Photography

Burned

The Images

Doug Morse

30 May 2023 — 4 min read

The previous post above hopefully gives a good impression of the place and so now I present some of my images. The landscape and conditions were well suited to black and white. Here I have a mix of neutral toned and warm-toned images. I am experimenting with a warm-tone and find it works in some cases by softening the image slightly. The panoramas were taken with the pan 65:24 aspect ratio. Because the lens I used is an old Olympus mount lens the others are all 3:2 like a full frame 35mm image.

[Technical Note: These images were taken with my Fuji GFX 50s ii digital camera. I used an adapted Olympus mount Tokina 70-210mm f4 lens throughout this series except where noted. The lens is very good as well as being lightweight and versatile. I get slightly less resolution at 30Mpix compared the camera’s native 50Mpix sensor. ]

These images are presented in the order taken.

The burned manzanita bushes made a great subject.

By now the weather was starting to turn and it turned me as well back to the shelter of the truck. A thunderstorm coasted across the valley and slammed into the mountains to the west and released a deluge that off and on lasted into the early morning hours.

I moved over towards Merril Cave as soon as there was a break in the rain. I found a hiking trail and walked a mile or more of flat cinder and lava fields. The wind was fierce and challenging and the weather swirled all around the vast valley of Tule Lake. In the image below I succumbed to the wind and setting sun and enlisted the wind as an unwilling collaborator. I think it works…

There were a great many flowers along with the green grass. To the north the clouds were organizing while the grass bathed in the warm evening light.

The weather gathered force as I got this scene.

I decided to retreat or risk getting soaked. As I returned I managed a nice image of castle rock through the rain. (Edward Weston made this a subject of one of his photos from this area.)