Owen Dudley takes it easy on his first ride after reconstructrive knee surgery in Bellingham Washington.

Speed Freaking Photographing

January 5, 2013 by Jay Goodrich

I met and began photographing Owen not too long after I moved to Washington. He was the ski school instructor at Mount Baker Ski Area that my daughter Jade gravitated to on her first day of non-dad lessons. He was responsible for getting my well-opinionated daughter to listen and actually make turns while hauling ass over snow. I remember the first day we shot skiing photos together and I remember the first day he schooled me on the art of downhill mountain biking like it was this morning. I have seen him injure himself every season that I have known him. And if there is anyone out there that is a testament to the human’s ability to heal it is definitely Owen.

Yesterday, I had a couple of hours before having to pick my daughter up at school and was on my way out the door for a ride when Owen called. He had just been cleared to ride some mild trails and wanted to know if I wanted to shoot. I looked at the clock and hesitated, knowing how often I am late to pick Jade up. Okay let’s do it. There is a trail in Bellingham that I have come to love for its amazing trees, and you already know how much of a tree whore I am, so this was a no brainer with fall color beginning to set in around here.

By the time we actually found the parking area that I always ride my bike to, but never my truck, I realized we were screwed for time. Owen may have been cleared to throw a leg over a bike, but he couldn’t climb, and definitely couldn’t crash. That left me to ride his new Transition 29er into where we were going to take some shots. Just one more reason for me to be jealous. As I looked down at my phone when we started shooting I had 15 minutes to pull something from nothing. The song Ten Seconds to Love by Motley Crue came to mind as I fired off 371 frames. I almost made it look as if I knew what I was doing. It’s safe to say that Owen still knows how to ride. And, at least I am learning how to not be as late. Speeding always helps. As does the song Breakin the Law by Judas Priest. Allegedly.

Winter snow melts from summer run off in Mount Rainier National Park, Washington.

Retract that Last Statement・A Contradiction of HDR

January 4, 2013 by Jay Goodrich

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)” – Walt Whitman

Okay, so I know that I have been discussing my lack of exposure merging and use of any HDR software in recent posts and articles. Now it’s time for a little contradiction. I have been completely content with my results from graduated neutral density filters in the field. So have my clients. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction though. Right? Enter the snow cave from stage right. Now, can I retract all those previous statements about tossing HDR techniques to the wind? Unless they devise some kind of special graduated neutral density filter that can mask an irregular object, or better yet be adjustable in the field, I will need to do what is best for my vision. That would be some really cool James Bond type tool wouldn’t it though?

When I saw this composition, I knew what I wanted for my final image, I just needed to figure out how to get it. Once I was back in my office, I quickly performed a few trial and error solutions in various softwares, I came up with this final workflow. I merged four of the exposures that I shot in Photomatix 4, then I took that composite image and hand blended in the sky and the Tatoosh Mountains beyond in Photoshop. I wanted my viewer to see a hint of the streaming water that was blowing in the light breeze, feel the coolness of my surroundings, and finally visualize the color coming through the thinner areas of the snow roof.

This final, final image was then mastered in Photoshop accounting for contrast, dodging and burning, color saturation, and vignetting. I think I was successful?

This truly proves that there is a tool for every occasion in photography. My goal is to never fall into the rut of shooting one or the other, but allowing for my scene to dictate which direction and approach I need to take in order for my vision to shine through to my viewer.

So what is your take? How do you feel about HDR and image blending? Do you regularly achieve the results you were looking for when you utilize it?

Original RAW capture untouched.
Mastered original.
Mastered Black and White Favorite.

A Midday Sun Battle

August 22, 2012 by Jay Goodrich

There are many that believe you can only create a superb image at the edges of the day. The reality is, that even during the long days of summer, during midday sun, you can come up with creative ways of expressing your vision. Weather and schedules don’t always collide to provide you with the best situations. Sometimes you have to make it collide. You have to make your vision come through.

