A few days before the New Year I posted my Instagram Best Nine, the photos that got the most likes in 2017. But, there are some photos I posted that maybe didn't get as much love as I thought they deserved; or, the experiences they represent were very meaningful to me. So here are 4 that didn’t make my “best nine” this past year, but as I look back they are ones I thought worthy of another look as 2017 ends and a new year begins:
#4 - I’m going to start with a fairly recent photo that just barely missed the best nine group. This one was taken in a day hike trip I took with some of the geology club students out to Starved Rock State Park, and I blogged about it recently. My oldest daughter went along with and I convinced her to pose for this shot. We were in French Canyon, which has this somewhat narrow entrance before it opens up again. The layers of St. Peter sandstone in these canyons make great lines for photography. Shot at 18 mm, f/8, 1/50 sec, and ISO800 to keep everything from front to back in crispy focus. I helped her get up to one of the sandstone ledges and then framed the shot so she was located at the bottom right power point and the bedding planes on both sides drew your eye to where she was standing. The sunlight coming in from above and behind her made for some nice back lighting.
#3 - In third place, I selected a photo from back in March, that I actually took a year earlier in March of 2016. This location is from Woodall Shoals, a spectacular exposure of high-grade eastern Blue Ridge metamorphic rocks in the southern Appalachians. It sits right on the South Carolina side of the Chattooga River, and is always a favorite stop of my students when we visit the south east in my Structural Geology class. A small amount of water flows down the sloping rocks, and I wanted a nice long exposure to smooth out that water. I also wanted the full scene in focus from the rocks in the foreground just feet away from me, to the trees and clouds in the distance. So to increase depth of field and reduce light, I used the smallest aperture setting of f/22 at 18 mm focal length. In addition, I shot this with a 3-stop ND filter to reduce even more light, and a polarizing filter to bring down the brightest part of the image, that blue sky peeking out between the puffy white clouds and green trees. I found one tree in the distance that seemed to stand out from the rest just a bit, so I framed the photo so that the “waterfall” (waterflow? waterslide?) would lead diagonally up to it from the bottom right corner. I set my ISO on its lowest setting of 100 (again to reduce light) and was able to get my shutter speed up to one half of a second. I didn’t have a tripod with me, but I’m a pretty steady shot and I can usually make half a second work with a firm stance, steady hands, and careful breathing. I also made sure to hold the camera level to keep those trees nice and vertical - it is tempting to “look up” to a scene like this, but if you do those trees will lean in from both sides toward the center, giving a less desirable look.
#2 - Coming in second place has to be Mt. St. Helens. I lived in western Washington as a kid, and remember when the May 18, 1980 eruption occurred, and as a geology professor, we often use this event to educate people on the power of volcanic eruptions and the importance of volcano monitoring. But I’d never been to Mt. St. Helens before, so when an opportunity opened up to see it, I was really excited. Unfortunately on the day of the trip, the weather was just awful - it was quite cold and it rained all. day. long. I was hoping for blue skies, but instead clouds covered the crater, and most everything else. But with the cloud cover came a really dark and moody look to the mountain and the valley below. Looking down from Johnston Ridge Observatory, the view was still somehow quite spectacular. There was enough light to give a beautiful color to the greenery in the valley, and the deeply incised streams made for great leading lines. What really captured the view, however, was the stark contrast between the white snow and the dark volcanic rocks of the mountain itself. This was definitely one of those times where you would say that “the photo just doesn’t capture it”, in part due to the extreme dynamic range of the scene and the depth of the field of view. I shot this one at f/10 to keep the entire scene in sharp focus. I had my zoom at 34 mm, which is roughly equivalent to 50 mm on a full frame sensor, a view that’s considered very similar to what the human eye sees. I set my shutter speed to 1/200 and ISO at 400. I really had to work on this image in post though. I normally only apply “global” tweaks to my photo edits (changes that affect the entire image), but in this case the colors and textures needed special care. I used a bit of dehazing in photoshop (a magic/voodoo slider that I don’t think anyone truly understands), then I applied a grad filter to bring down the bright sky, and lastly I used a brush filter to emphasize the contrast of the mountain snow. There the photo needed additional contrast, clarity, and sharpness to better exemplify the real scene. My photos are created from a desire for others to see, sense, and feel what I experience as a geologist in the field, and I like to avoid a lot of “photoshopping” when I create my images. But the obstacles in this scene called for it, and I’m really happy with the result. Nonetheless, I’m very eager to get back to the Cascades one day and photograph these majestic peaks under a vivid blue sky.
#1 - My number 1 simply has to be the solar eclipse. This was simply an incredible experience, and I can’t wait for the next one in 2024. They say this is a “once in a lifetime experience”, and I would agree, that’s how phenomenal it was. This was a difficult shot for several reasons: first, totality only lasts a little over 2.5 minutes, so I didn’t have much time and had to be fully prepared. Second, it’s obviously a low light condition, which means wider aperture, slower shutter speed, and higher ISO. I was shooting at 250 mm on my Canon 55-250 mm f/4-5.6 lens, so I really should have been using a shutter speed up near 1/250 seconds, but this lens is too slow for that in these low light conditions. To avoid motion blur from camera shake, it is good practice to use a shutter speed that at least matches your lens length. I’m a pretty steady shot though, and this lens has image stabilization, so I knew I could push it. I shot it at 1/60 sec, and fired off a whole lot of shots to make sure I got some that were nice and crisp. My aperture was as wide open as possible at f/5.6 and I bumped up the ISO to 400, which on this camera will still yield nice and clean images. Finally, I was leading the trip with one of my colleagues and we had about 70 people with us, including 3 of my own kids, and I had to keep my mind on their needs also. But it turned out really well and it was definitely my number one photography experience of the past year.