A bridge over troubled water at Tumwater Falls Park at night

I came very close to calling this image “A Bridge Over Troubled Water” but thought it might be a little to much so I edited myself back to just calling it Troubled Water.  Given the subject matter, I think it works.

I need to start this blog post by saying that I can’t take credit for finding this vantage point for shooting Upper Tumwater Falls.  I shoot the falls quite a bit, I recently posted an image of the falls after they were frozen, but I never thought about going up on the Boston St. bridge to shoot them.  For that idea, I have to give all of that credit to a fellow Olympia Camera Club member, Pat Shea, who recently posted an image made from this very location to the club’s Facebook group.

When I saw Pat’s image I knew that I wanted to go down and shoot from the same location.  I also suspected that it would be a perfect opportunity to do a little #WE35 research and post a field report.

Some people will argue that shooting with a single, fixed focal length, lens is very restrictive.  While I can understand that, I also find it to be a great benefit to creativity.  It forces the photographer to slow down and actually think about the composition of the image that they are attempting to make.  When you have a zoom lens you can simply stand anywhere and zoom in or out until you get the composition you desire, with the fixed focal length you have to actually move to change each composition.  IMO, that simple act of slowing down and shooting with a purpose will do great things when it comes to advancing your work.

WE35 Mailbox

In addition to the official research that the global #WE35 team will be conducting in 2015, we will also be conducting monthly photo expeditions.  For the January expedition we were assigned the task of making an image of our mailbox.  You can read a little more about the expedition here.

To tell the truth, I was sort of excited to do this. I will confess that my mailbox, as well as the other 5 that belong to my neighbors that I share a private road with, are not the most photogenic, but they are pretty well photographed.  Every time I am trying out a new lens, they are typically the first thing that I make an image of. Even though there is a good deal of separation between us and our neighbors, I have always wondered if they think it was odd that I make so many images of some lowly mailboxes?

Anyway, here is my mailbox, plus 5 others.