Isaac Lane Koval's photostream  

Sometimes the world looks better out of focus

I recently became aware of the photography of Zeb Andrews ( a local Portland photographer). Not only does he take amazing nature photographers he always has some really insightful essay bellow each of his photos. Last year he posted a photo of the Christmas tree at Pioneer square and the essay he included was pretty powerful. You can see the photo here: Zeb's christmas tree photo

Zeb's photo inspired me to go out last night without a tripod and shoot everything out of focus on purpose. At first it felt a little unnerving especially when I shoot stock photography if an image isn't tack sharp it's not useful. After a couple photos though I felt very liberated and free. My eyes began to pay attention more to shapes than details. The above photo is my favorite from the night. The photo was taken in Jamison Square in the Pearl District. I had recently taken this photo of the same tree. I think I like the tree better out of focus. What I love so much about the photo is that you can't see the actual tree but the lights still make out the shape of a tree.

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Uploaded on Dec 14, 2009  |  Map

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The things you'll put yourself through to get "the" photo

I just got back from a trip out to Eastern Oregon where I was doing a lifestyle photo shoot at this amazing cabin.

On the last night my friend Ben and I headed up to the surrounding mountains to get some long exposure photos of the star trails. I've had this idea in my head for quite a while now of putting lights up on a tree out in the middle of a snowy forest but only recently did I think to add star trails to the photo.

In all this shot took about 5 hours to get (time including the 2 hours of driving, setup time and a exposure of a little over an hour). The temperature hovered around -1 degrees F. Luckily we came prepared with very warm clothes and snow shoes. The weak link though was my shoes. By the end of the shoot my feet were very cold. Looks like it's time invest in better hiking boots, preferably ones that are waterproof.

This is just one exposure/photo. I did a couple test shots to see how long I needed to have the christmas lights on (it ended up being around 70 seconds). I then turned off the lights and let the camera sit, exposing for a little over an hour.

There are definitely some things I learned from doing this photo and things I wished I did better but overall I'm very happy with how the photo turned out.

I plan on making another attempt at this idea in a couple weeks, fixing some things as well as adding a couple more complexities to the photo.

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Uploaded on Dec 10, 2009

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Sunset at Cathedral Park

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Uploaded on Dec 1, 2009

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Fremont sunrise

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Uploaded on Dec 1, 2009

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