#0033

After a short drive, I showed up at this second house. Many of Hido's images appear during a storm. But when you can't produce a storm on demand, it makes emulating a little difficult. To compensate, I used a trick Hido himself uses, water. I fill a spray bottle with water then spray it onto the lens. This action blurs the image and adds an interesting element to it. There is a possibility of the water getting into the camera from this process, but most modern cameras are water-resistant, and I made sure to avoid spraying the body. 

 

#0005

As I mentioned a few days ago, the next series will be one about the images I created during my school photography class. In early January, I received an email from my teacher with a link to a Youtube video. The video describes the work of Todd Hido. Hido photographs manmade structures, typically during the night or a storm, void of human figures. The idea is to create an image that has a different meaning to each viewer. For this reason, he doesn't title his images. Instead, he uses the number given by the camera. Over the next nine days, I will be posting my emulations of his work.

 

Nightlights

A few days later, I went on another adventure. This one was back at a park I venture to frequently. But that was not the focus of the image. The focus was the highrises of downtown Dallas. I lined up as best I could on the road leading to downtown, adjusted the settings to capture the dark subjects, and took the image. It was cloudy that day, which meant that all the lights in the city reflected off them. This made the clouds appear in two different colors, violet from the night and orange from the incandescent bulbs. 

 

East Dallas Sunset

As the sun continued to set, I changed locations yet again. My next stop was Flag Pole Hill, one I know all too well from running. But instead of focusing on the hill, I focused on the road leading to downtown and the sunset. Similar to the picture from two days ago, there was nothing I could do to avoid the sun. So, I made it the main subject of my image. I angled the camera to get the best sun flare possible and positioned the drone so there it created a reflection off the road. These two actions, paired with the colors of the sunset, allowed for a magnificent composition. 

 

Humans and Nature

After biking around the lake, I came across one of many docks. This one happened to have a flock of birds in the water across from it. I was a little disappointed when I first took the image, but I like the muted colors more and more. The grass is not green, and the trees don't have leaves on them, but this makes the birds and people stand out more. The water is a weird brown-green color, and I'm sure it's not environmentally healthy, but I think it looks interesting. 

 

Blue Skies

My next adventure led me to White Rock Lake, where I was greeted with blue skies and gusty winds. These winds wouldn't have been much of a problem, but I had recently updated the drone and was not accustomed to the new direction-awareness system. This system tells you where the drone is relative to the controller and which direction it is facing. Regardless, I decided to test it out and flew anyways. The next problem was trying to shoot west towards downtown, right where the sun was. I thought about lowering the camera angle and avoiding the sun altogether, but that didn't help. So I figured, might as well include the sun instead of trying to avoid it. 

 

Winters Night

After adjusting the camera angle from the last image, I was delighted by this sight. I kept the same settings (0.8sec, f2.8, 100 ISO) which allowed for the motion of the cars to show. The sunset portion of the image is a second image that I took minutes before this one. If you don't know, the Dallas North Tollway runs almost directly north-south, and the sun doesn't set in either of those directions. So, about twenty minutes after sunset, I took an image of the colors above the already set sun. Then moments later, I took one of the moving cars. I combined the two, and it turned out like this. 

 

Motion

This image is one that I have been waiting to post for a while. One night during the Holiday Break, I biked over to the Dallas North Tollway and sent the drone up. It must have been a very calm night, as the drone was steady enough to take a 0.8-second shot. I was surprised when I saw this image since I wasn't expecting a long exposure from the air to work. But now that I know it does in the calmest winds, I will be emulating this image with other subjects. 

 

Eclipse

I bet you weren't expecting this post today, but how could I miss such a fascinating event! The day started with a 4:30 alarm, followed by a thirty-minute drive, followed by an introduction to my new favorite park. I had known about the May 26th lunar eclipse for quite a while but couldn't find a place near home but also far from city lights. I settled on Tandy Hills Park, off Interstate 30. The viewing of the eclipse was sporadic, as the clouds decided to invade my photographing of it. How rude! But, there were a few seconds when the clouds broke and provided me with a glimpse of the event. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth blocks the sun's light before it reaches the moon. The timing of this picture is before the total eclipse, which is why the moon looks like a regular crescent. Regardless of the clouds and regular-looking moon, the view from the drone was superb. It is odd for me to post twice a day, but I could not wait to post this taste of the lunar eclipse (the whole eclipse series is coming after the winter drone series). 

