The Wood River

Nature Trail along the Wood River, Oregon
(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

One of my favorite places to photograph is along the Wood River in Klamath County, Oregon.  The river is shallow and narrow, laps softly against low-lying banks, loops and snakes through the valley in ways that beg to be photographed.  Willows and other trees dot the banks, interspersed among wooden fences, grazing cattle, rustic barns and ranch houses.  And from some locations, the mountains that ring the east side of Crater Lake form a dramatic backdrop.  This image was made at a nature trail that winds along the Wood River on the east side of the small cattle-ranching town of Ft. Klamath.  The trees and pasture on the far side of the river are part of a ranch.

Getting there:  From Medford OR, take highway 140 east to the Rocky Point/Ft. Klamath turnoff which is well-marked.  Follow this road to Ft. Klamath.  At Ft.  Klamath turn right at Highway 62 which goes to Klamath Falls -- also well-marked.  Turn left onto Sun Mountain Rd. just before you reach the old military fort.  The nature trail is poorly marked -- it's a left turn at a small brown road sign that says something like day use park.  But the sign is small and postitioned right at the turn off into the park.  The  access road is a loop road -- park, and then follow the trail. The trail is nicely developed, providing good access for everyone. 

Klamath County has been suffering through a severe drought, and the effects of the drought were apparent on this trip earlier this fall -- the aspen had not turned color yet, and the leaves looked like they would shrivel and fall off before the color came up.  Willow trees still had green leaves on them.  I chose to work in infrared, a format that doesn't need color to create dramatic images.

Metadata.  Nikon D90 camera, converted to infrared.  14-24mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens at 24mm.  1/125" at f/11.

Developing work:  I have created a user preset in Lightroom 3 for use with my infrared images.  The preset worked perfectly on this image (though it doesn't work on all images; I tried it on the photo of an oak tree made last week, & it didn't work at all).  The steps the preset automatically executes include black & white conversion, adjustments to the B&W mix in the HSL/Color/B&W panel,  increasing contrast, adding grain, & split toning.  

 

A Taste of Autumn

Stone path & fall leaves

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

Between the demands of my current workload & a sudden series of storms with high wind and heavy rain, I thought I had missed autumn entirely.  Last Friday morning a friend and I went to Ashland's Lithia Park to check on fall color - there was still lots of color.  One of my favorite places in autumn is the Japanese Garden in Lithia Park. With its collection of Japanese maples, it is a colorful display every fall. 

The photograph I chose to share comes from that morning and is a stone path that curves through the garden and the leaves that have fallen from the Japanese maples. There were still lots of leaves on trees so I hope to get back this week for more.  The weather is supposed to be warm-ish, clear and dry most of the week so there should be some excellent photographs to be made.

About this photograph:  This photo was made October 29, 2010 at 11:17AM. It was an overcast day with nice, even light.   Nikon D300 camera.  24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 24mm (35-mm equivalent = 36mm).  ISO 100.  1.5" at f/16.  White balance: Shade (I use Shade or Cloudy as my default settings regardless of conidtions -- I like a warmer image). Polarizing filter.  Camera mounted on tripod (Gitzo carbon fiber, Linhof head).

Memories of Summer

Memories of Summer, Brookings, Oregon
(c) Darlene Lyon  Kruse - All Rights Reserved


Let me say, straight up, from the beginning, that this is not the best photograph I've ever made, not even the best I made on that particular day.  But it reminds me of a sunny, fun day I spent on the Oregon coast.  Today, here in Ashland, it is wet and gray.  We are experiencing the first storm of the season, & it's a doozy.  Clouds hang low on the mountains.  It's too wet to get out to photograph.  The possibility of snow on Siskiyou Pass.  A taste of what's to come.  And when I started looking at photographs for my blog this weekend, this photo just said what I felt -- I'm not ready for winter -- I want more 75 degree, sunny days before diving into umbrellas, jackets, gloves and boots. 

This photograph was made last summer (June 30) when I was on a scouting trip with David Lorenz Winston, looking for locations for a summer coastal workshop we were doing together.  On the beach near the Port of Brookings, the Banana Belt of the Oregon coast.  A bit of history:  On a photo trip here in the mid-1990s with a photographer-friend, we watched a dead whale (gray whale if I remember correctly) being buried right at this same stretch of beach (somewhere I have slides of a worker digging a trench and then burying the whale).  Anyway, the family was nowhere to be seen but there was something in all the beach toys, towels , flip flops etc that appealed to me. And the warmth and color definitely appeal on this gray, drizzly, autumn day in Southern Oregon.

