SavocaWeb » Nature

Photos from Banff National Park – Alberta Canada, Summer 2008

bensavoca — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:22:43 +0000

I recently recovered an old hard drive after a full year of unuse, and came across several old photos I’d all but forgotten. Here are a few from a trip to Canada in July of 2008.

Autumn Leaves (2003)

bensavoca — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:26:41 +0000

More from the photo shoot in Cincinnati.

Anemone II (2003)

bensavoca — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:21:36 +0000

These flowers were in the same meadow as ‘Anemone I.’ Those two images, as well as another of a bird nest in the field, I bundled together as a three-photo set, had prints made, and framed them for my mother for Mother’s Day.

Yellow Leaf (2003)

bensavoca — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:20:54 +0000

When photographing, I often exploit my independence from film – I take a number of shots of the same subject. Still, I also discipline myself not to delete images from the camera’s memory card until I see them on my computer screen.

This image was one of about fifteen I took of this branch. Some focused on the leaf, some on the branch. Some were oriented to have the branch straight and the leaf diagonal, and vice versa.

Looking at the images on the LCD screen on my camera, this would have been one of the images that would have been up for deletion. Luckily, I held onto it long enough to see the great detail in the barck of the branch.

Bee (2003)

bensavoca — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:19:33 +0000

Leaving the DAAP building one day in May, I heard a buzzing in the sculpture garden nearby. Bees were pollinating the freshly opened flowers, so I decided to whip out my camera to document this rite of Spring.

I must have underestimated the speed at which these little insects moved. I hardly had time to focus, let alone set up a shot and take it. It got to the point where I switched to AutoFocus and started shooting randomly into the flowers.

This method luckily produced this image. The bee was in focus, positioned dynamically in the shot, and the diagonal stems of the flowers provided an interesting line system from which the bee and his perch may diverge.

For a full-resolution image, see my ZenPhoto gallery

Anemone I (2003)

bensavoca — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:16:08 +0000

In Spring of 2003, the design task for Studio was to develop a sustainable school building for a Waldorf elementary school. We made frequent visits to the site, a lovely meadow teeming with flora and fauna. My Fuji’s built-in macro lens came in handy for close up shots like this one.

Oriental Maple (2003)

bensavoca — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:14:59 +0000

One of my favorite shots of all the thousands I’ve taken, ‘Oriental Maple’ was taken one rainy morning in the summer of 2003.

I was getting ready to leave for work at City Architecture, when I glanced out of my bedroom window and saw the raindrops on the tree outside. Hastily, I undid the latch on the screen, poked my camera out, and captured the shot.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think part of the success of this photo was the white siding of the house: it acted as a white card, bouncing diffused light back at the closer leaves while failing to reach those further away.

For a full-resolution image, see my ZenPhoto gallery.

Autumn Leaves (2003)

bensavoca — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:13:30 +0000

Brilliant days in autumn are hard to come by, but the combination of the azure sky with the intense colors of Fall provided quite a palette with which to work. To think of the infinite spectrum of color in the universe, and it has to be boiled down to a measly 256 colors to be displayed on the Web.

Fuji Rock (2002)

bensavoca — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:12:04 +0000

Since becoming interested in Photography, I find myself paying more and more attention to the weather. A brilliant blue sky makes a wonderful backdrop for nearly any subject. A heavy rain lightly mists plants and brings out their colors. A setting sun bathes everything in the golden glow of some celestial oven.

In this case, snow was falling gently in large, puffy flakes. I call this image Fuji Rock because it reminds me of the Japanese watercolor prints in the Cleveland Art Museum – no real sense of perspective, a tree reaching wide over a stone, everything seemingly at peace yet somehow maintaining a certain intensity.

Puddle and Lichen

bensavoca — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 01:26:52 +0000

A puddle in a rainstorm in Bandelier National Park, near Los Alamos, NM.