This is exactly where I was last week. When Heather and I left the house, we were enshrouded in clouds. The hillsides were covered with that misty drama that I love to shoot in. This was going to be the day that I was going to be able to get mist and mountain biking in the forest near my home. We dropped the kids off at day-care and proceeded north to the trail that we decided to ride on this day. It was only fifteen miles from our house as the crow flies and as we got closer and closer, the clouds began to dissipate. Before I knew it, we were in full-blown sun. This is where the words that can insult many of you begin to come out of my mouth. My favorite begins with the letter F. It was safe to say that I was generally aggravated with my choice to go further instead of staying where I knew we could succeed. A classic concept of the “grass is always greener” illustrated right in from of my face. At this point in my life and my career, I should know better. Learning experience number 2,546,300, some review of my life may be necessary again.

As I finished kicking the dog, the ground, myself, and my bike, I finished my coffee and decided to just simply go for a ride. I may have returned with something different and I may have not. My images may have all gone into the trash. Heather reminded me that this was all okay. I completely disagreed, but I cleared my head so I could be open to what the day sent me. We agreed to ride a bunch of trails that we have never ridden before in order to see what else was available for future image making. Climb after climb in the sun and heat, I passed by opportunity upon opportunity. The light just wasn’t right. It was high-noon after all.

Just as we came to the finish of our ride, I found what I was looking for. I wasn’t really sure how great the finished product was going to be, but I spent a few minutes having Heather ride my composition numerous times. I varied my exposure and my framing slightly for each image and gave her instructions on how I wanted her to tweak her body position and at which point on the trail. The beauty of digital is that I have the chance to see what I am creating as I create it, so I know when the moment is complete. Usually, it is that last sequence. As I shot the final photograph, I was pre-visualizing it as a black and white, but I wasn’t really sure of the technique that I was going to apply to it. After some trial and error, I ended up using the over exposed highlights of the backlit maple leaves as the whites in my final conversion and then added light to my shadows. I am really happy with the results and the final image, even though it was created in midday light it represents something unique and different.

Maybe the grass, or should I say the leaves, are greener on the other side of the fence if you go beyond those standard expectations?

You’re Not in the Mood Well You Get in the Mood

March 14, 2012 by Jay Goodrich

Rooted and Rocked Mountain Biking Washington by Jay Goodrich

If you ask my wife, she will tell you that I am the moodiest person on the planet-ridiculously happy one minute and ready to end it all at a moment’s notice the next. Those mood changes surprisingly change my creative disposition, and not only the way I take photographs, but the way that I process them too. You can create mood in the field during different weather conditions or you can create different moods when processing your images after the fact. How do we go about this?

Shooting in the field is definitely the hardest of all the scenarios to generate mood because you are controlled exclusively by your environment. If you head out to photograph on a clear, cloudless day, the mood of your photographs will differ drastically from a day when you head out and everything is enshrouded in fog, or it’s raining, or snowing, or even clearing as the sun is setting. All these scenarios give your photographs very distinct and different moods. At the same time, you can change that mood while processing them too. Now generating a mood within your frame, can truly be limitless.

Think about the direction of processing your image. You can process an image darker to promote a more thought provoking view or lighter to cheer up your viewers emotions. The same holds true when adding color. Blues are cooler, thus driving a more inward feeling, while warm tones can promote a positive mood. You can add grain to add confusion. Add sharpness to add clarity. Blur parts of your image to change your viewers focus. And in the same thought you can combine of any of the previous mentioned techniques as well.

My photographic mission has been changing pretty rapidly lately and now Adobe’s Lightroom software is more of the mainstay image adjustment tool than Photoshop. This is happening because of two reasons. One, most of the editors that I am currently working with will not even accept a file out of Photoshop. It must be a RAW converted to a DNG. Lightroom allows me to make image adjustments and still export a DNG that looks the way I intended, but also allows my editors to see the original file for verification of its validity. Interpretation–NO MERGED IMAGES ALLOWED! And two, I don’t have a ton of time, so if I can create it in camera and then process it quickly, I then can move on to the next project.

