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Photographs VR Photographs World Wide Panorama

Monteith Riverpark (revisited)

This is the Monteith Riverpark, in Albany, Oregon.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This panorama was taken in a local park that is used to host events in addition to being a general-purpose city park. This photo is a repeat of one taken 3 years ago at the same location for the World Wide Panorama “Set” theme. I tried to take it at exactly the same spot as before in order to make the changes clear.

Categories
Essay Photographs Waterfalls

Seeing Waterfalls

This waterfall picture is a combination of two different pictures. One was taken with a short shutter speed, so that the water appears frozen. The other was taken with a long shutter speed, so that the water appears as a silky flow. There are people who prefer both; there is no “right” way to photograph a waterfall because each of the two techniques illustrates something different.

(You can see the two original pictures below; click on the pictures to see larger versions.)

Categories
Concepts Essay Photographs VR Photographs

An Experiment in Looking Carefully

This photograph of a flower was taken in a local rose garden. Like many such photos, it’s been enhanced to show aspects of the flower that, although they were subtle, still jumped out at me enough to want to share them. The very subtle colors of an ostensibly white flower, the overall form and symmetry, the water droplets speaking of a cool, damp, fall morning. All these things were there in the original view, but not as clear.

Click or tap on the picture, and you will see a version of the picture with no distractions around it. Then click or tap again and it will become an interactive picture that lets you look around and see the whole location where the picture was taken.

Swipe to pan around, and pinch to zoom in and out. Find the flower and tap it again to return to the original picture.

Categories
Photographs VR Photographs World Wide Panorama

McDonald Research Forest

This was taken in the McDonald Research Forest.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab. When it opens, click and drag to look around.)

This panorama is one of my entries for the World Wide Panorama “20 Years” project, and is a repeat of one take almost seven years ago at the same location. (That earlier VR was incorrectly titled “Peavy Arboretum”. )

Categories
Concepts Photographs VR Photographs Waterfalls

More About Local Wonder

An earlier post presented the idea of “Local Wonder” as a starting point for a sort of vision for my photography. In that case, the focus was on looking closely at things to see their wonderful aspects. In addition to giving a focus for some photography, the hope is that it could also teach me to be more aware in general.

There is another aspect to being more aware that, ironically, didn’t occur to me at first, but was the first focus for my 360 photography – that it is also important to look around.

Categories
Concepts Essay Photographs VR Photographs

New Version of UPCA Church Interior

This is an updated version of a previous post of the interior of United Presbyterian Church in Albany, Oregon.

Categories
Concepts Essay Photographs

More About Waterfall Experiences

This is a picture from a recently posted 360 photo of Majestic Falls. The original picture was for one of my World Wide Panorama projects, and talked about the waterfall in general. I used a different picture of this same waterfall to discuss the idea of qualia; that one was just a normal photograph.

The normal photograph and discussion illustrated ideas of conscious experience and helped me think about the different aspects of experiences that are just based on perceptions, versus those that also involve internal context and related thoughts.

Categories
Concepts Essay Photographs VR Photographs

Frameless Pictures

When photographs are printed and hung on a wall, they often have a frame and a matte. Sometimes though, photographers, like other visual artists, choose to display their pictures without a frame – so-called “frameless” mounting. The picture here is an example of that.

This example does have a solid side, but sometimes frameless mounts don’t even have that – they may be mounted flat on the wall, or have a small hidden mount behind the picture so that it appears to be floating in front of the wall. In any case, the point is that there is nothing in the same plane as the picture itself.

Categories
Photographs VR Photographs World Wide Panorama

Eagle Marsh

Eagle Marsh

This is the Eagle Marsh lookout at the Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge .

Categories
Concepts Photographs Waterfalls

The Experience of Waterfalls

This is Majestic Falls, in the McDowell Creek Falls area, taken on a morning that was supposed to be cloudy but turned out sunny. Fortunately we made it there before the sun became a problem. Taken with a long exposure, the falling water appears silky smooth, almost like a wisp.

This photographic approach is very popular. One reason may simply be the beautiful aesthetic of silky smoothness. But also, something about this style seems to capture what we feel when we see a waterfall — the sense of pure unbroken flow.

In other words, the smooth lines of flowing water give a sense of what we experience, but may not be an accurate representation of what we physically see.