Prestwood Sunrise

Prestwood Sunset

Here is a photograph of a sunset over Lake Prestwood during my visit to Hartsville. I wish there had been some nice clouds in the sky. The next evening had a beautiful sky, but I was driving back home by that time.

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Rising Water

Isolation

The area of North Dakota where my mother grew up used to be fields as far as you could see. However, that has been changing the past several years. Water has been rising throughout the region. Roads have been cut off. Farms flooded out. Devil's Lake, Stump Lake, and Lake Lorretta have all overflowed their banks and inundated hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland. In many places instead of wheat fields, there are now plains of cattails stretching as far as the eye can see.

We saw this old, abandoned farm house on a small hill. It's fields taken over by Lake Lorretta. The county road we were on had obviously been elevated to stay above the lake water. Even then, it was only a couple of feet above the water.

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Waterfall Cove

Lake Jocassee Waterfall Cove"

This was the biggest waterfall that we saw on Lake Jocassee. It was nestled in this little cove behind a small cliff. There were also a lot of large, yellow winged butterflies fluttering around it the cove. However, I wasn't able to get any shots of the waterfall where you could actually recognize the butterflies in the them. The butterflies stayed close to the waterfall and didn't come close enough to us to be much more than a blurred, yellow speck. It was still quite pretty in there though.

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Haze ... all day!

Haze on Lake Jocassee

There was a haze/fog on Lake Jocassee nearly the entire day that I was visiting my sister's family. This photograph was one of the better ones I was able to get across the lake and even it took a bit of finessing in software to get it to this point. While this gunk obscured the mountains, it did even out the light for the waterfalls and family photographs that I took. Guess you could say there was a silver lining in the the haze.

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Lake Jocassee

Jocassee Reflections

My sister and her family went camping recently at Devil's Fork State Park on Lake Jocassee in the South Carolina Foothills / Blue Ridge Mountains. They invited my son to come and stay the week with them, and I ended up visiting them for one day as well. We went out in their boat and got to see several of the waterfalls that feed in to the lake.

More after the jump.

Lake Jocassee is an artificial lake which was constructed by Duke Power for hydroelectric generation in conjunction with their Keowee-Toxiway project and the Oconoee Nuclear Station. It is basically a set of mountain gorges that has been dammed and filled with water. The deepest portions of the lake are around 300 feet or more deep which makes it a popular spot for SCUBA divers. There is even a dive shop on the road close to the park's entrance.

Just a couple of years ago, when we were in the midst of our most recent drought, my sister said the lake was as much as 20 feet below normal. All of the docks were stranded on dry lake bed and some of the lake's coves and branches were not accessible via boat. Luckily, we've had more rainfall the past couple of years and the lake was close to normal. The waterfalls that we saw had plenty of water flowing over them and were quite picturesque.

The biggest problem was that it was foggy and overcast all day long. I think that we only had thirty minutes to an hour of sunlight peeking through the clouds in the afternoon. The sunlight eventually went away as afternoon thunderstorms were starting their daily build-up.

The photograph above was taken as we were drifting into one of the coves to view a waterfall. I turned around and saw these interesting reflections caused by our boat's wake and took a few of frames. This was the best of those frames. Normally, I try not to place a horizon line right in the middle of the frame as that tends to make for a rather static and boring composition. However, I decided that the contrast between the well defined trees and the smooth, wavy reflection would look best with a symmetrical composition with the horizon line in the center of the frame.

It is also a good example of not letting yourself get "shot blind" with what you think you want to photograph. We were trying to get closer to a waterfall and I was kind of focused on that. On a whim, I turned my head and noticed the smooth wake and reflections. I was only able to get around three or four frames before the wake had settled down thereby loosing the interesting dichotomy between the two halves of the image.

Sometimes it is OK to break the "rules" of composition, and it is always a good idea to look around for other interesting things to photograph.