Rooted and Rocked Mountain Biking Washington by Jay Goodrich

For those of you that aren’t in the mood to give it a try maybe the included image will get you there.

And The Winners Are…

December 16, 2011 by Jay Goodrich

Notice that I said winners? Because it is Christmas and I have a soft spot at this time of year and only this time of year, EVERYONE that commented on last week’s post regarding how I shot an interior image is getting a print of their choosing. So Younes, Dave, Ilene, Dick, and Michael just email me your choice from anywhere on any of my sites, include your shipping address, and I will print and ship you a signed print for playing. I also wanted to mention that all of you managed to highlight something that I did to get this image. In an effort to not leave you hanging, here is the full story.

Step 1-Spend over an hour moving all of the homeowners not so great furniture out of the way. This included hundreds of knick-nacks. Assorted bark-a-loungers, pieces of ocean glass, and even the cat. By the way, the cat acted like a dog and I loved that thing. He just always wanted to be in my frame. Then bring in the tripod and camera. In this case I did in fact use a Canon 24mm Tilt-Shift lens on a 1D Mark IV body with a cable release. The tripod and camera were then leveled with a handy hot-shoe bubble level.

Step 2-Use said camera vertically to capture 9 exposures of 4 separate compositions beginning at the left of the frame and continuing with about 50% over lap to the right side of my composition. All images were shot in RAW. No external lighting here.

Step 3-Move all of the shit back into place. Continue photographing house until it was pitch black out and pouring to the point that all of my lens glass was fogged with condensation.

Step 4-Ride the two hour ferry back home. Thank god it was Thanksgiving and not 4th of July–early sunset.

Step 5-Get kissed and hugged by the kids, yelled at by the wife because I am a stupid man. Then kissed by the wife.

Step 6-Upload close to a thousand images into the server.

Step 7-Begin to edit, sort, and process.

Step 8-Process this image. It was a 6 hour long mission. The whole image was mastered completely by hand. First, each of the four compositions needed to be merged to balance the exterior light coming in with the level drop that was present in the interior. Yes, the exterior does really look like what is shown in the glass, but it doesn’t necessarily need to for a lot of my clients. Then, I balanced out all of the lights and darks to make the interior look exactly as I wanted. The Mask Adjustment Palette in Photoshop CS5 is amazing for this. Now, the separate compositions need to be merged together. I have to admit that I did use the Photo Merge function in Photoshop to make this happen. It did a pretty good job. Where this function falls short is in the pattern areas of the plywood and ceiling panels. So after I finalized the crop, I then go back to my separate un-merged exposure images and cut and paste specific areas to make everything line up. Also there was a glass cabinet right above the bench in the fireplace tower that I completely cloned out because it was, yes, full of more ugly shit. This file was then saved as a layered composition file just in case I ever need to move more things around. And it is 1.5GB in size. This is why I use a Mac Pro with 30 inch Cinema Display.

Step 9-Flatten the image and go to town removing dust and miscellaneous things that just couldn’t be removed in the field. Then adjust for color, contrast, lightness, darkness, saturation etc. Click the image above to see what all of the layers are. At this point the file is only 630MB +/- something that is workable.

Step 10-Go to bed for a mere 4 hours it was 3am and I had 7 other images that needed to completed before noon to be sent off to the book publisher, who is Australia and they are a full day ahead of me.

Step 11-Today I fixed the leaning mullions in the image that I noticed yesterday when I did an architecture promo. See, it never really ends. Just Morphosises onto to something else. Like crazy mountain biking.

