Fairhaven Environmental Photography

  This whole day I was shooting in monochrome and I really liked it. I had to think about one less thing and took some of the frustration out of choosing what colors and saturation I wanted. I spent a while trying to get a picture of this heron and get up close enough to it to get a good picture. I ended up getting close and then I must have overstepped and it flew away and I quickly spun around and snapped a picture. thank God It was in focus and the shutter speed wasn’t too low. It ended up being a pretty cool action shot, and I’d never gotten a picture of a heron before this so that’s pretty cool.

  This is a photo of my dear friend Buck. He has sweetest smile, the rosiest cheeks, and a bull-strong adventuring spirit. Every time we are together we end up caked in mud, with flooded boots, with lost lunches and new cool sticks and scrapes to boot. I so dearly associate Buck with rivers, with waist-deep water and most often falling in.   I took this photo on a trip tromping in the Nooksack. We are shin deep, shoes off, and cold-toed. I was a very lucky guy that day and found a hagstone!! I took pictures of many things through it, the best being my friends grin. I wanted to capture the magic in him. This photo makes me giggle, reminds me of holding my camera high over my head, a just-in-case measure as we walked into the river. It was foolish to even bring it, maybe. But most things I do with Buck are foolish! There must be great luck between us :)

  My favorite photo of the quarter is this, the short eared owl resting after its sunset hunt. It was taken with f/7.1, ISO-1600, Focal length 500MM, and at 1/1250 sec. I did some shadow/highlight balance editing, as well as slightly upped the sharpness. I am so so proud of this one, I love owls!!!

 

  This photo was taken at Marine Park during our second-to-last field trip. This photo stood out to me because of the many elements it captures. One being the wind, which can be seen by the flow of hair. The second being the sunset. The colors of the sunset, I feel, set the energy of the photo. I waited till it was less bright because, as much as I wanted to capture the sunset in its prime, I personally love the purples and blues that emerge just as the sun is about to disappear on the horizon. I think what I was trying to invoke from viewers was a sense of calm, stillness, yet not relaxed. Also, a dazed sense is what I was aiming for. Dazed yet gloomy. Honestly, I feel like there's a lot someone could feel from looking at this. Maybe a sense of loneliness, being alone with oneself. To focus, though, on the theme of loneliness, I feel that people often negate the idea of being alone. I think people negate it because they often fear being alone. I personally think the world and peop...

 

  I really like this photograph, and I think it shows the change that animals are forced into through human development. At first, your eye is directed to the seagull near the middle, then to the surrounding docks and warehouses. Thinking about how animals such as the seagulls photographed, or the sea lions that were swimming around near the docks, are forced into this man made world is something that evokes emotion. I do believe that this photograph contains a more lighthearted, hopeful side too. Many places, even in Bellingham, have much more visible human interaction and pollution, leading to a very biodiverse ecosystem. On the other hand, this photo shows a rather diverse area, and it must have been a good area for feeding as there were so many birds in that area. I'm hoping this photo shows how we as humans coexist with nature, and must take care of it going forward. 

 

It was difficult for me to choose a single photo that stood out above the rest because there were so many I was excited about/proud of, so I just chose a few that I liked. In the sunset photo, there are a couple of specks of sand from the beach but I don't have an editor that could remove them unfortunately, but I was still happy about getting the sun-rays to show up so I decided to add it anyway. 

 

 

  The first photo is Valee perched on the cobblestones, holding their camera steady for a shot. I liked the bright contrasting colors of yellow and orange in their hair and waterbottle, with the blue background of sea and sky. I used the rule of thirds when framing this photo, placing the subject in the bottom right third of the frame, with space in front of Valee to imagine what they are photographing. I also like the diagonal line made by the small breaking waves that contradicts the two horizontal lines created by the other side of the bay and the horizon. To me, this photo encapsulates a feeling of serenity; appreciating the grandness of open spaces by immersing ourselves in the documentation of them.  The second photo I sneakily captured of my sister and her boyfriend eating lunch, but I was not sneaky enough when taking it. They are both mid-chew and mid-laugh, staring directly at the camera. I really like the framing of this photo; they way they are both sitting showcas...

  I chose these photos and took them for the same purpose: to show humans as they are. Untouched and unprompted. I find it beautiful to capture people in their element and display the simple beauty of their presence. 

  For this assignment, I wanted to document a lovely day in the Baker backcountry with my friend. With the first photo, I really wanted to make the viewer think about perspective. With such a wide shot, it's easy not to even see my friend in the air, and when the viewer's gaze reaches that bottom corner, it makes the viewer understand how big the scale is in the photograph. With the second one, I wanted my friend to be slightly out of focus, with Shuckson looming over. The third is taken looking down, as my friend scouts out his line, the viewer also directs their gaze downwards. I wasn't trying to represent any major emotions when taking these photographs, but more of the feeling of moving around big spaces, carefully yet freely. We have the privilege to play in these wild natural places, and I tried to evoke the feeling of that in these photographs.

  Photo 1: Shutterspeed - 1/125, ISO - 800, F/11 Photo 2: Shutterspeed - 1/125, ISO - 800, F/11 I don’t feel the most comfortable taking pictures of random people without their permission, so I decided to go out with a friend to take some pictures with her posing in various positions. I got some pretty good images of my friend posing next to trees and looking out, but I preferred the more subtle images with something other than a human posing as the subject. I got very lucky during this photoshoot because while taking pictures a small bird (I believe it’s a Dark-eyed junco) sat on my backpack so I quickly tried to take as many shots as possible. Because my lens can’t zoom in close enough to make the bird perfectly in frame as the primary subject, but this is still my favorite photo I was able to capture because it was so perfectly representative of nature interacting with human made creations. I also liked the vines climbing the building around the window and the reflection of the ...

Although none of these photos were necessarily intentionally posed, I really enjoyed the variety of moments I captured of people interacting with the environment in different ways. Throughout these individual moments, the overarching feeling that is captured is a sense of peacefulness and admiration for nature. There is a feeling of connection in these photos that comes from sharing the experience of nature's beauty with others. The first photo was taken during an incredible sunset that I could not stop photographing. I was so enamored by the sunset that I hadn't realized how many people had gathered on the beach since we had arrived there. The photo captures just a few people admiring the sunset, and I find it so wonderful that people gather to marvel at nature together. There's something very special about collectively seeing something so beautiful and sharing that moment. One of the best ways humans can interact with the environment is by admiring it.  In the second phot...