Same Place, Outer Banks Students ’12

Same Place – Different View

It is always fun to review the work of our participants when I post a new gallery and do a Same Place – Different View blog, such as I have just done for the Springtime on the Outer Banks students’ gallery.

The Outer Banks is known for its wild coast, much of it under the protection of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.   There are other aspects to the Outer Banks, too, and our students captured a good range of them, a few of which we’ll share here.

Piers are great places to photograph, and our group loved where we took them.

Sandra took chances and experimented and came up with this take on one of our favorite piers.

Mitch likes a square format, and photographing later, gave the pier a totally different look.

Color is always fun, whether absence of color or bright and cheerful.

Charlotte got way down and photographed these shapes using a very shallow depth of field.

Same Place, Savannah Students ’12

Same Place – Different View

I have done a lot of catching up.  Our travel schedule is so busy, that I often get behind on desk work.  Yes, we’d rather be outside photographing, but there are practicalities to running a business!

The Savannah & Her Lowcountry students’ gallery is now posted.

We visit many locations, some well known, others a bit off the beaten track. One of the locations is a famous cemetery.  Everyone loves to photograph there. Sometimes wrought iron catches people’s eyes; at other times, it may be the flowers or the river.

This year, people seemed really drawn to the statuary.  I don’t think anyone was more than 30 feet from one another when they all made these photos.

David liked the unexpected necklace adorning this young lady

Jeana found this little angel and turned it into a gentle black-and-white image..

Lamar wanted to give a heavenly look to his statues and picked this angel playing the lyre.

Same Place, Costa Rica Students ’12

Same Place – Different View

It has been a while since I have done a Same Place – Different View blog … too long.

We have finally put up the student gallery for Costa Rica’s Treasures, so check it out.  The participants did a great job.

As those of you already know who have followed this blog for some time, we encourage our participants to seek their own vision.  Often, a photograph of a location may resemble another, but always, the take is different.  Sometimes, even the scene is totally different.

In this case, we picked similar shots to show different approaches.

Costa Rica has a remarkably varied landscape, from active volcanoes, to plains, to tropical areas, to cloud forest, and I have not even begun to cover it all.  Its biodiversity is astounding and the reason such entities as the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) are headquartered and have several research stations that serve top scientists worldwide, even remotely via the Internet.

That aside, there is a reason that people love to visit Costa Rica.

Take the lush landscape, especially after a rainstorm.  We were on our way to another location, and a storm came through.  We stopped, scrambled out of our bus, and made many photographs.

Chuck homed in on an area and gave it a dramatic treatment.

Chris did a broader view with a gentler palette.

If you look carefully, you will recognize some of the same elements in both photographs.

There are all sorts of toothsome creatures in Costa Rica down at the coasts. A good reason not to go swimming in the rivers! One fine specimen was sunning himself on a log, ever watchful for a possible meal.

Bill concentrated on the head and captured the glint of light off the eye and teeth.

Patrick took it even further and just showed the awesome row of teeth.

You recognize the same set of teeth in both photographs. Both reminded me of that stanza in the nonsense poem “The Canny Crocodile”:

Sometimes all day on the sand he’d lie,
And deeply and thoughtfully