I’m sitting here in Bangkok’s Airport with my buddy Gordon on our way to some beautiful Thai beaches. Thought I would post a photo from Angkor Wat that I took two days ago. It was an amazing place to visit but hard for me to relax because I wanted so badly to make some unique photos. This place is photographed so much! I finally let go of that and just made some photos. On the third day I was able to relax and enjoy the temples. Going for a bike ride from temple to temple was lovely!

I’m posting this photo because it follows the last one nicely in terms of color and angle of view. Both are taken with a 40mm lens from a distance that allowed me to capture the trees without having to tilt my lens upward. It’s an architectural approach that prevents the convergence of vertical lines. I have never seen tent platforms like this before, and I appreciated the integration of the tents and cabins into the forest. It’s intrusive, yet playful; it reminds me of kids and tree-houses. I took this early in the morning before we went rafting on the New River….which was awesome!

I was in Palm Springs this past weekend for a meeting of Blend photographers and decided to piggyback a personal trip into Joshua Tree National Park to make a landscape photograph for my portfolio. I had only one night, but I think I made the most of it. I really wanted to capture an RV in this crazy lunar landscape.  This is a single 38 second exposure. No compositing. Click the photo to see it a little larger.

Joshua Tree National Park at night

Before an assignment two weeks ago I was roaming around the Shenadoah Mountains and came across this hotel under renovation and under much snow. I found this perspective I liked and after a few minutes this guy drove by. You have to go out of your way to go through this parking lot. It was odd but it made for a more interesting photo. The car creates a triangle for the eye. Were it absent, the viewer would be left with two static elements. Afterward, I spent a bit of time on the computer making sure the whites are neutral. And after all that, it probably looks super yellow on your computer! This image is best when seen big. Click on it for a larger view.

I woke up this morning to a thick fog. I don’t often take my camera with me while walking our beagle, but today I decided it was a good idea. We walked about half a mile up Colley Ave to a bridge that crosses over a finger of the Lafayette River and there I found a few good photo opportunities. I tied Moe up to a tree and took a few photos. I tried both a blue and sepia tone for this image, and decided on the sepia you see here.

Here is another photo from the same coastline as the previous post.

I was in Spain recently and spent a few days along the coastline known as the Costa Brava. Salvador Dali lived a few miles from where this photo was taken. The craggy coast shows up in a lot of his work. It’s hard not to be inspired by it. I’ve always been drawn to water and rough coastlines. There is an innate tension between the fluidity of water and the solidity of stone. This photo is a composite of 3 photos I made in the same cove. I did not have a tripod (trying to travel light) with me so it was a challenge keeping the camera still on my camera bag. Click the image to see it a bit larger.

I’m still experimenting with my old field camera. Took it to First Landing State Park and made two photos. I liked this one best.

Yesterday after a shoot, I walked onto the beach near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. I was testing out my old 5×7 wood field camera (read about it 2 posts down). I had one film holder which holds two sheets of film. I shot one photo of the bridge and another of a nice couple that was curious about the camera. They did this spontaneous piggy-back thing. I’ll do a few more tests before I decide to try some color film. Only Kodak still makes 5×7 color film and it costs $4.00/sheet + developing. This is Efke 100 film which costs $.70/sheet and I can develop it myself. It’s not cheap, but I like that I have to slow down and that I only get a couple shots. It’s the opposite of digital SLR which is fast and unlimited.

Even though today was not cold, it still felt like winter with the sun setting around 5pm. To relive those warm summer days I edited some camping pictures from a few months ago that I have barely looked over. This is sunset at False Cape State Park. That’s my wife reading a book, as she does when she gets bored of me taking photos. Scroll down two posts and you’ll see her reading a book a few hours later when the moon rose over the ocean.