Dave Block Photography » Landscape

Santa Monica Beach

admin — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:09:33 +0000

A couple of shots from a recent weekend trip to Santa Monica – the two shots of the pier are high dynamic range (HDR) created using Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro plugin for Photoshop.

Old Barn, Skagit Valley

admin — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:07:23 +0000

Last week I went up to the Skagit Valley with a friend to shoot the beautiful fields of flowers at the annual tulip festival, but got sidetracked during our scouting drive when we passed by this incredible decaying barn set back a little from road. After a quick consultation (which mostly was “wow did you see that barn..we HAVE to go shoot that”) we decided to turn around and go back. We couldn’t find anyone who might not want us there or hopefully give us permission – despite the heavy farm equipment rumbling through the adjacent fields – so we decided to proceed and wait to see if anyone came by.

We shot the exterior and went in to the ground floor and shot the gloom and clutter of the ground floor interior. It was spooky to say the least – a tumble of weird artifacts and lost items, and it looked like maybe the barn had flooded at some point in the past, as everything was covered in a layer of dust or mud. A high afternoon haze made for incredible soft light that flowed into the barn through all the broken out windows and missing doors. A little quick work repairing an old ladder got us up to the 2nd floor and the chance to shoot rows of old dorm rooms for farmhands with broken bunks and decaying mattresses, and then up to the 3rd floor, where we startled an owl out from the rafters. It was like the inside of the barn was frozen in time – we found beer bottles dated 1962 and old Lucky Strikes cigarette packs. The light coming through the exposed ribs of the roof was glorious but also showed that the floor was rotting out from years of rain, so after some careful shooting in the intact sections of the room, we headed back down and out, half expecting a sheriff to be waiting for us (which there was not). Truly an amazing shoot.

4th of July Fireworks – South Lake Union, Seattle

admin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:03:39 +0000

Shot the fireworks this weekend from an excellent vantage point – from the stern of the Virginia V, one of the wooden steamships docked at south Lake Union. These are all long exposures as you will see from the light trails of the moving boats on the lake – most of them were 30 second exposures in order to capture multiple bursts per frame. This was my first time shooting fireworks with any seriousness (i.e., with a tripod) and I think they turned out pretty well. Enjoy.

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Vancouver is a giant softbox

admin — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:18:20 +0000

Panorama taken from my hotel balcony last weekend. The amount of light just bouncing everywhere was amazing, and nearly every high rise building in the downtown area is glass and/or mirrored which makes it all even more beautiful.

Technical notes: this is a stitch of 10 vertical shots with a Nikon D700; the final image measures 10,240 x 3,400 pixels and is 99.6 MB. Stitched using Photoshop CS5; minor levels and color enhancements in Photoshop and Lightroom.

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From the archive, on a winter night

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:10:41 +0000

A little greenery to rail against the fading winter light. Shot last spring at the Japanese Garden in Seattle’s Arboretum.

Shooting for Black and White – Valley of Fire

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:43:15 +0000

I spend a lot of time in Las Vegas for various trade shows – CES, PMA, Photoshop World, to name a few. Every year I try to get outside the city for a morning shoot, just to get some fresh air and reset from the weirdness of the Strip. There are amazing places within a fairly short drive, and one of my favorites is Valley of Fire state park, which is about an hour and a quarter north. It’s an otherworldly, weird place, with incredible volcanic rock formations and amazing pink stone.

I just got back from CES, and for my get-out-of-Vegas shoot this year I went up with a specific purpose – I wanted to shoot some black and whites to add to a wall of landscapes that I’m putting up in my house. This doesn’t require anything different in the camera – with digital, B&W is all done on the computer – but you have to think a little differently about what you’re shooting. You have to strip color out of what you’re seeing and focus on lines, shapes, forms, textures, and patterns. It’s a discipline I used to have in spades – I shot almost exclusively B&W film all through college because I was the photo editor of the school paper so film and a darkroom were free – but I haven’t done lot of thinking in black and white in recent years.

I definitely felt a little rusty but here are some of the results. Post-processing note – I use Adobe Lightroom to manage my photos and it does a reasonable job converting to B&W, but not outstanding. For all these shots, I used Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro which is in my opinion the best B&W conversion tool available.