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The Carolina Gallery Photography Invitational

Poinsett Bridge in Autumn

The Carolina Gallery, a local art gallery here in Spartanburg, held a photography contest recently. Last night was the opening reception for the gallery's show of the contest participants' entries. The show is scheduled to run from last night through August 4th.

The contest had two categories: Color and Black & White. More than 150 photographs were on display last night. Styles ran the entire gauntlet of photography from landscapes to fashion, from realistic to ultra-stylized. I was really impressed with the variety of images selected for the show. There are a lot of really good photographers who entered the contest from the local area, North Carolina, and even Georgia.

More after the jump.

Furman Lake at Twilight

You may recognize the two photographs that I posted today. I've posted them here before and these photographs were my entries in the competition. It was the first photography contest that I have entered and I wasn't really sure what to expect. As I said, there were lots of great images in the contest and such things always come down to the opinion of someone that you don't know. So, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that my Poinsett Bridge image was named the Third Place winner in the Color category.

I wasn't able to sleep very much last night for some reason. It wasn't as if I was jumping up and down all night. I was just too happy to be able to go to sleep. Maybe there is something in this photography stuff for me after all? My mind was spinning with the possibilities.

If you are in or passing through the Spartanburg area between now and August 4th, then stop by Carolina Gallery downtown. The photography show is on the third floor, but the other two floors are also filled with paintings, sculptures and local crafts you may also enjoy viewing.

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Blue Sky, Blue Water

Presque Isle North Pierhead Lighthouse

Another place that we stopped to visit on our way to Niagara Falls was Presque Isle State Park in Erie, Pennsylvania. The day we visited was going to be the shortest day of travel up to Niagara and we had some time to do a bit of sightseeing before our friend got off of work. The night before we looked at our maps and noticed that Presque Isle was very close to our route. We looked it up on the internet as well and decided it would be a good place to spend the free hours in our schedule. Plus, it gave us the change to stretch our legs after being in the car for a day and half, and allowed us to show our son one of the Great Lakes up close.

More after the jump.

There are two lighthouses on Presque Isle. The one in the photograph is the Presque Isle North Pierhead Lighthouse. It sits out on a pier that seems to be a popular fishing spot due to all of the people fishing off of it during our visit. The lighthouse marks the entrance into Presque Isle Bay and the Erie Harbor. We were fortunate to have some nice light and interesting skies, although it was quite windy at the time.

There isn't really anything special with how I took or processed this photograph. It isn't an HDR or other digital magic. I simply used Lightroom 2 to boost the contrast, Vibrance and Clarity/sharpness an touch. I think I did use a polarizing filter to cut the reflections on the water and darken the sky. Another element that I liked was the sailboat. It contrasts well with the lighthouse and gives a bit more context to the lighthouse's function.

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More twilight blues

Tower in Twilight

A different view of the Furman University clock tower in the pre-dawn twilight. This one was actually taken before the photograph I posted yesterday. I think the tower looks like it is leaning backwards due to the perspective distortion of the wide-angle lens. Although, maybe I am being a bit too critical.

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A good weekend

Twilight on the Lake

A former co-worker of mine organizes a charity 5k race for her church's youth ministry. I went this year to take some photographs for them. Got some good ones, I think. Shot about 800 total, and processed just over 200 of them into final JPEGs. You'll probably seen a couple of them later this week.

Anyway, the race is held out at Furman University. It gave me the opportunity to photograph the University's lake and signature clock tower in the pre-dawn twilight. This is something that I've wanted to do for awhile. I didn't get the shot I wanted, but I'm quite happy with what I did get. The only reason I didn't get what I wanted is that I did not have the time to get into the position I had pre-visualized with the sunrise colors behind the clock tower. I only had about 20 minutes and didn't know my way around the Furman lake. I will head back and do some scouting though, so I can get what I wanted. That's the fun of photography. Heck, even Ansel Adams kept returning to the same places in Yellowstone until he found the best light he had pre-visualized.

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