I’m now showing selections from an ongoing personal project documenting urban basketball courts in the Milwaukee area. Check it out at www.adamryanmorris.com by clicking through the splash page and then selecting “projects” from the navigation bar.
You are currently browsing the archive for the landscape category.
As seen in Riverwest.
You wouldn’t know it from this blog, but I’ve been busy lately. For now, a present: Some birch trees and sunlight from a shoot (unrelated to this photo) last week in Dousman, Wisconsin.
My wife, Courtney, and I took a much needed vacation on the Caribbean island St. Lucia the first week of March. The goal was relaxation, so I resisted the urge to shoot, shoot, shoot all the scenery. On our return flight I couldn’t hold back any longer, so I whipped out my iPhone to snap a few scenes.
Snake cloud west of Saint Lucia.
Wing over icy Lake Michigan shoreline as we leave Michigan and approach Wisconsin.
Close-up of Courtney’s jeans.
For me, it still takes a while for the size of this salt mountain at the Port of Milwaukee to sink in. It’s the juxtaposition with the two transport trucks that really knocks it out of the park for me. They look toy-size compared to that pile!
In a previous post I talked about fixed-focal length lenses and a favorite creative exercise: leaving the house with one lens, challenging myself to make interesting pictures with whatever’s in front of me. (It really helps you see the world from a new, or at least different, perspective.) The frame above was made that way, with a 50mm lens.
Unlike a wide-angle lens, a 50mm starts to really allow a shallow depth of field. I like to find a tangle of branches, set a good baseline exposure, and lock focus, then look around via the camera. With a shallow depth of field, it’s amazing how many patterns — unseeable to the naked eye — reveal themselves.
Our friend and freelance writer Julie Collins over at the Julie Tries blog was married in a small ceremony a few months back, and last weekend she threw a big bash for her friends… in rural Wyoming, her native turf. We flew into Denver and drove a rental vehicle north two hours to Laramie on Friday. Saturday, before partying it up at a saloon in Centennial, population 100, an hour west of Laramie, I hit the road with my camera. When looking out across wide-open fields, the words spare and sparse frequently came to mind. And beautiful. Definitely that, too.
I’ve shot plenty with the Canon 5D Mark II since acquiring it last month, but not much with wide focal lengths. So last week on a rare free morning I drove to a favorite stretch of urban wilderness along the Root River Parkway for some exercise, both physically and mentally. I had been using a crop-factor camera for the last couple of years, so for example my 20mm lens was effectively a 35mm lens. It was time to reacquaint myself with how the world looks at 20mm.
I’m big on fixed-focal length, or prime, lenses and on challenges. Prime lenses force me to work for my shots, move around, wait for the right moment. It can be harder, but well worth the effort. With that in mind, now and again I like to leave the house with one lens and see how much I can push myself to create interesting photos out of whatever’s in front of me. On this day, it was the wide-angle lens and a jagged, snowy plot of land. I photographed a trio of trees, their messy branches pointing every which way.
Soon, I’ll share a frame or two from a similar exercise with the newly rediscovered 50mm focal length.
Went back to my home state of Iowa recently for a funeral. As the sun set and we drove west, I made myself all but carsick staring through my camera and firing off frames from the passenger seat.
It was a fun exercise in chance and in creating my own luck. (Something that was recently discussed here.) I firmly believe that in photography, and in life, you make your own luck by knowing what you want and putting yourself in the right places at the right times so you can get that coveted shot. Or whatever you’re after.
I watched as an ever-changing landscape of hills, fences, telephone poles, trees, farms and fields whipped past at 75mph. If my reflexes weren’t fast enough to catch a scene just so, no big deal. I was in the right place, at the right time. I was all the more prepared the next time my lens met something similar.
Rural Waukesha. August 2009.
One frame from a scouting mission last month out in the boonies. Man, I love the boonies.