river Archives - MarvinBowen.com

River of Color

Autumn bring such nice changes to the visual world. Clear skies, crisp air to look through, different colors to paint the landscape and more gentle midday sun. In this scene I was particularly impressed with the beauty of the river that most people never see, because you have to walk across a train bridge for access to the view. What is normally a drab and dreary part of the Payette River has now become a river of color thanks to the autumn change. Enjoy this little trip to a peaceful place in a busy life.

Two Stones Flow

I’ve taken a new approach to photography recently: I always take my camera with me. For a while I was quite burned out on using camera’s for much of anything but I’m starting to get the joy back. And with better and better image processing options I have the ability to make shots I’m proud of without spending all day in Photoshop. This image didn’t even see Photoshop once. I only used Lightroom 2 and Topaz Adjust 5.

This is my very first image processed using a fantastic little plugin called Topaz Adjust. I’m just on the 30 free trial right now, but I’m LOVING it so far.

This is along the Payette River between Banks and Crouch, Idaho. It’s a tough place to shoot because the road is on the north side of the river and the hill opposite is VERY steep and facing north, so it almost never gets good light on it. Plus, it has a strongly lit sky behind. But that all makes for a good photography challenge. These two stones seemed to go nicely with each other even though I’m clearly breaking some rules of composition. I don’t care. Sometimes you just have to shoot be it good or bad.

South Mineral Creek Sunrise

While on my latest vacation with my family, I decided to stop being so lazy and actually take some pictures in the morning when the light was optimal. The next thing I did was shoot straight into the sun. Ugh. Well, I think I like this image anyhow. It was just too beautiful to pass up at least attempting to capture the scene. I did take the necessary bracketed exposures for and HDR process, but haven’t gotten to that part quite yet.

The morning was cool and clear until the sun came up. Then all of these awesome puffs of clouds started to rise up out of the valleys and skitter across the sky in assorted patterns. It was actually a great time to be making images of the surrounding cliffs and peaks and I made the most of it while I could. Now I have to do the actual work part of the shots – post processing. Well, that is a story for another time. Back to the setting.

With the high mountains surrounding, jutting up to 13,000 ft, and the dark foliage of the trees I really had my challenges. I was also down in a deep canyon shooting waterfalls and rocks and sunbeams, and those images truly do need HDR processing to look nice.

Just imagine being there in the still morning air, bundled up in cozy gear against the chilly 38 degrees and the dew on the grass. It’s really a picture of peacefulness.

Payette River Frost

Ice and frost on the Payette River. Banks-Lowman Road, Idaho.

On my way to visit Sylvia at work I had to stop and photograph the cold, winter river. This valley runs east/west so it gets little to no sunlight during the winter months. So even though it was the middle of the day, there was still plenty of frost on the rocks. The river humidity makes an ever-present ice covering in the deep of the valley.

Payette River “Beach”

This is a prime example of almost doing it right, then trying again. And getting it very wrong
on the second try.

I first decided to shoot the little beach and when I thought I had it, I moved on to doing a “backup” shot of it with the sky. Well, both shots were sub-par. The first is mostly a cropping issue (save the lack of light, but the sun doesn’t shine here for more than half the year). The second has a better crop, but in trying to create and HDR shot from 4 exposures I really ruined this one. Not to worry. I’m showing it anyway. This is a blog, after all, not a portfolio.

Project Patch and Payette River

One day I needed to go to Project Patch. I decided to bring along my camera. The trip was very nice, and I saw some beautiful things. For the time of day I feel like I got some nice images. What do you think? Let me know in the comments!