Metadata:  Photographed with Nikon D300.  24-70mm f/2.8 lens at 70mm (35-mm equivalent = 105mm).  ISO 200.  1/350 at f/6.7

Tashi Choling

Tashi Choling

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse, All Rights Reserved

Last week Bill Exley, a friend and photographer, and I spent the morning photographing in the Colestine Valley, a rural valley south of Ashland that straddles the Oregon-California border.  We were treated to old barns at historic farms, railroad tracks, and the serenity of the meditation garden at the Tashi Choling Center for Buddhist Studies.

This photograph is of the pond. To the right you can see prayer flags and the top of a roofed area that houses one of the three statues in the garden.  I love the contrast of light and dark in this photo.  And the feathery-ness of the trees.  I have a feeling of serenity and balance when I look at it.

Metadata:  Nikon D90 camera converted for infrared.  14-24mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens at 18mm (35-mm equivalent = 27mm).  Hand-held.  ISO 320.  1/320" at f/11.  This photograph was made at 11:20 AM PDT.

All the post-processing work was done in Lightroom.  I converted it to black and white. In the point curve box, I selected strong contrast.  In the Color/HSL box, I adjusted the red, orange and yellow.  I also experimented with adding grain, hoping to make it look a bit more like infrared film.  I used the split toning option again -- I really like that look. This time I selected a gold/mocha-like color (hue 22; saturation 18) for the highlights.  For the shadows, I chose lilac (hue 271, saturation 18). I placed the balance slider at +70.  And then added a vignette.

Thanks for coming by to take a look -- I hope you like it.  It's a beautiful, peaceful, serene place. I hope I've done justice to it.   ~ darlene

Up, Up & Away

Montague Balloon Festival, Montague, California

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

This was my first time to go to the hot-air balloon festival in the small ranching community of Montague in Northern California. It's an annual event on the last weekend in September so this won't be my last time to go there. What a great time!!  A fabulous backdrop provided by rolling hills.  Large enough to be interesting and still easy to find places to park, easy to get great shots of the balloons.

This photo was made on Saturday, September 25, the second day of the festival.  Ascension was at sunrise (roughly 7AM). This photo was made about an hour later.  What I liked about it enough to want to work with it was the position of the two balloons, the foothills in the background, and the two people in the left foreground. Everything works for me.

This is an infrared photograph. The lack of the bright white foliage so typical of infrared comes, I think, from two elements -- one, there isn't alot of foliage and, two, the early morning light meant less infrared radiation in the environment.  Here are the details:

Camera: Nikon D90 converted to capture invisible light (infrared).  14-24mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens at 24mm.  ISO 160.  1/200" at f/13.  Hand-held.  

Post-Processing.  I developed this image in Lightroom.  The steps were:  Converted to black & white.  In the Tone Curve panel, I selected "Strong Contrast" (a personal preference -- I like stronger contrast for most of my infrared photographs), lightening the lights and darkening the blacks.  In the split toning panel, I used my usual color combination of bronze for the highlights and mauve for the shadows.  (Highlights: bronze set at 37 for hue and 37 for saturation.  Shadows:  mauve set at 261 for hue and 20 for saturation. Balance set at +52).  Kodak HIE (high speed infrared film) had a lovely grain to it and so I played around with the Grain feature in Lightroom 3 to see if I could come close to what film used to do. This is my first try with it and I'm mostly pleased -- I'll keep playing with it though. And then of course I finished off with a little vignetting in the corners.

I hope you enjoy this image.

The Oaks

The Oaks

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse -All Rights Reserved

The Rogue Valley in Southern Oregon once was covered with oak savannahs.  Clusters of oak trees still populate the valley floor, in greatly reduced numbers though.  Often on private land that is inaccessible. For a couple of years I've been looking for a good pair of oaks and a single oak near my home that I could return to easily, in all kinds of weather and at all times of day.  I wanted them on some kind of low knoll, without a lot of telephone wires, houses etc to clone out.

Well, a couple of weeks ago I stumbled on the perfect oaks - two on a knoll and then a single oak a few hundred feet to the left on its own little knoll.  This photograph is of the pair.  Love the road in front that can lead the eye right to them. And they are within a couple miles of my home in Ashland OR, easy to reach in 5-6 minutes.  There's even a rural driveway at the base of this road where I can park my car off the main road which is an important thing on country roads that often have no shoulder.  You'll see the single oak one of these days soon and all three will undoubtedly make frequent appearances here, in color and in infrared.  They are just so beautiful!  Look at the curly-que limbs on the left-hand oak. They are just yummy to my eye.

