Light The Sky

Light The Sky :: Maine

“Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,

“You owe me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.”

Hāfez

(Working title: “JJ Acadia”, for those JJ Abrams fans out there! Or Acadia fans, as the case may be.  Both = a double win! lol)

It’s been a busy few weeks…as I mentioned last week, we are working on a book (which will be awesome.  Sign up for the newsletter for updates, discounts, etc when the time comes!), I’ve got a few personal projects going on and I’ve spent the last few weeks working with Edith Levy on an mutual interview project (because her travel images rock and I think you’ll love them.  Her interview will be released next week…stay tuned for that!).

As of yesterday, she was kind enough to put together a little behind the scenes interview about my photography work.  Please, go check it out and show her page some love. 🙂

This image will be part of the upcoming ebook that David and I are working on…it is a shot I took in Acadia last fall as an example of sun flare.  The final is actually a blend of three exposures, using luminosity masks and manual tweaking.  When we got to the beach a little before sunrise, I wasn’t sure if we were going to get much color.  It’s always a fine line between heavy clouds adding texture to a sky, and heavy clouds blotting out the sun.  Thankfully we got just enough breaks for the light to pour through and give us a show.

That trip was still one of my top photo trips.  I was there with such good company and the weather was just perfect for dramatic shots…what more can a landscaper ask for? ❤

Follow my work on any (all?) of my various social medias…I use each for something a little different. 500px, twitter, FB, G+, IG

Friend, like, circle me (in a non-creepy way), 1+….get to it!

Eternity of the Tides

Eternity of the Tides

And so castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually. -Hendrix

I’ve noticed, lately, that I spend a lot of time photographing water. It’s powerful, eternal, enchanting and dangerous. How can any reasonable girl resist those charms?

This Beautiful Life

Mirror, Mirror

Promise to stay wild with me.  We’ll seek and return and stay and find beauty and the extraordinary in all the spaces we can claim.  We’ll know how to live.  How to breathe magic into the mundane. -Victoria Erickson

The Forest Through the Trees

The Forest Through the Trees

“There is always music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it.” -Minnie Aumonier

That is the kind of sky I live for.  A natural symphony.  A masterpiece.  The kind of light that makes anything look beautiful.  Those few precious moments, just before the sun falls below the horizon, lighting up the sky and the forest with the most intense shades of rainbow…

*sigh*

The editing process for the images I took this day was touch and go.  I wasn’t sure if this photo was any good.  I wasn’t sure what I would ever do with it (I have a number of images sitting on hard drives like that) but a few things made me decide to publish this.

First, I was feeling very inspired by some of Lars Van De Goor’s beautiful forest images.  The quality of the light and his edits are gorgeous.

Second, I had some wonderful feedback and encouragement from a loving boyfriend and a good friend.  There is a lesson to be learned there.  Always surround yourself with positive vibes. ……Ain’t nobody got time for haters. haha

 

Grow Old With You

Grow Old With You

I want to make you smile, whenever you’re sad. Carry you around when your arthritis is bad. All I wanna do, is grow old with you…

Yesterday I spent a little time cleaning up the to-do list.  I worked on some edits, set up some meetings, tended my social media gardens and FINALLY finished a new logo watermark.
Now I know, people tend to be pretty split on the watermark issue.  For a long time I never marked the images, mostly because I never got around to putting together a logo I liked.  Then I came up with this idea…probably about 2 or 3 months ago, thought it was super genius…and didn’t have time to follow up.  haha

New Logo!

So…what made me decide to finally mark the shots?  Well, two things.  First, I want there to be some way for people who are interested to be able to find me, as images often get separated from their captions…. And second, I wanted to make an attempt to at least show that this is a product of my heart and soul, in case push ever came to shove.  It’s easy to remove for someone determined to do so, but at least I can tell people I tried. 😉

Now, what I didn’t want to do was make an obnoxious, obtrusive, glaringly obvious watermark that detracted from the images.  I wanted something that had a way to find me (website), a personal touch (that is, in fact, my handwriting at the top) and still looked polished.

Not too bad for someone who is awful at graphic design, eh?

Now, as for the shot itself…  3 exposure manual blend, luminosity masks mostly. The image was taken in Bolton, CT at one of my favorite parks for engagement shoots. These trees reminded me of a photo of my grandparents, grandma folded into grandpa’s arms, looking off into the distance together.  Sunsets like that just sing romance. ❤

Making Fire

The Day’s Last Blush

I recently read an article in the Light and Landscape Magazine by Scott Reither. It’s well thought out and written….I don’t want to butcher it by trying to re-hash his ideas….so I will briefly paraphrase and fully encourage you to wander on over to their page to read it yourself. 🙂

In essence, Scott tells the people he teaches that when you survey a landscape, you’ll see things that stand out to you.  Most people will take a few snaps, settle for a few satisfactory compositions, and move on to the next angle/spot/perspective.  Scott’s article, though, challenges photographers to fully explore a scene.  Don’t just settle for a spark (a decent shot)…push each composition to it’s limits, nurturing the spark until you’ve made fire (an extraordinary shot).

After reading that, I thought of all of the failed outings I’ve had….heck…that every landscape photog has.   I wanted to do better.  There were so many places close to home where I had felt that spark, but didn’t do my very best to bring an image to life.

This river and pilings (pylons? parts of the pier for the ferry!) is just a few minutes away, and while I enjoyed my first visit, the original images were lackluster.  This attempt is not perfect…the wood-sticky-uppies could be sharper, I forgot to do an exposure or two for the moon itself, wish the wind hadn’t been so fierce as I was having a hard time staying warm and sheltering the wind……..   But thanks to Scott’s article, and subsequent inspiration, I’ve got another, better version of the site to add to my photo collection. 🙂