Red Lake - Canon 7D

The above photo was taken with my Canon 7D, which is a fairly expensive DSLR camera used by many professional photographers. I used a tripod and 5 different exposures (combined).  It is a wonderful fall scene.

The below photo was taken with my Canon G12, a point and shoot camera. It is relatively sophisticated, but a point and shoot nonetheless. I did not use a tripod and I popped the on-camera flash to brighten up the foreground.

Red Lake - Canon G12

The quality of the G12 photo is not as good as my 7d (phew), but you can see that you do not have to have a “nice” expensive camera in order to take a wonderful photo.  You just need to know a little bit about good composition and light. Try it.

Fishing in Paradise

Fall Creek

I love everything about Fall.  I love the cooler air, the frost in the morning, shorter days, the smell of leaves burning and the COLORS.  I really shouldn’t be driving around during this time of year because I am so distracted by the scenery I’m afraid I’m likely to drive off the road.

A Smoky Day in the Angora Burn Area

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, I am deeply attracted to the Angora Fire Burn area.  It is constantly changing and I find myself drawn to it almost every day.  Lucky for me it’s close by AND (bonus), I can take the dog off leash.  The state is beginning to take down the burned trees and so it will not look like this much longer.  I find these burned trees oddly beautiful and I love the new vegetation that is growing and replacing the burned parts.

Smoke From a Nevada Fire Adds Beauty to the Sunset

Yesterday the dog (Obie T. Dogg) and I drove out to Hope Valley.  And, oh what I candy we saw. The dog loved the fact that we stopped at many different places, but we really didn’t walk too much.  Here are a couple of scenes that we saw.

Hope Valley - October, 2011

Aspen at the Golden Hour

I have more pictures to edit, but I’ll save them for another day.

That reminds me that I still haven’t put many photos up from the great Rice Farm Photoshoot.  I’ll work on that.

Sunset on the Rainbow Trail

Now, 4 years later I find I am drawn to this area over and over again.  The vegetation is returning and there is a certain beauty in the burn.

These photos were taken by me during my walks with the dog over the summer in the burn area.  I hope you see as much beauty as I have seen in the recovery of this area.

Obie T. Dogg stops to smell the flowers

I spent most of the summer in my favorite place, Lake Tahoe, CA.  My family has owned a summer home and now a part time home since 1952.  The original summer “home” was built by my dad and his best friend, Allen Combellack.  It was, how should I say it, rustic.  For a while there were no stairs to the upstairs and so they used a ladder to get to the bedrooms.  The interior walls were not finished for years…in other words, the bare 2×4′s were uncovered. My parents finally bought their own place in the 1980′s.  They have since passed away, so my brother and I have inherited this place.  I am greatly humbled by the hard work my parents did to own this place and then graciously passed it on to us.

The time I spent up there with my family and friends over the years hooked me.  I love the lake, the beautiful natural surroundings, Izzy Burgers, The Rainbow Trail, Kiva Beach, swimming in Emerald Bay, walking in the forest behind our house and everything else about the place.  So, this year I have spent quite a bit of time here, mostly with my dog, Obie T. Dogg.  Here are a few pics that I was able to take while strolling around the area with the dog.

Meadow at Rainbow Trail (Visitor's Center) near Taylor Creek

Fallen Leaf Lake at Sunset

Obie sits on Kiva Beach after taking a swim

Obie watches other dogs frollicking in the lake at Kiva Beach

Baldwin/Pope Estates

Meadow Near Fallen Leaf Lake

We also spent a lot of time in the Angora Burn area, but I’ll save that for another post.

Enjoy!

I wanted to say a little something about Day Two of my Redding Adventure.  It was a long but wonderful day.

My new roommate and I woke up about 3:15 a.m. because we had to meet the rest of the photogs and Mark Behrens in a Redding Parking lot by 4:30 a.m. We got there in time and carpooled to the first location which was more than one hour away.  We arrived as the sun was coming up in the cloudless sky. Not the best situation for some good landscape photography.  However, we managed to get a couple of good shots of Mt. Shasta and some local flora at a little lake.

After that we trekked down to a waterfall location at a place called Dunsmuir.  It was a short and easy hike down to this particular location and well worth the hike.  After taking numerous shots of the waterfall, the models that we brought along with us began to pose underneath and around the waterfall.  It was a little chilly down there because the water was ice cold and the sun hadn’t risen high enough in the sky to provide some warmth.  I was great with that because I had hauled quite a bit of gear down with me and I was beginning to work up a slight sweat.  The models, however, were pretty cold.

