Seeing Waterfalls
This waterfall picture is a combination of two different pictures. One was taken with a short shutter speed, so that the water appears frozen. The other was taken with a long shutter speed, so that the water appears as a silky flow. There are people who prefer both; there is no “right” way to photograph a waterfall because each of the two techniques illustrates something different.
(You can see the two original pictures below; click on the pictures to see larger versions.)
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An Experiment in Looking Carefully
This photograph of a flower was taken in a local rose garden. Like many such photos, it’s been enhanced to show aspects of the flower that, although they were subtle, still jumped out at me enough to want to share them. The very subtle colors of an ostensibly white flower, the overall form and symmetry, the water droplets speaking of a cool, damp, fall morning. All these things were there in the original view, but not as clear.
Click or tap on the picture, and you will see a version of the picture with no distractions around it. Then click or tap again and it will become an interactive picture that lets you look around and see the whole location where the picture was taken.
Swipe to pan around, and pinch to zoom in and out. Find the flower and tap it again to return to the original picture.
Read more A Community Park
This is the Yachats Commons Park in Yachats, Oregon.
Yachats is a small coastal town, popular for tourists looking for a quiet place to spend some time on the coast. My original plan was to shoot this Wrinkle panorama in the same rose garden as the first two, but plans changed, as they often do.
This park isn’t necessarily anything special, but it did allow me to keep sort of a garden theme, and I did think this particular spot was pretty.
Junction City
This is Junction City, Oregon, a city in name only.
This spherical picture was my entry for the “Cities” theme of the World Wide Panorama in 2024.
Junction City is a very small town; its name can be seen if you look closely at the orange banners hanging along the street or the water tower peeking over the trees across the corner. Despite the name, it’s a small town with a lot of typical small town character.
Read more Waikiki Sunset
This is sunset on the Waikiki beach on Christmas day, 2008.
This picture was taken during a family vacation but never processed. Our family had traveled to Oahu for a Christmas break vacation, and I took the opportunity to take this sphere (in addition to other photography, of course). I decided to finally finish this picture for one of my World Wide Panorama (WWP) 20 Year celebration entries this year.
This picture was difficult from several standpoints. Obviously, the bright sunset and dimmer surroundings were a challenge for photography. I had to use high dynamic range (HDR) techniques to get this much range. But also, we were traveling and I didn’t have my normal tripod. This made some aspects of taking a spherical picture more difficult.
A Picture of Evolution
This is the Independence Amphitheater in Independence, Oregon. It’s part of an effort by the town to transform itself from a small historical town into a vibrant destination for other communities.
This spherical picture was my entry for the “Evolution” theme of the World Wide Panorama in 2024.
One meaning of “evolution” is directed change — change that has direction or purpose and is not totally random. We often think of the term as the direction of increasing complexity of biological systems that occurs as the result of natural selection. However, many different systems can evolve when they change purposefully, such as the evolution of this town.
Read more Avery Park (revisited)
This is the rose garden in a local park.
This picture revisits the same location as an earlier post.
In that earlier post, new growth was just starting. Now, many flowers are in full bloom in different shades of red, although some are white like the ones in the trellis surrounding the camera.
Read more McDonald Research Forest
This was taken in the McDonald Research Forest.
This panorama is one of my entries for the World Wide Panorama “20 Years” project, and is a repeat of one take almost seven years ago at the same location. (That earlier VR was incorrectly titled “Peavy Arboretum”. )
Read more More About Local Wonder
An earlier post presented the idea of “Local Wonder” as a starting point for a sort of vision for my photography. In that case, the focus was on looking closely at things to see their wonderful aspects. In addition to giving a focus for some photography, the hope is that it could also teach me to be more aware in general.
There is another aspect to being more aware that, ironically, didn’t occur to me at first, but was the first focus for my 360 photography – that it is also important to look around.
Read more Neskowin Ghost Forest
This is the Neskowin Ghost Forest, a grove of trees that was buried in sand around 2000 years ago.
Although many reports claim that these trees were buried in an earthquake, the best consensus is that they were buried by gradual dune encroachment. This often happens on coastlines.
This buried forest was uncovered in 1997-8 during a winter of El Niño storms and have been exposed ever since.
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