 

Baseball

As I continued my bike ride south, I noticed this baseball diamond. I have taken a few pictures near the area, but never from a drone. I took this picture a few minutes before 5, which made the shadows long and light soft. Throughout the image, the subjects are cast in different lights. Treetops in a bright orange or green, the baseball diamond and park a soft yellow, the lake a dark black, and the pathways a light gray. It is a unique way to see the park, one that I have never seen before. 

 

Stormy Skies

After a brief break to finish up my school work, I am back! This next series will be nine days straight of drone images I took in Dallas in December and January. After this short series, I will post another series that I have been working on for my school photography. Then following that series, I will begin posting more recent images. 

This image comes from December 19th, 2020, and back when there was still some color on the trees. What I like most about it is the rays of sunlight and how the image's composition splits into three sections. The lower half is of homes, the upper left is downtown, and the upper right is the sun. The original image was relatively dark, but nothing some Photoshop can't fix. 

Cloudy Skies

After taking the last picture, I biked a few miles to the north and found myself near a major road. I chose to stop here because I knew that the road's line would help guide your eyes to the focus of the image, the Dallas skyline. It also happened to be partly cloudy that day, which gave some fascinating sun streaks in the right half of the picture. I never planned to wait for the perfect lighting, but I think this time, the lighting was waiting for me.

Downtown Dallas

Back in Texas, I spent several days flying it and taking pictures of Dallas from above. This first image is looking at downtown Dallas from the northwest. I ended up putting it in black and white because I didn't feel that color added any benefits. There wasn't much color in the sky, and the trees were either brown or pale green. This is eventually a theme I realized while looking over the pictures and am waiting for the days when the trees gain some color and the grass is not brownish-yellow. 

 

Road to the Next

As we wrap up this series, I wanted to end it with a similar picture of how I ended the summer Colorado series. I walked into the middle of the road (yes, I was very aware of cars coming by) and aligned myself with the center divider. The clouds were continuing to work their magic, and the almost setting sun eliminated the harsh light. I believe that the summer picture has better scenery than this one, but this one has snow and interesting-looking clouds, so I guess they balance out.

 

Forest Service Road 650

Once again, about twenty feet into the air, there was something magical at that height. You can't quite see over the trees, but you are high enough to see most of the mountains in the background. Forest Service Road 650 seemed like a lightly traveled road that is the only winter-time entrance into the town of Ophir. We parked between the highway and town, far enough from both that we didn't hear the sounds of either. Besides the occasional car coming by every five-ish minutes, the only other sounds we heard were those of the birds. 

 

Between the Mountains

Still, at an altitude of 1,600 feet above my starting point, I turned the camera around and moved the drone a couple of hundred feet to the north. I wanted to get a little closer to the roads and see if I could notice anything behind the mountain to the right. When I was talking about pictures being blue a long time ago, this is the image that I had in mind. It might be because of the white snow and the darkness in the valleys, but for some reason, the mountainsides are very blue. 

 

Surrounded

After reaching a height of 1,600 feet above my starting altitude, I looked directly down. I saw the dirt road on the left side, a small stream on the right, and trees on both sides. I had a little trouble deciding which line I wanted to align the picture with, but I eventually settled with the tree line. I thought about choosing the road, but it wasn't entirely straight. So, the only other option was the tree line. I wouldn't call it the best alignment, but I think it's pretty good. 

 

Rugged

Next, I turned the drone to face the surrounding mountains. Something seemed special about the rocks sticking through the snow and half of the mountain being entirely white. To make the picture appear older, I significantly lowered the saturation and vibrance. Not completely to zero, but very close. It really increased the contrast while keeping a hint of color in the image. 

 

Ophir

The next part of this adventure involved turning down an unnamed dirt road after seeing some interesting-looking houses. I didn't know it yet, but from 1,500 feet, I could clearly see the small town of Ophir nestled in the valley of these mountains. Something that bothers me about this picture is the town's slant. It is not perfectly flat but slopes to the right. This is just a minor detail that annoys me since I am the photographer, but I still think it is an amazing image. 

 

Shadow

When one of the drone batteries became a little low, I looked down, trying to align myself for a landing. I found the landing spot, but I also found these trees next to me. I saw I had about six more minutes of flight time and took a detour. And what I saw was unlike anything I had seen before. The almost setting sun made for some great shadows, and there were some very nice shadows from the trees. I knew this image had to be in black and white, but besides that, I didn't change anything else. I wanted the picture to speak for itself and to show the unedited scene.