Private Residence on San Juan Island © Jay Goodrich

Tell Me What We Did and Win A Free Autographed Print

December 6, 2011 by Jay Goodrich

Ok, this is pretty simple (not in the slightest). Insert Dr. Evil laugh here. Tell the world how you think I created this image. We want as many details as you can think of from lighting, capture, to post processing. Remember too that architecture photography is all about moving furniture. Start there. You can even click on the image to see it larger, that may help. The person with the closest guess and most details will win a free 16 x 24 print of their choosing off of my stock or portfolio websites. You have one week! Begin.

Mosses dominate the forground of reflections in Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park.

The Water Olympics Workshop

April 28, 2011 by Jay Goodrich

Oh yeah it’s one of those scenes…I can here you now, nice colors Jay, I like the textures, interesting perspective. This scene is not what you think my friends. What you don’t see in this image is the devil, pure concentrated evil. I am speaking of the 666 variety. Just lurking below the calm waters of of Lake Crescent here in Olympic National Park exists a serpent. Last weekend I was leading a workshop there with a great group of 25 photographers and all of them were just as unsuspecting as you are to the events that were about to transpire. Hell even I wasn’t on board.

It wasn’t mere minutes after this wonderful, peaceful scene was created on my sensor, sent through the buffer, and written to my flash card that the world was about to change. I moved in closer to the water to create abstract reflections of those branches in the right of this scene. Some great compositions. And then in an instant. FUCK! Yes, I managed to knock my brand new 1D Mark IV and 70-200 f2.8 IS II lens, tripod, ballhead, and shutter release into the lake. I mean that unseen fucking serpent took it–I can’t blame it on my own stupidity now can I. Not just a little, but into the depths, complete submersion. Listen to the needle drag across the record here.

My alter ego, (Tyler Durden from Fight Club) wanted to beat the crap out of me, but he resisted in this case, so the 25 severely concerned witnesses didn’t have me committed. After going fishing to bring the whole rig out, Art and Gavriel helped me dry it off. What the heck was I going to do? There were still two days left in this workshop? I decided to go for it and press the shutter release to see what would happen, and to my surprise, the damn thing took a picture.

Arms raised like I had just won the SuperBowl. YES! A true testament to a Canon professional body and lens. After toweling off the exterior, I went in. Opened the battery compartment, flash card compartment, lens off, everything completely dry. Looking through the lens no water, nothing. This can’t be happening to me. I never have this kind of luck.

And then, after about 2 hours, the scene from the Empire Strikes Back came blazing into my life. “Chewy, let’s make the jump to lightspeed.” Han Solo pulls the lever, and in the true spirit of his luck, the ship shutters and slows, as if to say, I am just too tired my friend you are out of credits once again. The lens fogged, camera produced an error message, and menu went blank. “But, but I thought I fixed the hyperdrive?” Laser blasts all around. FUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK! No water anywhere inside? What the hell? Again?

After kicking the tires, scratching my head, and other various body parts, trying to figure it out, it came to me. Wait, wait, I went from the clear blue warmth into the cool, moist, shaded rainforest of the Hoh. Temperature gradiant and just enough moisture left in those seals? What if I open everything up and put this puppy in the hot car, in the sun for a few hours?

Hours later as we walk down the water’s edge of the Pacific on Second Beach, my thought process was about to be tested. Had I come up with a legitimate solution? Was I worthy of the “Professional” title in front of my name? “R2 what do you mean the hyperdrive was disconnected?” The flick of a little lever and…The stars all of a sudden align and blur like a long exposure. Hyperdrive fixed once again. Click. Time to photograph the sunset.

I am now off to the desert to lead a group in Zion, where this no water–no water, just rocks…

Mark Kogelmann makes some powder turns in the backcountry near Mt Herman.

