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Denali National Park

November 2, 2016 / Hitzeman Photography

“Vast and High” – Denali National Park

Having returned from a trip to photograph the majesty of Denali National Park, I sat down to write a piece to go along with the posting of a photograph.

Yes, I have photographed Denali, but how can I possibly write about it?

I could take the angle of humor.

About how my wife imagined that our ride into and out of the park for 12 hours and 185 miles round trip was going to be on a luxury tour bus with huge windows and a glass rooftop and on-board restroom and a gourmet lunch and hors d’oeuvres, when it was actually only a repainted school bus.

About how the bus driver, who was also the tour commentator, kept repeating himself and constantly telling us to buckle our seat belts.

About the 15 or so stops where someone on the bus would shout “STOP!” when they thought they saw a bear, actually showed up as a slightly moving brown dot some ¾ mile from the road.

About how when we got to Reflection Lake, the water was rippled and the top half of the mountain was hidden by clouds, and the bus driver said, ”This is called Reflection Lake, but today it is just ‘Lake’”.

But instead of humor, I want to write about the beauty, and yet how can mere words do it justice?

My puny photographs try to do it some justice in this pitifully limited thing we do with our cameras and software.

I try by taking several images and merging them together into a wide panorama, with the only way of indicating the scale of the scene is by including a small bit of road in the corner of the frame.

“Nearing Denali” – Denali National Park

I am perplexed knowing that my making a photograph takes what I love and have seen in person, and shrinks it. I have made the beauty smaller.

But also, I have made it possible for me to see it again, here on my phone or my computer or in a print on my wall.

By creating a photograph, I have made it possible to be reminded of that day and that sight by my image of it. And, I have made it possible, in some small way, to let the viewers of my art in on something they may never see in person.

“Come on Up and See Me Sometime” – Denali National Park

And not seeing it in person is a fact of life.

We cannot go and see everything because of the limits of time, money, health, access.

Someday, there will be fully developed VE (virtual experience) technology that enables one to visit almost anywhere in the world, by simply driving over to a VE Realitorium and buying a ticket. VE will allow us to “feel” like we are climbing around the hills beneath the mountains of Denali, “feel” the gentle breezes of walking through low-lying clouds, “smell” the scent of pine trees.

All without having to ride a school bus on a one lane road 92 miles in, 6 hours in and 6 hours out, driving 2 hours from Fairbanks to the Denali Park entrance, flying 12 hours from Chicago to Seattle to Fairbanks, fiddling and searching the internet to make airline reservations and bus reservations and hotel reservations, and spending the money to pay for all this.

So yes, God bless technology and the artists and creators of it. If they can create a VE Denali Trip — the views and smells and sounds of this beautiful place – and I can have it by simply hopping over to our local VE Realitorium, I would definitely do it!

Until then, I will enjoy my humble photographs, and those of other photographers, bringing me the beauty of these wondrous places.

“Denali Fall Color” – Denali National Park

Daisy Daisy

August 31, 2016 / Hitzeman Photography

Daisy Daisy Give Me Your Answer Do

This image is titled after a song written in 1892, often sung to me when I was a child by my mother and grandmother:

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.
I’m half crazy all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage.
I can’t afford a carriage.
But you’ll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two.

For this image, I wanted to experiment with the blur effect in Photoshop. I wanted it to look like there were streaks of energy or light shooting out radially from the prominent daisy about a third of the way in from the left.

Daisy Layers

The bottom layer is the original image.

Above that is a Blur Layer where I have applied a radial blur smart filter. This layer has a mask that is painted black in areas where I want the shape of a daisy to not be blurred.

The top layer is a curves layer to adjust tones to make the “important” daisies look brighter than their surrounding foliage.

Red Leaf Splendor — Morton Arboretum, Lisle, Illinois

Finding a Hero for Your Composition

September 16, 2015 / Hitzeman Photography

“A vivid thought brings the power to paint it, and in proportion to the depth of its source, is the force of its projection.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was not thrilled to go to the Morton Arboretum for the umpteenth time. It was NOT spring, and it was NOT fall. With all green everything, I expected to be unsuccessful in creating anything good. What I discovered was that going to a familiar location and seeing it under a new set of weather conditions (and an expanded set of my own experiences since the last time I was there) can spark in me a new set of compositions.

I am in the process of preparing a talk on creating impactful photographic images from one’s own intuition and imagination, and so I paid particular attention to my own creative process on this outing.

Below is a sequence of images I created during this trip to Lake Marmo at the Morton Arboretum, along with observations of how my intuition and imagination led to each image. I would be interested to know which images and/or observations you find most impactful and why.

Image 1

For the first image above, I was drawn to the brightest, most golden part of the scene – the trees at the west end of Lake Marmo. They were bathing in the direct golden sunlight of a 7:00 AM sunrise. Not a bad image, but I felt that the glowing trees in the distance were not interesting enough to be the leading presence in this scene. I started walking west to get closer.

Image 2

I stopped to take the image above of a stand of trees that were on the south side of the lake. Here I am emphasizing the cloud-dappled pattern of the sky in the water taking up the bottom half of the image, and in the sky taking up the top eighth of the image. The sun’s side-lighting glow on the trees adds warmth to the scene, like the glow of a hearth or the light on a ripe fruit. It is a more shape-defining light, not the dimensionless direct lighting as in the first image.

Image 3

The sky pattern reflection in the water was driving me to expand it even more and to look for a horizontal composition as in Image 3 above. The sun had gone behind some clouds, cooling the colors. The sky was still bright, but I was able to get this scene by merging two exposures in HDR. This is a moodier, gloomier or more restful picture. There are no warm colors in this image. The clouds and their reflection take up the majority of the space, and the span of trees in the middle are silent, dark, waiting for a burst of warmer light.

Image 4

Image 5

These two images 4 and 5 above were taken from almost the same spot. The sun was still hidden, and I was playing with trying to get something of interest in the bottom of the shot. I often do this to give the audience the sense of standing there, witnessing from their feet forward what is in the space, how life at this instant is directly positioned on the edge of this water. I like image 5 better than 4 because it shows a little more at my feet, and a golden or orange color enters the composition from the dried grass in the lower right of the frame. There is also a rounder “glow-ier” look to the tree forms in the distance. There are many layers in this image (I count 6!), letting the eye play deeper and deeper, seeing farther and farther. My imagination loves this feeling of depth and spaciousness.

Image 6

I was about ready to give up and head to another part of the arboretum, when I came through this little stretch of water next to a bridge (Always stop at bridges to check out the view!) that allowed me to get the reflection of this tree in the water in image 6. Still, the image looked flat and cold as there was no direct sun, but THEN – there WAS! It’s amazing to me how this tree with its white bark – looking like a faint white pole way in the distance in the image 1 above – is now the majestic, handsome / beautiful hero in this image.

So, my intuition and imagination led me around this lake, playing tag with the sun and clouds, looking for strong leading characters and supporting secondary staging and backgrounds, to come up with 3 or 4 pretty powerful images.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on which images you like — and why.

Tree-riffic!

November 28, 2014 / Hitzeman Photography

If you’d like to experience a Magic Kingdom, but don’t have the time, money, or patience to fly to Disney World, then this is for you — the TREE ILLUMINATION display at Morton Arboretum in Lisle IL. See their website to order tickets online.

For sharp photos, I’d recommend using a tripod, especially since your shutter speeds will be longer than usual.

And no need for “light painting” — the arboretum supplies all the lighting and music!

Click on the thumbnails below to see full-size images from this enchanting photo shoot.