Oregon Coast

I am going back to my Oregon theme today. I took heat for my previous blog post on Oregon (see "Five Truths About Oregon" posted on March 30th). While my previous post was written with "tongue in cheek" humor, I was poking a little fun at Oregon and Oregonians. However, those Oregonians take Oregon jokes very personally.

Today's blog post is to portray the beauty of Oregon. My photograph is an early evening capture at Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast. The sun was setting (though you can never actually see the sun setting in Oregon behind the clouds…..oppps, there I go again!) and there was a slight mist in the air (like there always is in Oregon……oh, slack my hand, I just can't help myself!). The natural colors were not very inviting or dramatic so I planned to put this into black and white when I took the image.

Most of my post-processing was done in Adobe Lightroom with some finishing touches in Adobe CS3 Photoshop. The key post-processing step I took with this capture was to run the "clarity" slider way down to give the image a very soft look. The softness really emphasized the evening light and ever-present mist in the air. I was really pleased with the final result.

I also printed this image on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Photo Rag Satin paper with my Epson R2400 printer. The final print looks spectacular and am looking forward to mounting, matting, and framing the image with a very professional, exhibition quality look.

A few more images like this one and I will need to find someone interested in sponsoring and providing a location for a photographic exhibition. Any offers?

Go visit Cannon Beach, OR. It is a spectacular place and the community is delightful.

Cheers,
Dale

In Flight

In my day job, I have traveled extensively. At times, I have traveled up to 50% of the time, traveled to many places around the world, and lived in China and India for a brief period. I love to travel to exotic and interesting places. And of course, I bring my camera with me.

Things have changed these days. My career is in transition and I do not travel anywhere to the extent I used to in the past. In fact, I rarely travel now.

However, this past week I had to make a short trip to San Jose, CA. The trip was for business but also allowed me to connect with Kathy Waite, Waite Associates and Adobe, and a high school friend, Cindy Emond Fay, that I hadn't seen in over 33 years. Cindy and I got reconnected on Facebook about a year ago. It was great to see both face-to-face and visit with them for a while.

It is always great to connect with friends and colleagues and my blog post is to share the photographic inspiration I receive from other people.

I met and heard Jay Maisel at NAPP's Photoshop World in Las Vegas in September, 2008. It was the first Photoshop World I have ever attended. It was an awesome event. See my guest blog post regarding Photoshop World at my good friend, Rich Legg's, blog at http://www.leggnet.com/2008/09/photoshop-world-recap-by-dale-welcome.html

Jay's work is inspiring and his words of wisdom are equally so. Read Jay's guest blog post on Scott Kelby's blog http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2009/archives/3814 . Jay's website can be found at http://jaymaisel.com/ . At Photoshop World, Jay left me with several thoughts:
- You cannot take photographs unless you carry your camera with you - take it with you everywhere
- The best photographs are right behind you - turn around
- Give yourself personal photographic assignment challenges

Jay's words have stuck with me to this day.

The second person that inspired me was Julieanne Kost, Adobe's Chief Photoshop Evangelist. Julieanne's images are amazing and she is also a terrific teacher. I can see why Adobe made her their chief Photoshop evangelist.

You can find Julieanne at http://www.jkost.com/ and http://www.jkost.net/ . Check out her work.

Now, here is the connection with traveling, Jay Maisel and Julieanne Kost. Julieanne has done a series of images taken from the seat of the many, many planes she has been on in her extensive travels. Her book of these images, Windows, is worth checking out. Jay Maisel has inspired me to take my camera everywhere, look behind me and challenge myself photographically. Julieanne's idea of taking photographs from her seat on the plane out the window is a view of the world I had never thought of. I love the great ideas other people have and wish I could think of those things.

My photograph above, In Flight, was taken out of the plane window on my recent trip to California. Normally I get on a plane, turn on my iPod and fall asleep. Now, I get on a plane, turn on my iPod and look out the window. I used to always get an aisle seat. Now I always take the window seat. I took this photograph because I had my camera with me and I looked out the window.

Thank you Jay and Julieanne!

Cheers,
Dale