shot.