Category: Fall

Going Up North: A Video

10/13/2013

I made a trip up north last week to focus on the fall colors and my landscape work. This is where my passion in photography truly resides and it is ironic how much time I spend doing everything but landscape photography. When I get around to it, it feels like coming home. Once I shake off the city armor that a lot of us urban types don, and it takes a good day or two, life becomes in sharper focus, the questions change and little concerns seem to melt away. Everything feels right.

I have lots of work to process and share, but while I was there, I made a point to make some videos for this blog. It occurred to me that while I can talk about how great a waterfall is, it is different to *HEAR* the waterfall too. I can talk about the roar but you will understand so much better if you hear it yourself. Can you feel the misty spray of water on your face and arms, so fine you can't see it but you feel it's presence?

[note: these are HD videos. Depending on internet speed, it may be best to let them load before pressing play.]

©Lisa M. Bond Photography

Here is a video of the waves coming in and out of Lake Superior one morning. Please enjoy a 43 second power vacation.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you will come back again soon.

Color Priority: An Experiment

2/7/2013

Originally published Nov. 4, 2012

Fall as a season is about 3 months short for me. With all due respect to the calendar’s dates, here’s how it goes in Minnesota: Spring 3 months, Summer 3 months, Fall 4-6 weeks, and Winter 5 months. There’s a couple extra weeks in there but this is a flexible calendar. Following is a more detailed analysis, if you are curious.

Spring lasts from about April to June so I’d say 3 months, give or take a couple of weeks. Summer runs from somewhere in June until maybe sometime in September, so a good 3 months there as well. Fall is from sometime in September through pretty much most of October making it the shortest season at about 4 or 6 weeks tops. Winter can kick in during October but most likely early November and lasts through March, sometimes even into April making it the longest season here at 5 months plus.

When Fall rolls around, it is an intense and concentrated period of color and if you are into capturing it with a camera then one must get busy and focus. Fall also has the same issue as Spring, that being the wind. If one subtracts all the days when it is too windy to shoot, I’m guessing half of those possible 30-40 days of the season just went out the window. If only Fall was Winter we could really kick back and enjoy it.

At any rate, one day while I was enjoying the display of colors, I got to thinking there sure is a lot of competition out there for attention. When we survey the landscape, which color grabs our eye the most: red, yellow or green? (I didn’t have any orange in my test acreage.) I guess it’s the hidden psychologist/marketing director inside of me that wanted to know the answer to this question.

Here I tried to find trees in order of Green-red-yellow,

Green-yellow-red,

Yellow-green-red,

Yellow-red-green,

Red-green-yellow,

and finally Red-yellow-green.

What color did you notice first? Did it matter what order they were in?

The tree color I noticed first was:

Green
Yellow
Red
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The tree color I noticed second was:
Yellow
Red
Green
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The tree color I noticed last was:
Red
Green
Yellow
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Then I got to thinking some more. Perhaps my experiment had too many variables such as size of tree, number of leaves, and percentage of frame each tree occupies. So I thought I would try it on a smaller scale with one leaf representing each color. Do you notice any differences now?

Green-yellow-red,

Green-red-yellow,

Yellow-red-green,

Yellow-green-red,

Red-yellow-green,

and last but not least, Red-green-yellow,

The leaf color I noticed first was:

Green
Yellow
Red
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The leaf color I noticed second was:

Red
Yellow
Green
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The leaf color I noticed last was:

Red
Yellow
Green
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Perhaps another variable could be whether you are female or male.

I am:Male
Female
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Thank you for taking my polls. Maybe this will help you make your next marketing decision, at least as far as color is concerned!

Late Fall Farmer's Market

2/7/2013

Originally published Oct. 29, 2012

I made it to the Mill City Farmer’s Market one more time before it closed last weekend. I wrote about it in August and at the time was most delighted that I had finally found squash blossoms.

The surprise of my October trip was this vegetable called Romanesco.