About this photograph:  This is an infrared photograph made on a September morning, just before noon.  With infrared the time of day isn't as important as it is with color and traditional black & white. Different times of day create different levels of intensity but infrared can make magic during the times of day when color images get harsh and unattractive.  The beauty & grace of an infrared photograph made at noon or at 2PM was the tipping point in my decision in the 1990s to begin shooting infrared film.

Camera: converted Nikon D90. Lems: Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8.  Settings: 1/200 at f/13; 70-mm (35-mm equivalent = 105mm); ISO 200.

I developed this image completely in Lightroom.   After converting it to grayscale, I deepened the blacks and made some color adjustments in the HSL/Color/Grayscale panel.  I substantially increased red and orange, slightly increased blues, purples & magentas, decreased green and aqua. Then I went to the split toning panel.  For the highlights I selected a dusty yellow-bronze color (hue 48, saturation 37).  For the shadows I picked a soft mauve (hue 237, saturation 24).  I finished by adding a slight vignette -- I  like a subtle darkening of the corners, sometimes just barely visible to my eye. 

I hope you enjoy this minimalist photograph of two elegant oaks.

Oregon's oldest lighthouse

Cape Blanco Lighthouse (infrared)

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

The Cape Blanco Lighthouse is Oregon's oldest continuously operating lighthouse AND its most westerly.  Poised on the point of a bluff six miles north of Port Orford, Oregon, with no protection from south, north or west, the winds can be fierce.  The fresnel lens was lit for the first time on December 20, 1970.  The lighthouse is still active today.  You can learn more about this exquisite lighthouse here http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=125

Besides being Oregon's oldest and most westerly lighthouse, it is also elegant -- with beautiful lines and textures.  From any angle, it presents an intriguring, strong, beautiful face to all who visit her.

This photograph was made during the workshop David Lorenz Winston and I co-led in August.  When we arrived at the lighthouse, it was enshrouded in fog, barely visible from the road.  The fog lifted, allowing us to photograph it with fog swirling around it and then completely clear of fog.  In all kinds of weather, the lighthouse at Cape Blanco never disappoints. 

While this is very much a photograph of the lighthouse, the addition of the people interacting with the lighthouse -- one entering, one leaving -- was important to me.  For my eye, other photographs made at the same time but without people lack the power and emotion of this image. 

About this photograph.  This is an infrared (invisible light) photograph made with my newly-converted Nikon D90,  using my 14-24 mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens at 21-mm (35-mm equivalent = 33mm). Minimal post-processing: I converted the image to grayscale and increased the blacks, clarity & contrast to enhance the black-white contrast. 

Something Different

The Dolly Dock at Night

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse -- All Rights Reserved

Here's a photo that's something different from anything I've posted here before. This was made during the Port Orford-Cape Blanco photography workshop David Lorenz Winston and I co-led in late August. We spent sunset along the beach at the Battle Rock Wayside and then noticed that the lights were on across the bay at the dolly dock. So we all trekked over there, after dark, and photographed some more.

About this image: When I first arrived at the dock, I made some standard shots of the activities going on -- people working on the docks. It was so dark, though, that there was lots of motion-blur. And so I decided to take advantage of it to create some abstracts. I shut down my aperture enough to give me a slow shutter speed and created ghost images of workers. Then I experimented with zooming in. I was drawn to the vivid orange, yellow & lime green as well as the ice on the floor of the dock & decided to use my zoom to create some images that were more about color and line than about subject. This is one of my favorites. I hope you too enjoy it.

Metadata: Nikon D300, 24-70 mm. f/2.8 lens at 24mm (equivalent = 36mm), exposure of 0.7" at f/19, ISO 800. Tripod. No flash.

On the dolly dock, Port Orford, Oregon
(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

This past weekend, David Lorenz Winston and I co-led a photography workshop at Port Orford and Cape Blanco on the Oregon coast. The weather was great, no big winds at the Cape, partly cloudy skies. The photo ops were many, and we all had a great time exploring the beaches and docks with our cameras. "On the dolly dock, Port Orford, Oregon" is an infrared photograph I made while there.

About the dolly dock: Port Orford is unique. It has one of only two dolly docks in the United States. The harbor is too shallow for safe mooring and so boats are hoisted onto the dock with a huge pulley, placed onto custom-made dolly-trailers, and towed to their "mooring" space on top of the pier. This is a photograph of a commercial fishing boat being lowered from the dock to the water.