Here’s one photo that I took underneath the overhang of the waterfall with a very long shutter speed.  It almost looks like a beam of light. I liked the big slab of granite behind the waterfall.

The next stop was a lovely park near the river.  The sun we beginning to be high in the sky, so it was a little more difficult to find some great locations for our models showcasing the location.

Flowers and Rocks

It was beginning to get a little warm as we finished up our fourth location, so we broke for lunch and then met at HDR Imaging for some photoshop lessons. It was nice to be in an air-conditioned room during the heat of the day because Redding, California, is very hot in the middle of summer. After several hours of great instruction, we broke for dinner and then headed off to another location.

This location was fabulous.  It was an overlook to Shasta Dam, Shasta Lake and Mt. Shasta.  That particular location is called “The Three Shastas”.  Not only did we have a fabulous view, but when I drove up to the site there were four gorgeous Porsches, a Mustang and a four wheel drive vehicle. Oh!  And there were also about 6 or 7 models.  Later on, a nice guy on a hot red motorcycle stopped to see what all the hub-bub was about and he let us use his motorcycle as another prop.

I haven’t had a chance to go thru all my photos of this particular shoot, but here are a few…

After the sun had set and all the cars were gone as were most of the models and photogs, I wanted to try a long exposure on the beautiful Three Shastas.  It was very dark by this point and I had to use my tripod and manual focusing because  it was too dark for the camera to focus on its own.  When I finally saw this photo, I was glad we stayed after everyone else had left.

The Three Shastas

All in all this was a long but wonderful day.  Day three was almost as fun…more on that later.

I love thistles.  Not sure why.  Maybe it’s the lively colors.  Maybe it’s the very defined foliage.  I dunno, I just like them.  They are popping out in the Angora Fire Area in South Lake Tahoe, CA, right now.  I found a whole field of them when I was out with Obie T. (The) Dog on a walk the other day.  He always finds good things for me to photograph.

I’ve been working on making my landscape/still life photography better.  So, I thought I would practice on these lovely thistles.  Besides, I’ve been trying to photograph something interesting to hang in my bathroom, which is green.  I thought thistles would add a nice little pop of color to the whole scene.

One of the biggest problems with photographing thistles is that they are only one bloom on top of a long stem.  So, you have to make sure your background is pleasing and not distracting.  I found that out the hard way one morning after shooting about 25 thistle photos.  I failed to isolate the flower and I threw most of my shots away.

Luckily for me, the wildflowers are in full bloom in this area, so I just used the other flowers as background. I took two exposures of this particular scene.  The first one (above) has the thistle properly exposed and the background flowers quite light. I like it, but I think I like the next one better.  I got more of a silhouette on the thistles but backlight on the thistle-y part.  I like this one a lot. Makes them look almost dangerous to touch.

I also tried to isolate one of the thistles a little.  I added some texture post process and I rather like how it turned out.

Now, I have a few choices for my bathroom project.  I will probably have them printed on canvas and at least 16×20.  I think it will look swell. (Does anybody say that anymore?).

PS.  If you are interested in purchasing any of these as prints or canvases, contact me at schmautzhaus@sbcglobal.net.

Wish you were here!

My favorite things combined:  Landscape photography and People Photography…all in one great weekend. These pics are from my weekend photo adventure and workshop with Mark Behrens and a bunch of wonderful photographers and models.  On Saturday we traveled around to a bunch of different wineries and vineyards searching for the National Geographic moment.  We had the advice and teaching of a wonderful landscape photographer, Dean Gustafson.  He helped me capture the below photo along with several other ones, below.  Very nice man. Here’s a few more shots of the landscape portion.

Napa Winery Tower

Rose in Sunshine

Fog rolls into Napa Valley

Hot Air Balloons over Napa Valley

What a great time we had in Napa Valley this weekend.  The whole weekend was devoted to photography.  Saturday was spent studying landscape photography with the help of landscape photographer Dean Gufstason.  I learned so much from him.  He is an excellent photographer (click on his name to go to his web page) and was extremely helpful and kind.

Sunday, we journeyed up to the private Behren’s Family Winery where we literally had the run of the place.  I have lots of photos to edit, but I’ve put a few here for your enjoyment.

I’ll probably do a little slideshow later on and I may add some more to the blog by way of a light box, or something.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun.  Thanks to Mark Behrens for putting the whole thing together.  Disneyland for photographers, indeed.