The photo above was taken on my first trip to Trillium Lake.  I left my house at around 4:45 because I wanted to get there well before sunrise.  I was probably a bit over-eager, since I got there a good hour prior to sunrise.  This is partially why I love going on photography trips like this alone.  I had an hour to soak in the view in front of me.  The stillness of the water, and lack of wind made it feel like a three dimensional painting hung in front of me.  I found this grouping of rocks and carefully framed the mountain reflection in between them.  In order to even out the exposure, I used a two stop Neutral Density Filter on the sky.  This allowed the reflection to be of similar brightness as the actual mountain.  As I finished taking a few photos, I notice some clouds were forming on the left side of the mountain.  I was hoping for a perfectly clear sky, but overall was happy with the photo.

The above photograph was taken about fifteen minutes after the first photo on this post.  As you can see some bright white clouds began collecting on the right side of the picture.  Additionally, I moved my position to exclude the rocks in the foreground.  When I took this photo, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but when I got it home and converted it to black and white I thought it worked very well.  This is actually my favorite photo of Trillium Lake that I’ve take thus far.

This photo was taken about 8 months after the previous two photographs.  Unlike my previous trip to the lake, this time I was met with a parking lot full of photography enthusiasts.  Also, my brother came with me.  Taking pictures has always been something I like to do alone, so it was new for me to have company.  Additionally, their was a lot of wind, causing the reflection to disappear.  I did notice quite a bit of cloud movement.  As a result, I set this shot up with a 10-stop Neutral Density filter, a Graduated 2-stop Neutral Density filter for the sky, and a circular polarizer.  The shutter was held open for about 2 minutes and 10 seconds.  The resulting picture showed some great cloud movement over the mountain.  One drawback was that the wind also caused the tree to move, so the greenery has a soft focus to it.  The water turned out very nice–and almost looks frozen.

As we were packing up to leave for the trip back to Portland, the sky began to light up.  I tried to compose this shot so that there was a bit of green in the foreground, and a softness to the water.  I found a good spot, and set the camera up with an 2-stop Neutral Density filter over sky.  This allowed me to hold the shutter open for 8 seconds.  This was necessary to create the soft look on the water.  I also find that Neutral Density filters tend to bring out a bit of saturation in the final picture, which seemed to work well on the cloud in the sky.    I will be putting up some information in the next few weeks on using Neutral Density filters.

More and more, I find myself drawn to the soft abstractions that result from Long Exposure photography. The contrast between the tranquility of smooth water and an object invading the scene results in a surreal picture. When I look at this type of photograph, I’m drawn to the simplicity. Some of my favorite photographers that shoot in this style are Michael Kenna, Michael Levin and David Burdeny. The problem is that when I try to take photos in this style, I’m not sure where to start. Should I shoot in the morning? Should I shoot in the evening? How long should I keep the shutter open for? What filters should I use? There is only one way to find out what works for me. I need to shoot. Shoot A LOT. This blog is going to help me document my progress in this photographic style.

I will be posting my set up shots, some of my test shots, and my final shots. I hope to begin to better understand what I need to do on the technical side in order to create photographs that appeal to me. I will not limit myself to Black and White or Color. This will all depend on pre-visualization as well as my taste for the final shot after postproduction work.

The shot shown above is of a cement block with an old chain connector on the top. You can click any photo and see a larger version. On a previous trip to this location, the water was much lower, leaving the block dry on the beach. Last week when I headed to the same area, I found it mostly submerged in the water. I decided that this would be a great subject to photograph. I took a few test shots, and decided on a shutter speed of 2 minutes using a 10-Stop Neutral Density filter. When I set up this shot, I was looking down on the scene. My tripod was holding the camera about chest high. The resulting shot is shown below. I was happy with the misty look of the water in the upper part of the frame, but unhappy with how much of the block you could see on the bottom part of the frame. My goal was to make the cement appear out of the misty water.

It was a very bright overcast afternoon (probably not the best conditions to be attempting a photo like this). As I moved around the block of cement, I noticed that when I crouched down the glare on the water really began to engulf the water surrounding the block. The result was that the submerged portion was not as visible as it was in my test shot. Simply by moving my head, slightly changing my perspective the mood of the final shot moved closer to what I had initially envisioned. With today’s digital technology, I should probably shoot 100 photos in slightly different positions, take them home and pick the group that I like the best. I don’t do that. This is a personal preference. I can see the advantages of doing so. But I like the process of anticipating the final image and taking my time in creating it. In this case, I took two test shots from a high vantage point, and two images from the low vantage point.

The photograph to the left is how I set up the final image. As you can see, I got the camera fairly low to the ground. This photo shows how the glare on the water really starts to hide most of the cement block. Once I downloaded the image, I thought it could use a bit of a saturation boost to bring out the sand color. The boost was minimal, but I think it adds to the mood that I was going for in this photo. From this exercise I learned that a very subtle change of perspective, even a few feet, can have a remarkable effect on your finished product.