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Tag Archives: fall
2011 Top 10 #4 – Mountain Barn
The restored Tate Barn is an iconic landmark in Midway, not far from our Park City home. It’s an often photographed landmark, but one that has eluded me through the years.
On an early fall day, after the first snow in the mountains, I had an early photo shoot at Soldier Hollow, the 2002 Olympic cross country venue. The early light was cast beautifully on the barn with snow-covered Mt. Timpanogos in the background – an idyllic scene and a great HDR opportunity.
2011 Top 10 #5 – Autumn Rainbow
Fall of 2011 was simply amazing – color everywhere and extending for over six weeks. The one thing that was missing in our own Wasatch Mountains, though, were reds. So it was a quick car stopper when we ventured up the Mirror Lake Highway towards the High Uintahs and found this amazing patch of red, green and yellow.
This is a longer telephoto look at a grove of trees not far from Soapstone Basin. It was photographed with a Nikon D700 fitted with a Nikkor 70-300 lens on a Manfrotto tripod. single shot, no HDR.
Of all the many dozens of selects I chose from this past fall, this one has always stood out in my mind for the vividness and diversity of the color.
It was, literally, an Autumn Rainbow!
Weddings: Having Fun
Historically, I’ve been very selective in photographing weddings. While I’m known now more for my landscape and travel photography, my original career was news and sports. So when I do photograph a wedding, I do it in true reportage style.
I was excited to photograph Scott and Becky’s wedding. It was an ideal time of year – autumn in the mountains. My interest in document their wedding day news style was perfect for them.
After crunching through bride and groom shots up in Empire Pass a couple hours before the service, Becky had one more shot in mind – a chairlift. Fortunately we have a lot of them. And, even more fortunately, I was carrying a stepladder to help boost bride and groom up onto the Ruby lift at Deer Valley.
It made for a perfect scene. We went through a range of shots. Then it was time for a little fun!
While I haven’t made a career of shooting weddings, one thing I have learned is to get away from the solemn nature of traditionally serious, emotion shots and have some fun. In every setup I did that day, I closed it by having the participants whoop it up a little bit. And I’ll be that in almost every case, it will be those photographs chosen.
I love this photograph – it was the first select I pulled in the same-night look at over 1,200 images. It captures the fun and frivolity of their relationship. And a little Photoshop work brought out the super cool cowboy boots Becky wore that day.
And it will be a memory each of them – and I – will share whenever we load onto Ruby after a hard day skiing powder in Empire Canyon at Deer Valley Resort.
Dawn’s Early Light
Dawn’s Early Light, originally uploaded by tomkellyphoto.
It’s always a challenge an hour before sunrise figuring out whether or not it’s worth shooting and what location is going to produce some wonderful photographs. It was cloudy today – very cloudy, with a good chance of socked in overcast. But there was enough of a break that I felt it was worthwhile. It turned out to be a bonanza of opportunities!
It’s just a short drive up through Deer Valley Resort to Empire Pass and on to Guardsman. This time of year sunset is late – around 7:30 a.m. So there are always bike being unloaded from cars for the ridge ride.
Today I started at Empire Pass, scaring away a pair of deer hunters in a pickup. Shooting was good – very good. But it would get even better. Leaving Empire I passed another photographer with two tripods setup shooting south. The sky to the west over Guardsman looked especially inviting.
I stopped at four or five different locations, all producing great shots. But all of a sudden I turned around and looked east. The sun was piercing through the clouds shooting a bullet of light to Earth.
After shooting some closeup verticals of a single ray, the sky all of a sudden lit up with a series of sun rays.
The key to the photographs, though, is HDR – high dynamic range. This photograph is actually a series of three shots, each one exposure stop apart. It’s a simple HDR, processed with Photomatix, that worked very well – capturing the brilliance of unlit golden leaves with the menacing dark sky.
Enjoy!
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