I’ve never seen it before but love the name and the appearance. It looks like a cross between broccoli and cauliflower. The guy told me it is best roasted. Out of curiosity, I tried a fresh bite first and I would say that it tasted like cauliflower but a little sweeter. The texture is very much like cauliflower. So, I followed recommendations and roasted it with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. It was really delicious. I recommend trying it if you find any at your farmer’s market.

Breads and Pastries from Solomon’s Bakery in Minneapolis

I’ll try to get back early in the spring next year to see what I can find then. Here are a few other images from my trip.

These breads and sweets are from The Salty Tart, also in Minneapolis.

Old Man Winter blows an Icy Kiss

2/7/2013

Originally published Oct. 26, 2012

Big change in the weather here this week. It was in the 70s Monday and snowing Thursday. It is definitely a challenge to adjust to downward temperature swings that cover 40 degrees on the thermoscape.

Even the birds will have to wait for the predicted lunchtime high of 40 degrees to get a drink.

A store I went in yesterday was putting out ice scrapers. I’m trying to look at the bright side of this. At least it wasn’t snow shovels. They still have rakes out. We won’t talk about their being relocated to the clearance section.

I know there are some out there who are high-fiving each other and woo-hooing it and revving up their Ski-Doos. I, on the other hand, am boo-hooing it while I wash up the long johns and stock the pantry for the big one that’s coming in.

Although I am initially resistant to this particular change in the seasons, the other good news about this is that I can finally focus on indoor work again, having been pleasantly distracted on a daily basis with photographing fall colors and leaves. A “job” which reminds me every minute why I love what I do. More about that later.

Hope you are keeping warm wherever you are!

Photographing While Driving

2/7/2013

Originally published Oct. 1, 2012

Southern Minnesota is quite beautiful at this time of year. Much of the land consists of farm fields populated with corn and soybeans. The harvest stage of these plants is to turn a dark yellow, maybe even golden in color while some are the color of straw. Set this against the periwinkle blue sky, sprinkle in some clouds, and driving through those farm fields in September is very lovely indeed.

As a child I felt differently and quite detested these flat fields that seemed to go on as far as the eye could see. It would have been so much more interesting to view mountains or oceans than corn and soybeans. So I’m not sure at what point I turned over a leaf and had a change of heart about this part of the world I grew up in. Now instead of ignoring it, I wanted to photograph it.

How many of you see something while you are driving and you want to take a picture of it? This happens to me all the time. Usually I think “I’ll come back and photograph that later.” On long trips though, the opportunity might only present itself once. Maybe next time you come back it will have changed somehow.

Then, if you decide to stop and do it, you might find yourself thinking “that wasn’t so bad” and you might find another spot just a mile or two down the road, and then maybe another. It becomes impractical to keep stopping the car, especially if there are other passengers. It’s also fairly dangerous to be standing on the side of the highway. One time when I decided to pull the car over and get out (I was even on a gravel road meaning a lot less traffic), a farmer and his wife hurried out in their car to see what I was doing. It was a little more attention than I wanted – I was only photographing some hay bales. Now I wonder if they kept their gold bars in there or maybe something else?

Anyway, sometimes it seems easier if I could just operate the camera while driving. I know, this is a terrible idea. I really should have someone else driving the car but my 11 year old can’t reach the peddles yet. I’ve tried looking through the view finder while driving the car. Even though I’m still looking at the road, the perspective is different and it’s just plain dangerous. Sometimes you want to stop but there is nowhere to park the car.

This is when you must get creative. This time I did the shooting somewhat randomly by not looking through the viewfinder but trying to do the best I can to frame the image while keeping on my side of the road and clear of the ditch. I shot at a very high shutter speed since I was traveling at 55 MPH.

I’d love to hear how any of you manage to photograph things you see while traveling down a road or highway.

Going Up North: A Video

Color Priority: An Experiment

Late Fall Farmer's Market

Old Man Winter blows an Icy Kiss

Photographing While Driving

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