Fairhaven Environmental Photography

  This root caught my eye because it looks like a little doorway into another world. Something about the way it twists and curves, with the moss creeping along the edges, makes it feel like an entrance to some secret place underground. Although it may just be a hollow space under a tree, but in black and white, it takes on a whole different vibe- kind of eerie and magical. The contrast really brings out the texture, from the smooth wood to the rough patches of moss and dirt. I like how it feels both strong and fragile at the same time, like it’s been holding the earth together for ages but could just as easily be swallowed back into the ground. I usually don’t like taking photos in black and white; I love to see the colors pop in the picture and I feel like black and white makes everything look dull. But to my surprise, I was really happy with the way this photo came out. I think this specific shot really looked better in black and white than in color. It makes you focus more on th...

 

  Pixie Cup Lichen  1/120 s f1.8 Bird Wing 1/121 s f2.8 Rose Hip 1/140 s f1.8 Fragrance Lake  1/592 s f1.8 This weekend I traveled down to the Skagit River Delta, once of a field trip and once with my parents because they were visiting. We also went for a hike up Fragrance lake. This was where I got these photos. I wasn't sure what it was I wanted to do with my free choice photos so I stuck with what caught my eye while also trying to challenge myself. There were bushes and bushes of rose hips covered in these vibrant yellow lichens and so I worked to capture these lichens. I am still working on improving my macro photography. I struggle with the composition of macro photography because it tends to be so abstract with an absence of foreground and background. Instead macro photography is a smattering of up close textures and colors that seem almost alien because we so rarely look at it. My hope with macro photography is to instill a kind of awe in the exciting vibrancy and...

 

  {Shutter Speed: 1/1000, F/8, ISO100} {Shutter Speed: 1/2000, F/5.0, ISO100} {Shutter Speed: 1/400, F/14, ISO 100} {Shutter Speed: 1/2000, F/7.1, ISO100} My four photos captured our field trip to Semiahmoo Park, my favorite field trip in the quarter. It was nice to have many elements to work with on our camera, like adjusting ISO, working with larger lends, and seeing so many pretty views. This location offered us many different subjects to shoot and gave us a variety of scenes.  Because of how sunny the day was, I struggled with overexposure in most of my photos. I cannot remember adjusting my light settings or the ISO, therefore I was more than likely using the wrong settings for this type of location.  Another critique was that my camera lens had a smidgeon it, which you could see in the photos. Due to this, I had to crop the photos so they were not viewable but in doing so, I lost some of the visual. For future field trips, I will clean my lens before taking photos....

  I deeply enjoyed and was moved by our class trip to Semiahmoo , ancestral lands of the Semiahmoo people whose small nati on occupied this land in the 1800’s and who ’ s presence became scarce i n the 1850’s due to both smallpox and decent into Canadian territory. A thread of thought that continued to arise for me as I approached this trip searching for the theme of my freestyle shoot, was the history of photography itself. Photography, which has deep roots in colonialism, surveillance and anthropocentrism, must be decolonized when it comes to my own approach and interaction with the art form.   On this trip, our class stumbled across a beached Giant Pacific Octopus . These beautiful creatures are the largest of their kind, and also inc redibly clever; holding the ability to problem solve, communicate and recognize people and things. I wanted to capture this melancholy scene while also respecting the life of the octopus and not participating in a sort of anthropoc...