About the photo: This photo was made at about 9:45 AM (PDT) on August 28, 2010, with a Nikon D90 that has been converted to infrared. Metadata: 18mm lens, ISO 250, 1/200 sec at f/10. Post-processing included converting to black and white in CS3; levels and curves adjustments to pull out the drama in the sky, increase the contrast a bit, and deepen the darks; and sepia toning. In Lightroom I added a graduated filter to darken the sky and further accent those great, sweeping clouds. I also added a vignette.

This is not the usual infrared photograph, with lots of foliage turned white. There is some grass in the background that has turned white, but none on my subject -- the fishing boat. An infrared photograph of a non-landscape scene can create an image full of drama and texture. If there's anything in the sky at all, infrared will bring it out, even if it seems insignificant to our eyes. The dreamy quality I associate with film infrared is present in this image -- and has combined with the drama in the sky to make this an image I like a lot.

Golden, Oregon

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

My newly-converted camera arrived Tuesday, and I spent Wed., Thurs. & Fri. testing it. This is one of the photos from maybe 200 infrared images I shot on those three days.

Golden, Oregon is a small ghost town in Josephine County, Oregon. There are 5 or 6 buildings still standing plus some equipment from this once-bustling mining town. It is located off Interstate 5, near Wolf Creek Oregon.
This is a classic infrared image -- black and white, trees and grass turn white. I have developed the image in Lightroom and CS3 - mostly exposure and contrast adjustments. I also added a slight vignette to draw your eye to the center of the image.


Metadata: Nikon D90 converted to record infrared light spectrum. 24-mm lens. ISO 200. Exposure 1/100 second at f/11.

Flora Oregon

Flora, Oregon, a living ghost town
(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

This is an older photograph, made on film actually, in the 1990s. But recently I worked on it to create the mood that I had hoped I'd find on that trip to Flora -- but which just didn't happen. Part of being a fine art photographer is expressing a feeling about a place or an event. And the digital darkroom makes it possible for us to create in ways I never managed to do in the traditional wet darkroom.

About Flora. Flora is located in Wallowa County, northeastern Oregon, about 35 miles north of Enterprise, on Oregon Route 3. There are occupied residential buildings in Flora, but mostly it's a ghost town. The area is beautiful, rural, agricultural. Worth spending time exploring with your camera if you've never been there.

About the photograph. This is a composite of two photographs. The sky is one photograph. The buildings and foreground are from another. When I was at Flora, the sky was flat gray. For the feeling I wanted to evoke with this image, I needed a dramatic sky. I pulled this from another image and desaturated it. The buildings are color-corrected (they had a strong blue-ish cast) but otherwise unchanged. the grasses in the middle-ground and foreground have been painted in Photoshop using a brush in Color blend mode. My thanks to my colleague David Lorenz Winston who taught me this technique.

I hope this photograph evokes the sense of isolation and drama I saw in the Flora landscape.

Abandoned Barn & Cattle Chute, Ashland OR

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse, All Rights Reserved

Kodak made me do it. I fell in love with infrared photography in the early 1990s and had been shooting High-Speed Infrared Film (HIE) ever since. When Kodak announced it was discontinuing HIE, digital seemed like my only choice. But I went there kicking and screaming because I so loved the soft, surreal images that HIE gave me, and digital infrared has a sharpness that creates a different kind of image. I bought a dozen rolls of HIE before it was forever gone, though, and still have a couple of rolls in my refrigerator...and an Oregon source for developing them.

Abandoned Barn & Cattle Chute is on a farm across the street from where I live. The City of Ashland decided to develop the land, for affordable housing, much needed here. Talk about mixed feelings -- I loved photographing at this farm, now abandoned, but am also in favor of affordable housing. SO...I spent the summer of 2009 photographing over there almost everyday. A week after I made this photo, construction started. The farm was fenced off. Trees were trimmed, old outbuildings torn down. The barn is still there but no longer accessible.

This version of Abandoned Barn is actually a composite of two. When I looked at my images in the computer, I saw white PVC pipe laying along the fence, to the left of the cattle chute and not visible in this version. So I went back the next day and reframed my image. But...when I looked at it in the computer...NO CLOUDS. And the clouds are essential to the success of this image. For two days there were no clouds in the sky. And so I created a composite, using the clouds from the first image I made. I chose the sepia tone because it adds a vintage, romantic feeling that I felt while I was photographing the barn.

