A Weekend in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

Last weekend my wife and I spent a four day weekend in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. Yes, I said 50th….blows our mind. We got married in college and waited to start a family until our late 20’s. We both talked about remembering when my grandparents had their 50th and how old we thought they were. Doesn’t seem that long ago…….

Anyway, our girls and us have talked about what to do for our 50th. A lot of ideas surfaced and international travel destinations were discussed. We have traveled quite a bit through our life together both internationally and domestically. One of the things that kept popping up was how much fun the two of us have on road trips where we get in the car and drive to areas we haven’t been to before. Since moving up to the Pacific Northwest, we keep talking about checking out the beauty of Coeur d’Alene Lake (and the town) in Idaho. Idaho is one of only 4 states we haven’t traveled to. The girls thought it would be a great romantic getaway for us. It was and as you would expect I took a number of pictures of the natural beauty of the area. I’m sharing six of them to give you a feel of the beauty of the lake and surrounding forest.

Coeur d’Alene 1

We stayed in a time share right on the shores

Rocky Shoreline

I took this shot on a trail that led out from a park into the forested shoreline by the town. (telephoto lens)

The Beauty Of The Lake

This capture was along the same trail, but a bit further along it. You can tell that the shoreline goes in and out of the lake creating a variety of perspectives.

Coeur d’Alene 4

This is the Coeur d’Alene Resort which is in the downtown area of the town. They have an awesome upscale restaurant “Beverlys”, which is located on the 7th floor (which is the dark band of floor to ceiling tinted windows about half way up). The view was incredible looking out over the lake with the large covered boat docks sitting at our feet.

Coeur d’Alene 5

On another hike I did, I came across this capture. At first I thought the shape on top of the rock was just more rock, but then it turned and I saw the head of a deer. Kind of a fun thing to see and it was looking out at the trail around the bend from where I was standing.

Coeur d’Alene 6

Right after the original deer shot, I was turning around to get back to the trail, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the underbrush. It took me a few minutes and the telephoto lens to realize the movement was another deer.

Just wanted to share some of my captures from a beautiful location and a great weekend.

Thoughts? As I have said before, everyone reacts to visual art techniques and looks differently, so I am not in the least offended by opinions. 

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Same Subject, Two Different Presentation Styles

This week I wanted to share two art prints of the same subject, but in completely different styles. I do that periodically because I often try different art styles using the same subject matter to get to one result that I like over all the others. In some cases, I can’t get down to just one form of presentation as I see something I like in more than one style. In this case it’s a boat dock on a lake.

The first one I created using a pointillism style. This style uses tiny dots of color which become blended in the viewers eye creating a subject matter. It’s a style that was introduced in the early 20th century.

The Dock

The second one I created using a fauvism style. This style uses vivid shapes and non-naturalistic colors. Bold and bright is the best way to describe the look. It also dates back to the early 20th century.

The Dock In Fauvism

Thoughts? As I have said before, everyone reacts to visual art techniques and looks differently, so I am not in the least offended by opinions. 

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Sunrise At The Boat Dock – Featured Art Print

In Arizona, we have some very vibrant sunrises and sunsets. With high level clouds scooting across the desert sky, the sun reflects a brilliant light show as it rises or sets. As this occurs, you have moments where the entire landscape takes on varied hues of brilliant color. This particular art print represents one of those moments at sunrise. For this piece, I intensified the yellow I was seeing reflected off the lake. Keeping the palm trees a dark purple gives a bold contrast to the sky and the reflective waters. It turned out as kind of a bright and fun, surreal depiction using a fauvism technique with the brush strokes. Thoughts?

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Sunrise At The Boat Dock

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Dock On The Lake – Excerpts From a Photo Shoot

The excerpts from a photo shoot I want to share today are of a dock on a lake. On a photo shoot from a few months ago, I took numerous shots that I started sharing last week. The shoot was around a small lake near our house. The focus this week is the dock on the lake.

I have attached three photographs of this dock. The point of discussion is the variety of shots you can get centered on the same subject matter. Each of these shots has a different look and tells a different story, yet is of the same dock on the same lake.

Dock on the Lake 1

The first shot gives you a point of reference of the dock as it pertains to the lake. You get a feel for the size of the dock and the general feel of the lake. The dock itself isn’t large, nor is it one of many. From this perspective, the dock is center of the frame, but what really becomes the focal point. Is it the lights along the path, the hill in the background or the dock? As you look at the composition of this shot it encompasses all of these elements….again, no right or wrong depending on what you want to portray.

The second shot zooms in on the dock. The benches on the dock become more prominent, but so do the homes on the surrounding shoreline. The composition of this shot has the dock with benches front and center. It also has the same hill in the background and homes along the shoreline…again, no right or wrong depending on what you want to portray.

Dock on the Lake 3

The third shot puts the framing vertical instead of horizontal. One of the benches takes center stage and the lights on the dock become more of an important element.

All three photographs are well composed, but tell different stories. I put this out there as food for thought as you are taking photographs and trying to figure out what you want the final result to say. By taking numerous shots from different angles, it gives you a pool of pictures to review and determine which one represents the story you want to tell. As a side note a couple of these shots looked better in a black and white format due to the elements within the shot….any idea which two? Thoughts?

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A Photo Shoot: The Moss Covered Stairs

I wanted to get another hike/photo shoot in before the rains take over the weather here in the Seattle area. Yesterday was the perfect day for just that. I live at the base of an area called Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. The park tops out at an elevation of 1595 feet above sea level.  One of the trail heads up the mountain starts down the street from us.  The trail takes you through very dense woods and numerous switch backs as you climb in altitude very quickly. The forest changes from deciduous to almost all fir trees. My goal for the day was to hike to what is called the Anti-Aircraft Peak trailhead. In the 1950s and early 60s, two active Nike missile sites were located within the park’s current boundaries, in order to protect the Puget Sound region from potential air attacks. Eventually, these sites were decommissioned, and in the late 1960s, the county took over ownership of the land that would later become Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park.

What I wanted to share was a couple of pictures from that hike/photo shoot. The first picture is from the top and gives you an idea of the elevation.

Cougar Mountain Reserve Overlook

This is a view looking north towards Lake Sammamish. My hike started almost straight below this picture. To the right of this shot is the Cascade Mountain Range and to the left would be Bellevue and Seattle proper.

Ok…thanks for the tour Kirt, but what the heck does “The Moss Covered Stairs” have to do with that…

The Anti Aircraft missile site was located just south of this overlook. What remains of what was once an active military installation is a large grassy area. The county has done a great job restoring it back to a useful public park. The park has large posters and maps erected depicting where the barracks use to be, the missiles and all of the supporting buildings, etc. Fascinating, but you truly don’t see any of that now, except….as I walked around the site looking for any old indications of what use to be there, I came across two stair cases that connected the flat “barrack area” (now grass-covered park) up to another level where the missiles had been. The first stair case was through some weeds.

The Moss Stairs I First Found

The second staircase was through a grove of trees.

The Moss Covered Stairs Above Them

Both stairs were created using stone and metal. The first set was pretty straight forward, while this second set had multiple levels and wound around the trees. An interesting find and glad they were left when they decommissioned the site and turned it into a park. Makes for a “wow” moment for a photographer.

I was able to get a number of other great shots in the woods, but thought the stairs were the biggest surprise for the day.

As I work through the shoot and evaluate what I have, some of the shots will find themselves transformed into paintings and others, like the stairs, will stay color photographs.

Thoughts? Comments?

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