Work–Workshops–and Travel

March 22, 2011 by Jay Goodrich

Many of you have been wondering where the heck I have been. It has been how many weeks since my last post? I know, I know, inconsistency is not good for Google, SEO, PPO, CPS, NPS, LLC, INC, and whatever other abbreviations you can come up with. Seriously though, I have been working like a crazy man. 21 days of photographing skiing, 14 days of teaching workshops, and then image mastering–tons of mastering, keywording, descriptions, titles, and headlines. And let’s not forget the proposals for upcoming projects. Days are just flying by, I can’t believe it’s almost April?

I have put together submissions to Patagonia, Powder Magazine, Black Diamond Equipment, and a major calendar company. I taught a workshop with my dear friend Art Wolfe in Seattle on the art of composing images, then I taught two HDR workshops at this year’s NANPA Summit in McAllen, TX, and the whole time in-between working to create the best ski portfolio ever. This is where I need to add a special thank you to all of the athletes who have been working with me–Mark Kogelmann, Owen Dudley, Peder Bottheim, Tyler Hatcher, Nick Marvic, Colin Poff, Pat Tolton, and Ian Burge. The images would be nothing without them. Now, I would also like to thank the Academy…I think it just feels good to complete missions and projects. It’s like adding another notch to the bedpost. Or something like that. Laugh. Oh and there will be a film highlighting all this work sometime this spring, with an interview with ah…me. We are thinking of calling it life | SENTENCES, what do you think?

I have been to Seattle, Texas, Canada, and now as you read this China. Yep, JG Inc. is going international–again, this time crossing the monster pond. If I can sort out an internet connection while there, (which I am hoping I can do) I will post some of the work I am creating while there.

As if that wasn’t enough, l have managed to fill all but 2 of my workshops. China–FULL, The Olympic Peninsula–FULL, Zion–FULL, Lightroom 3–space left, and Alaska–space left. The Alaska trip is being co-lead with Art Wolfe, so why wouldn’t you want to go? I mean it is not everyday that you get to drink really good Tequila and Bourbon with really good photographers. Right? And in the future, I promise to try and enlighten the world at least once a week with something intriguing, if not, it will at least be completely off the wall, humorous, and as misdirected as a Jack Russell Terrier.

2010 in Review

January 7, 2011 by Jay Goodrich

Photographer and writer Jay Goodrich has assembled a collection of his work from the past year. Images were captured on location throughout Washington, Colorado, California, Oregon, Utah, New Mexico, Montana, and Wyoming.

My friend Jim Goldstein has a project on his blog every year where he asks people to submit their favorite images taken during the previous year. This year he inspired me to take it a little further. I finally created my first film, video, or what ever you would like to call it. I know there are plenty of mistakes, but I tried to go a little further and tell a little bit more of a story. Maybe I achieved success and maybe I didn’t. Either way I guess we all need to start somewhere. I hope you enjoy. One thing this project has taught me though is that I am pretty impressed with the capabilities of today’s software and computers. As a kid I never imagined that this would be possible from my office above the garage.

A clearing weather system highlights cloud cover on top of Mount Rainier as the stars begin to shine after sunset, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington.

September 2010 Photo of the Month

September 20, 2010 by Jay Goodrich

After such an amazing evening hike and dinner with Heather and the kids I couldn’t help myself this month. I had to use one of the images as a photo of the month. I was fortunate enough to capture this photograph at the bottom of the Paradise Trail as we finished our hike in complete darkness. I decided to throw all the rules of composition out the window and include way more of the sky above rather than the foreground of wildflowers that was at my feet, which was almost black to the naked eye. Since these clouds were rolling along at a fast pace all I needed to create the above effect was a 30 second shutter speed. In some cases it takes much longer shutter speeds to see even the slightest bit of movement in clouds, but not on this night. The scene looks almost like the volcano itself is outgassing during an eruption. Taken with a Canon 1D Mark III, 16-35mm f2.8 lens, Gitzo tripod, Kirk ballhead, and mastered in Adobe Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5. You can read more about the evening and see additional images on my weekly post to the Outdoor Photographer Magazine Blog.

JAY GOODRICH

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