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.