Posts Tagged ‘leaves’

New Morning Light image – Buckeye, Foothills of the Sierra Nevada, California 2011

Thursday, March 17th, 2011

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III__EF70-200mm f/2.8L USM__1/3 sec at f / 19__ISO 200

I have lived in the Sierra for 33 years, and I have always been thrilled when seeing the first buckeyes popping out in early spring.  The leaves come out so fast that I have never caught that moment I have enjoyed for so many years.  The bare branches of these small trees often have wonderful patterns that I have photographed during the winter months.  See one such image on mine on the OP site:  The Digital Deluge.

I have been wanting to capture that sense of early spring that I have seen and felt every spring for so long.  The timing for this image was critical – early enough in the budding process to still see the branch patterns and also see the full, radiating shapes of the leaves.  On Tuesday morning, on my Morning Light run, I think I captured the moment.

Enjoy!  Bill

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Posted in Landscape Photography, Nature, Nature's Design, Patterns of Nature, photography, Sierra Nevada, Sierra Nevada Mountains | 7 Comments »

Calla Leaves, Ahwahnee, California 2011

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III__EF70-200mm f/2.8L USM__1.5 sec at f / 22__ISO 100

For the past couple of months, I have been watching this calla plant growing in my living/dining room area.  The light comes through two different windows to light the leaves to various effect.  This past Sunday, I finally saw a composition worth setting up for.  I hung up my black piece of velvet on the wall behind these leaves.  I left my camera set up and made frames when I saw interesting light. I downloaded the images, looked at the new images, and was not particularly inspired by the results.

Yesterday, four days later, I looked at the images again with Lightroom.  Then it hit me that there was real potential here, made several adjustments to this image, including converting the image to BW.  Bingo!  I polished up the file this morning in Photoshop this morning.  Here is the result!

Enjoy,  Bill

For more of my BW work, see my Meditations in Monochrome ebook!

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Posted in Macro Photography, Nature's Design, Patterns of Nature, photography | 7 Comments »

Black oak leaves, El Capitan Meadow, Yosemite National Park 1983

Friday, May 28th, 2010

BLACK OAK LEAVES, EL CAPITAN MEADOW, YOSEMTIE VALLEY 1983

John and I have been working on my next ebook, which is a collection of my Yosemite photographs.  This image is one of my favorite Yosemite images, but it has sadly languished in terms of printing it because the original film was lost about twenty years ago.  The Cibachrome lab I used lost it.  I never had a proper scan made of the film as high res film scanning was not commonly available back then.   And don’t get me started on “lost film” stories.  I have far too many…

However, I have an exhibit coming up this summer at The Ansel Adams Gallery from  7/07 to 8/17/2010 so this will be a golden opportunity to print and exhibit this image.  For the digital file shown here, I scanned an 8×10 Cibachrome.  Not an ideal method, but I can make a very clean 16×20 print from that file.

By the way, this photograph was made with my Wista 4×5 Metal Field Camera in January, 1983.

In my Yosemite: The Promise of Wildness book, I included this photo and wrote these words about the making of it:

“This young oak stands a few feet from the main road leaving Yosemite Valley.  Millions of visitors race by it each year.  Despite its incongruous location, the tree conveyed a sense of wildness to me.  I had had a bad day at work [The Ansel Adams Gallery] and was heading home.  Needing something to calm my frustrated disposition,  I stopped for a walk along the meadow’s edge.  Having had the time to slow down and relax, I looked up from my ruminations and was struck with the beauty of these leaves.  With my attitude adjustment complete, I exposed my favorite image of Yosemite!”

Enjoy,  Bill

And come visit The William Neill Store!

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Posted in Landscape Photography, Yosemite National Park | 7 Comments »

Welcome to my new PhotoBlog!

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
Lily Pads

Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III__TS-E90mm f/2.8__1/3 sec at f / 13__ISO 200

As you can see, my new photoblog is up and running!

The blog now matches/blends in with the new web design.  My goals are the same -  to share my thoughts on landscape and nature photography in general, as well as sharing information specific to my own photography.  I will continue to include links to the work by other photographers I find inspiring, plus products and resources that I find useful.

Please update your bookmarks, RSS feeds, etc.

New Photoblog address: http://www.williamneill.com/blog/

The photo included was made in my backyard pond.  When I noticed the pattern that the pads form, I visualized a B&W photo.  This was unusual for me, but since John and I developed the Meditations in Monochrome ebook, I am “seeing” in B&W more often.  I also made dozens of color frames on Saturday and Sunday.  Sunday was especially good since it rained here!

I look forward to your comments and feedback.

Be sure to “follow” me on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter too!

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Posted in photography | 11 Comments »