A bit about digital infrared: To make this image, I used a digital SLR that was converted by Life Pixel to capture infrared. A Nikon D50, my first digital SLR, my learner camera after 20 years of shooting film and reluctantly coming to digital. With the conversion, it became a dedicated camera, used only for infrared work.

Because of the calibration process when a camera is converted, images are sharper than those made with film. And unlike trying to shoot infrared with an unconverted digital SLR, exposure times are as they would be with a traditional digital SLR. (Exposure times for infrared using my unconverted D300, for example, were in the 50-60 second range.) Late summer/fall 2009 I lost my D50. After a winter of tearing my house, storage area, and car apart -- more than once -- and not finding it, and a spring of testing the unconverted D300, I finally accepted reality bought a new digital SLR. It's in Washington state right now, being converted by LifePixel. My new dedicated camera should be here this week (YIPPEE!), and I will be SO glad to be back in the infrared business again! It feeds a part of my creative self that nothing else does.

To see more infrared images, digital and film, check out my fine art gallery on my website.

Metadata: Nikon D50 converted SLR. Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 lens at 18,,. ISO 200. Exposure: 1/320" at f/11.

Pismo Beach Palms in Infrared

Palm Trees, Pismo Beach, CA
(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

Infrared photography is a special love of mine. The dreamy, surrealistic images. The graininess. The contrast between the white-whites and the black-blacks. "Palm Trees, Pismo Beach" is a favorite of mine from my archives. I chose to share it this week because infrared is on my mind. Last summer I lost the camera that had been converted for digital infrared. After much testing to see if I could shoot infrared with an unconverted camera, I just this week purchased a new camera that I am having converted to shoot digital infrared. So I'm excited and eager to be back in the world of infrared photography again.

About this photo: I found these palms at Pismo Beach, California during a visit with my son and daughter-in-law. On that trip I discovered what perfect infrared subjects palm trees are -- the contrast of trunk and leaves, the feathery quality to the palm fronds especially appeal to me -- and made several. This is one of my two favorites from that trip. Because this was done on film, I don't have the metadata. I do know that it was made on Kodak HIE (high-speed infrared) film with a red filter, 35-mm. film format, probably done with my Nikon FM2.

What I love about this image: The palm trees. There's such an other-worldiness to them. The curved wall of the planter they sit in. Also, the curved wall and the building behind the palms have an Art Deco quality that I remember from the Miami Vice TV show, even without any color.

A little about infrared photography: I began photographing with infrared film in the early 1990s after seeing a portfolio of work in a photography magazine. What interested me was the surreal quality of the images and the fact that the best infrared photographs are made during the time of day when visible light photography is at its worst -- 11 AM to 3PM.

The infrared portion of the light spectrum lies beyond what our human eyes are capable of seeing. Infrared film reveals this unseen world to us. I don't know much about the physics of it -- HOW it works doesn't particularly interest me. My interest is as an artist. Somehow, magickally it sometimes seems, in the infrared world grass and green leaves turn white while water and blue skies tend to go black or at least very dark. Kodak HIE added some graininess that I liked a lot. And because of the makeup of the film emulsion itself, there was a soft glow to subjects. Oh, and because of focus issues, there was an added softness.

Kodak has since stopped making HIE which is a great loss to all of us who ever shot it. But there is digital infrared now. Definitely a different animal in many ways -- but with its own special qualities and a unique beauty.

Next week I'll be writing about digital infrared -- how it's different, what makes it special in its own right -- and posting one of my favorite digital infrared images.

The Mary D. Hume

The Mary D. Hume

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse, All Rights Reserved

Most of the work I've done on the Oregon coast over the past 20+ years has been done between Port Orford and Newport so, when David Winston and I scouted locations for our upcoming workshop at Port Orford and Cape Blanco, it was an opportunity for me to explore Gold Beach. The Mary D. Hume is much photographed but this was my first time. Here's a little info about the boat, first:

Built in Gold Beach in 1881, she is named for the wife of the builder and first served as a steamer serving Mr. Hume's cannery business. Later she became a whaling ship and, when the whaling industry ended, she served as a tugboat, a tender for halibut fishing boats and a towboat before being retired to the harbor near where she was born. The Mary D. was in service until 1978, the longest serving, commercial boat on the Pacific coast. Now she sits at the mouth of the Rogue River, slowly decaying, becoming part of the river.

