Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Spivy Mountain
Alright, welcome to Spivy Mountain.....well, not here, the fourth photo was taken on Spivy Mountain, I just added these because for the color in the sky and for the beauty.
Ah, here you go. Welcome to Spivy Mountain. This is what I call the second top or the first preview of the peak's real view. By that I mean this. Where I am standing now, there is a large opening, this part of the mountain is just high enough to see the surrounding mountains, but its only a preview, the real view, as I called it, is at the top of the mountain, however, the top is no longer accessible to people any more, however, if you type in "Spivy Mountain", you'll get a video of the top's "real view." Spivy is actually owned by a man who lives in Charlotte South Carolina, he had a crew remove a good portion of trees off the top of the mountain for himself, you see he gets into a helicopter and lands on that cleared area. He does this once every year as a means to take a break, he's a business man. Now, you might be wondering, how high is Spivy? Spivy is about 3,294 feet, located in West Asheville, North Carolina. If you want to Google map it just type in, Spivy Mountain Road.
Bikers challenge this road in the summer time. Its VERY steep and hard to get up. I've biked it many times, but even at that I have to take three to four breaks. For a professional biker, he could do it in 20 to 30 minuets. for people like me, it would take around 45 minuets to an hour, but the view is well worth the work.
This is the "preview" as I called it.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
River Side Park
Well, welcome to River Side Park, other wise known as, Carrier Park, its is a three mile long park that runs side-by-side with the French Broad River. River Side is without a doubt the best park I have ever attended, its features include a three mile paved walk way, which has been used for jogging, running, biking, skate-boarding, skating, and in the winter time skiing. It also has a small roller blading court, a bike-racing court, a sand court with a single net which connects from post-to-post to play ball games, a play ground for kids, a basket ball court, and a grass bowling alley. I'm not entirely certain what the name of the game is, but basically you roll your bowling ball across this very fine layer of grass to see whose ball goes the farthest. I don't get it, but that's what I have seen. Also this park allows people to go kayaking down the French Broad during warmer seasons, you may also fish, but you can't hold onto the fish, also a baseball field, I'll also add that they allow camping there too, I see many people bringing in their RV's all the time, some small and others large, and well in charge, just a little rhyme for ya, and finally at the end of the park are some picnic tables and grills to cook on. Yes, I say, its my favorite park!
This is one of the bridges you see when entering River Side. Now this bridge is actually closed down now, but that's what makes this shot so cool, plus the glowing cross there on the top. Yeah, I got lucky with this shot.
This is the French Broad, now mind you, it doesn't actually get this high, in fact this water is on street level. You can't see it, but near the shore line were some steps, those steps normally get you down low enough to the water, but only when you have reached the 9th step, in other words, this river shot up four feet in a single week, needless to say we had a lot of rain.
Skulls/Light Painting
Okay, so I had a grand time putting this one together. This first photo was taken with my Nikon point and shoot, the color effect was made with a cd's reflection.
OKAY, I have to say this. My favorite singer in the world is Steve Taylor, some of you know him others don't, but if he were dead I think this is how he'd look. Just saying. This one picture in particular was a BLAST to work on, it took a couple of tries, but in the end it was well worth it.
I love this one, it reminds me of something out of a comic book.
Alright here is the beauty about light painting photography. You see four skulls right? Wrong! Actually the only real original skull here is the red one on the far left hand side, all of others were recorded. If you are in a pitch-black surrounding than the camera can't see anything, unless some thing or some one shines light onto it, than the camera can record that object. If you turn your lights off again and move your object than again shine light onto it, the camera will pick it up, basically you can keep doing this so long has you have plenty of imagination and a lot of space, imagination I have, space on the other hand....no. Now some of you might be wondering: "How in the world can I do this!?" Well, here's how. What you'll need are as followed: 1: A tripod. 2: A digital slr camera. (I don't think point and shoots can do this, maybe a more advanced point and shoot). 3: A remote shutter release. I use a Ml-DC2. and 4: You need to switch your camera to bulb mode, if you can't figure out where that is than turn back to your instruction booklet. Some have bulb mood on the dial which is on top of your camera, others, like myself, have to go into our shutter speeds and change it manually.
For anyone who needs a video tutorial just contact me at the same address and I will make one for you. PLEASE REMEMBER ONE THING: Do not capitalize any of my letters in my e-mail address, I was not being lazy by not capitalizing my (S), it was easier for everyone to keep them ALL lower case because Yahoo is cap sensitive, I don't know if it is still like that today, but it was when I got started. Anyways, thanks for reading, I'm happy to answer any questions, and if you should have any suggestions or ideas feel free to share them, as I always say: "It is good to see a photo through another photographers eyes." Odds are they have thought of an angle or an idea that might be better then your own. Good luck and have fun folks!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)