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.