Another good day of learning

I had a pretty productive day yesterday and learnt a few new things to boot, which is never a bad thing.

The day started off with my decision to do some photo reconnaissance at Turkey Mountain in Tulsa.  I've been wanting to locate some higher elevation viewpoints of the Tulsa metro area as there are some promising potential photos to be taken.  

Once at Turkey Mountain I decided to leave my tripod in the car and took the monopod instead (so glad I did this) to save weight.  Also, the supplied carry strap on the tripod doesn't work too well as it is top heavy so keeps flipping itself upside-down.  And, as I later discovered, a monopod makes a pretty useful hiking pole to aid traversing broken terrain.

However, I did find at the end of the day, my Lowepro Stealth Reporter bag is not very suitable for hiking over several miles of trails.  My shoulders are not very happy today...then again, have a few aches and pains in other places too!  Suffice to say I will be investigating a back pack for future trips here....and I fully plan on returning.

Okay, back to the trails and views.  I picked the "yellow" trail as it followed along the line of the Arkansas River and had the higher potential of good views over Tulsa.  Unfortunately as it turned out, the views were a little disappointing in a photographic sense.  There were few spots where there was uninterrupted views of the (interesting) Tulsa skyline(s).  Even the Autumnal trees with the lesser foliage did a good job of blocking things.  Don't get me wrong, the trail was very enjoyable, just not what I was looking for.

My best opportunity came at approximately the mid-way point on the trail, when I got to the "spider" part, where the "pink" trail passed close by and there was a view of the Tulsa downtown area:

Admittedly, in this recon photo, the sky is pretty boring and I will need to zoom/crop quite a bit to concentrate on the downtown skyline but it certainly has potential.  Should look much better with a great sunrise/sunset lighting the buildings and skyline...just need to be here at the right time to catch either.  Although, I'm leaning more towards a sunrise as I'm not so sure I fancy navigating the trail back down to the parking lot in the light of dusk (or later) - definitely need a good headlamp to light your way so as to not lose the trail and/or injure yourself.

Here is a zoomed/cropped recon photo to give a better idea of how things would look:

Again, a pretty flat and boring sky - not helped with this being taken in the early afternoon but then again, this is just a recon to find viewpoints to revisit at a later date when the light is better.

My only real "keeper" photograph of my visit is this one of the trail itself.  I spotted this tree that had grown around a huge boulder just to the side of the trail and the autumnal leaves just added to the scene:

All in all I had a great time at Turkey Mountain and fully intend to visit again.  I want to learn the trails better (recon them for photo viewpoints/vistas) as well as be there under more favorable lighting conditions to capture better photos of Tulsa.

New photo post coming soon

Not a lot of activity on here lately as I've been rather distracted. I
have, as time allowed, been putting together notes for a more in depth post
and also been taking some more photos. Not sure if any are post worthy but
at least I'm back behind my camera.

Hope to get everything together this weekend and with me having a 1 week
vacation coming up next week, I fully intend to take a lot more photos.

Stay tuned for the new posts.

Weekly update

Once again my weekly update is by email as I have not been spending much
time with my camera. Still in a retrospective mood and trying to figure out
how to move forward in my creative endeavors. I've really noticed how my day
to day responsibilities are restricting my drive and creativity where my
photography is concerned. Mix that in with my lack of direction as to
subject matter and what inspires me and you have a pretty large obstacle to
overcome.

I know I'm not alone in these things as I thing every creative individual
faces these things on a regular basis and I just need to tear things down,
to create the new me with which to move my photography to the next level.
Just not sure on how long this will take and what all will change to achieve
the next phase. All I know is that things are not working as I would like at
this time.

I hope to have some new photos to share soon, so keep checking back.

Not many photos lately

It's been a pretty quiet week photography wise and I haven't spent much time
behind my camera. Instead I've been a little preoccupied with my day job.

I did drive by a pretty impressive scene one day but I didn't have my camera
and as I was on a major highway, I couldn't have stopped anyway. Instead I
used it as inspiration to go back and see if I could find a safe location to
take the photo/scene. So far I haven't found a good vantage point to give a
similar point of view as I saw driving along the highway. So this is going
to be a work in progress until I find the beat point of view.

Visit to Woodward Park

I made another visit to Woodward Park in Tulsa, to pass a little time before heading to the airport to pick up my wife from a training trip to Virginia. It was the early afternoon so the light was bright and harsh, so I made use of my speedlight (with a diffuser dome) to provide some fill light to even out the lighting in the photos.

So once I arrived, I headed to the training garden to have a nice variety of subjects. There I found a nice selection of different flowers, plants as well as some structures and a pond full of colourful koi. I will be adding a full gallery of photos both here and on my website (I also posted a gallery on my Google+ profile) but as it's currently late - and I need to get to bed - I will post a teaser selection here...so watch this space for the remainder of my photos.

Hope you like the photos:

Low key weekend

Ever had one of those weekends when you planned to take some photos but events conspire to change your plans? I had one of those weekends.

The only photos I took were on Saturday morning, when I captured the colourful sunrise as I headed out to the local farmer's market. I fully intended to do some more photos either Saturday or on Sunday but abandoned the idea due to just being to tired/sleepy that I felt it unsafe to drive anywhere. Instead I just stayed on the couch and pulled up Google Maps on my MacBook and did some recon for subjects and locations.

Here is the sunrise from Saturday looking towards Glenpool, OK.

Sea of concrete

The other day I saw these flowers blooming in the midst of a sea of concrete and felt inspired to go grab my camera to record the scene. Okay, it was my driveway but why let a small detail interfere with such a nice metaphor.

I used my speedlight off camera and to the left of the flowers, triggering it via a TTL cable, to provide a little fill flash and additional texture to the flowers and concrete. Nature continuing regardless of man's attempt to cover it up and tame it.

Of course, while thinking of the contents of this blog post I started thinking more about other metaphors that this photo could represent. The main one that came to mind was how it's symbolic of me (as a person and/or as a photographer) surrounded by a sea of concrete. Trying to make my place in the world (and world of photography) while all the time hoping there isn't anyone nearby with a can of weedkiller to cut me down.