The Daily Photograph™

It is a sad thing

When a dragon can’t get it’s way. But it’s a fact they are technologically challenged. Never met a dragon with a PC or smartphone. I think partly because the claws get in the way, and partly because they don’t read very well.

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You, on the other hand, don’t operate under those handicaps. You can enter, quite easily, to win a signed, original fine-art photograph, as detailed under ‘A Thanksgiving Prize,’ above, and you can purchase one for your very own right now at a significant discount, and if you’re a winner, I’ll give you another or refund your money! You choose. To win, you can tweet, comment here, or on my Facebook page. Check the rules for details.

Sorry dragon. Besides, dragon’s breath is very hard on photographs.

I’ve mentioned that these works

Are sketches or studies, and this is certainly the case here. I wanted to find out how emotional responses would change as color is removed from a scene, especially one that had been filled with very wild color to begin with. I took nearly every color away from this sunset. No greens, no yellows, nor browns (which, in fact, are a class of yellows), leaving only a bit of red, a touch of blue and a good deal of what we photographers call ‘tonal values;’ that is to say, blacks and grays. Compare this photograph with this one, which was made in the same place and only a few minutes earlier, but it was developed in a wholly different way.

I think here you can see the importance of the palette of colors used by an artist. Another example to illustrate: Monet’s painting technique is not greatly different from Van Gogh’s, but the emotional impact is much changed by the palette of each painter.

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And I’d like to remind you that I’m giving away a prize for Thanksgiving. To get your chance to win, you can tweet this page, along with my @walterhawn handle or post a comment here or on any page of this blog, or post to my Facebook profile. The complete details are here, or at the “A Thanksgiving Prize” link above. And I’m offering a splendid price on certain works to those who enter the prize drawing.
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These are the first few

And it’s filling rapidly. You may have heard that I’m giving an original fine-art photographic print to some lucky someone the Monday after Thanksgiving. The winner can choose among three works: “Wearing Whites”, “Purple Mountains, Purple Sage”, or “Long Time Livin’”. The complete rules and all can be found on the page, “A Thanksgiving Drawing”. But the short form is that you enter by tweeting (while including my @WalterHawn handle) any page from The Daily Photograph™, by commenting on any page here, or by commenting on any posting on my Facebook profile. You can enter every day, twice a day, until midnight Friday, November 26th. I hope you will!

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Also, I’m offering a darned good deal to anyone who enters: A signed, original fine-art photographic print of any of the three works, matted and mounted to fit an 11×14 frame, for only $89. That’s twenty-six dollars off the regular price of $115. And, on the rules page, you’ll find a way to get an additional ten dollar discount.

So, I hope you’ll enter, and I hope you’ll think about ordering a fine-art print for someone you love or for yourself.

It’s become winter

Suddenly on the flat. There has been some snow up high the past two weeks, but only a skiff one night a couple of weeks ago in my backyard. Today that changed, and no more will the colors of autumn be seen. From here on out, the skeletal trees will strive to scratch the sky until Spring comes to relieve the itch of Winter.

Mountains and oceans

Have a few things in common. Among them, the morning and evening breezes. East to West in the morning, then West to East at nightfall on these mountains. This particular evening, the wind was a brisk forty or fifty miles an hour, and the sun filtered its light through just the right amount of cloud and dust to light up the West end of Muddy Mountain like a bar-room sign. The clouds above the mountain had a hard time holding their shapes in the evening breeze.

You may recall this shock

Of prairie wheat from an earlier post. I liked it so well that I cut it loose from the parent grass clump and found a suitable vase for it.

I’m not sure quite what to do with it now, but I still like it. Perhaps it will become another recurring character in still life photographs, alongside the Bowl of Roses.

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By the way, I have added a new feature to The Daily Photograph™. Below you’ll see a line of stars. This is a way to show your approval or not of a particular photograph. Each star indicates a higher rating. I’d appreciate it if you’d click on one or another of them.

The sun slanted so well

On this vine that I spent several days exploring and learning about backlighting and how it works with color. Ordinary reflected light looked fine on the vine, but with the sunlight glowing through the leaves, the colors deepened and came alive. I learned that even five minutes could make a huge difference as the sun angle changed.

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The fun lasted only a few days. The leaves eventually withered and dropped off, and the vine is now a mere skeleton of itself.

The actual valley is far to the east

Beyond the end of the canyon, but hardly anybody calls that the Platte Valley. It is simply known as ‘the flat,’ which, oddly enough is what ‘Platte’ means. It continues on until the Platte River intersects the Missouri. What we see here is called Jackson Canyon, even though it’s nowhere near Jackson’s Hole, which is really a valley. The early settlers were not real sticklers for nomenclature.

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I have discovered that the harsh mid-day sun of autumn produces fine conditions for black and white photography, so you are certain to see more of that here.

Never seen anything like this

They said, in their letters home. A lot of the Westering pilgrims (as they were called, then) kept letter diaries and wrote copiously about the trail and the way west, in letters dated every day, written to parents, sweethearts or sometimes even just to the town where they grew up. Most letters we know about were finally posted someplace in Oregon or California, and made their way back East on ships, by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Lines of communication were much longer, and harder, back then.

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As I was lining up this photograph, a fellow dressed all in camouflage, head to toe, with a bow strung across his back, rolled up on a four-wheeler. I wore shorts and a t-shirt. He wanted to know if I’d seen any elk. I said “no.” and he roared off. I suppose, neither had he. His dust effected the scene for probably three or four minutes. I had to wait it out, but still, you can see that some of it settled on my lens.

Zane Grey knew what he was talking about

With his purple sage and all. It is rare that you can see it in today’s West, however. For the sage brush to show purple, it requires a wet winter and wetter spring. It seems that, as the West becomes drier, that happens less and less often. I’ve only seen purple sage twice in my life out here. This sage is not really purple in full daylight, but it looks darned good at twilight.