Stories and pictures about our travels, our photography and the outdoors.
As you can tell from our photos we recently traveled to Chile. The country has many spectacular sights and a ton of landscape diversity. Our trip took us to the Atacama desert in the north, central Chile (Santiago and Valparaiso), Patagonia in the south, and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) out in the Pacific. We put together a short video of our travels to try and share some of our experience in this beautiful country. Hope you enjoy the video.. Boyd
Hope you saw our favorites of 2016. We have deleted that page to make room for our new "Chile" page. We recently returned from touring Chile. It is a vast (but narrow) country with incredible diversity. And incredible photo opportunities. We have some images from the trip that we hope you will enjoy. So the favorites page had to go. Many of those photos live on in one of the other pages (landscape, fauna, flora, moments, monochromatic). But, there wasn't room for all of them. So if you are looking for your favorite from 2016 and don't see it on the site, shoot us a message (form available on the "Talk with us" page) and we will put it back up. But, we hope you check out our "Chile" page too. And come back frequently as we will be adding new stories here on the blog over the coming weeks.
In case you didn't notice, we have added a page of our favorites from 2016. There are 10 color and 10 monochrome images. So just click above, on the title bar, where it says "2016 Favorites". And hopefully, you saw the three episodes of our 2016 retrospective (below in the blog). These three video episodes have a different perspective. They tell the history of our year photographically. The gallery page 2016 Favorites displays our 20 individual favorites. Did I mention you can click on the link above? Did i mention they are our favorites?
One of our 10 favorite color images from 2016.
And one of our 10 favorite monochrome images from 2016.
Episode 3. The concluding episode of our 2016 retrospective. Yes summer and fall wrapped into 4 minutes and 10 seconds. You know you don't have to be anywhere in the next 10 minutes. Heck, you can watch it twice! Enjoy!
And now for Episode 2, the 2016 retrospective continues with photography from our spring adventures. As usual this is best viewed on a large monitor at 1080p. But it works on a mobile device too. Don't forget to watch Episode 1, Winter 2016 too. We hope you enjoy Spring 2016.
Here is the first segment of our retrospective on 2016. This segment is winter photography from Iceland.
Geologists classify rock into igneous (basically volcanic), sedimentary (rock broken into small pieces and turned back into rock), and metamorphic (igneous or sedimentary rock changed by pressure and heat). We aren't geologists and we can't always differentiate rock into the three types. But we do love the different textures. Especially when we think about the age of some rocks.
While at the Oregon Coast recently, the texture of the rocks caught our eyes. Some places rough, some places fine. All of the textures constantly changing and evolving, facilitated by the movement of water and the grinding of one piece of rock against another. Just imagine the journey of a single rock. Out of the center of the earth, ground down to sand, buried under miles of other layers of sand and mud, then lifted up above the waves and exposed to the relentless force of wind and rain, only to be buried again, maybe heated, melted, squeezed by pressures of unfathomable force. When you think about them like that , there's no such thing as just another rock. No wonder the textures are so fascinating, they are the lines of age on the face of the planet.
Can we all just chill for two minutes? Breathe in. Breathe out. Two minutes. Maybe this will help.
Sometimes I am not sure where I want to go with our art. Should I stay literal and documentary; keep subjects super sharp and full of detail? Or should I take a more impressionistic approach: more painterly maybe with softer lines, muted colors maybe more dreamy? "Dreamy?" "Whaaat?" "Are you going all artsy-fartsy?" I hear a little voice somewhere in my head say. The same little voice that purrs over a well-crafted spreadsheet with cool graphs, built-in macros, statistical tests. The little voice that was fed most days at the old paying job.
Along the Coast Highway
But then the other little voice speaks up. "Hey, its me. The starving Biafran in the other part of your brain. Come on dude, it's ART."
"Boyd, you are doing photography. Come on. This is the craft of Ansel. You aren't Monet or Kratter. What are you thinking?" "Remember how much you liked that super sharp, detailed image of the canyons outside Moab?" the bigger voice says. As the memory of that frame bounces around my skull this voice gathers strength and momentum.
Clearing Storm over the Colorado River outside Moab, Utah.
But the second, more gentle voice isn't finished. "Remember the smell of the beach? The feel of sand underfoot? You love that." The little voice has a point. "And the mist and fog and the muted sound and the way the waves mesmerize" he continues. I think he has a point. Mr. Detail retreats. But I know he will be back. And the third part, the referee part, will have to wrestle with the conundrum and have to make a choice between voices again.
On the edge of a storm
Kelp lines and rocks
Reclining rock
All the images in this story are lightboxed, click on them and they will expand to a larger size. This effect is really nice on a larger monitor. Most images also have a title that is viewable when the cursor hovers over the image.
This is the first of what we hope are several stories that have their origin on the Northern California and southern Oregon coast.
When someone says the word dock what comes to mind? The tray at the bottom of your computer screen? The place where the accused stands in an English courtroom? Or maybe the verb used to indicate securing a vessel. In this case we refer to the place where boats tie up, deliver their catch, and prepare for the next trip. Along the southern Oregon coast there are two species that most of us think of when it comes to seafood from this coast: salmon and dungeness crab. So guess what we saw when we were at the dock.
Chillin'
Deceitful Jetty. It only looks peaceful at the mouth of the Rogue River.
Maxx lift. Port Orford, Oregon
187 times 100
Landing table
Double shot
Lines and buoys
Wet 187
Pot knot
Buoy in a pot