I was drawn to the texture of the timbers -- there's something SO seductive about peeling paint & old weathered wood --, the bright green of the moss growing at and below the waterline, and the tilt of the ship against the pier, as if leaning on it for support. I hoped for a soft spring sunset to warm her up, maybe some clouds in the sky. But the sky was cloudless, and the sunset didn't manifest its full potential. Sometimes you just have to do the best with what you're presented with. So...I have helped it along in Adobe Lightroom. I did that by adjusting the color temperature to bring in more warmth & using Lightroom's graduated neutral density filter to intensify the existing color in the sky.

My vision was to create an emotionally satisfying image of the Mary D., one that is warm, sweet, nostalgic, even romantic. That didn't happen when I was there -- so I'm really grateful for the technology that allows me to come close to expressing my vision for her. I can't wait to go back and photograph her again...



Metadata: 6/30/10. 8:28PM. Nikon D300. 24-70mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens at 70mm (35mm equivalent - 105mm). ISO 400. 1/180 sec. at f/8. Gitzo tripod with Linhof ballhead.

Waiting

Cape Blanco Lighthouse, Oregon

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

David Lorenz Winston & I were on the Oregon coast a couple of weeks ago, finalizing locations for our August 28 workshop (click here for more information). We both love the elegance and stark beauty of the Cape Blanco Lighthouse.

I had photographed it from several angles that day and was looking at compositions where I could get down low when I saw these two women slowly working their way up the gentle slope, an older woman who needed some support from her younger companion. There was a gentleness, a mutual caring between them.

As they approached the lighthouse, I waited, camera on tripod, waited for them to step into a relationship with the lighthouse that resonated for me. Just below the crest of the slope, they stopped. Resting? Chatting? Waiting?

The photograph felt complete.

Photographed with Nikon D300 camera. 24-70 f/28 lens at 55mm. ISO 400. 1/90" at f/8. Circular polarizing filter. Gitzo tripod with Linhof head.

Unexpected Beauty

Reeds, 12th Street Boat Launch, Port Orford, Oregon

(c) Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

Last week David Winston and I scouted locations for a workshop we're doing together in August - Port Orford and Cape Blanco on the southern Oregon coast. Driving around Port Orford, we saw signs pointing to the "12th Street Boat Launch". Sounds pretty unappetizing. I think of boat launches as being all about that sweep of concrete that makes it possible to launch boats into a lake or bay. Something tugged though -- call it curiosity -- and at the last moment at an intersection I decided to follow the sign, to see what was there.

As a photographer one of the gifts to me is permission to find out what's there, to satisfy my curiousity, to take the winding, meandering, indirect way from one place to another. Sometimes there's nothing at the end of the trip. But then again sometimes there is. The 12th Street Boat Launch in Port Orford ends at Garrison Lake. David and I found a sweet little dock, some interesting angles, and these reeds. I was totally captivated by the reeds, their reflection & the deep blue of the water. I did several compositions, some verticals, some horizontals. This is one of my favorites.

Photographed with Nikon D300. Lens: 24-70 f/2.8 Nikkor at 55mm. ISO 400. 1/90" at f/8. Circular polarizing filter. Gitzo tripod with Linhof head.

On Showing Up

Spring Sunset, Bandon, Oregon
(c)Darlene Lyon Kruse - All Rights Reserved

"Spring Sunset, Bandon OR" reminds me that this old adage is at least partially true: "How do you make a good photograph? F/8 and be there" -- of the two, Be There is the vital one. 90% of the success of this photograph is because I was there...with my camera...on a tripod when Mother Nature put on her show. I wasn't in a restaurant eating dinner or at the motel watching TV. I was standing on the beach, in awe of what was happening in front of me. 10% is because of elements I had some control over: composition and exposure.

This is one of nearly 100 shots from that evening. What I love about this particular one are its painterly quality...the soft colors in the sky...the perfect clouds, just the right shape, just the right amount...the pink underpainting on the clouds...the rim light on the waves...and that one wave in the lower center that rises up with such energy and presence.


Often sunset photography at the Oregon coast means waiting in the wind and chill, hoping for a colorful sunset. Even on a seemingly clear day that holds the promise of a sunset full of color and light, the sun too often dips behind a cloud-bank or fog-bank and doesn't fulfill its promise. This evening, though, the sun put on a show of light and color, and I was rewarded for Showing Up, for Being Present.

Photographed with Nikon D300, 27-70mm f/2.8 lens at 35mm. ISO 100. Circular polarizing filer. 1/4" at f/16. Gitzo tripod with Linhof head.