growyourwings | Portland Chinese Garden (finally) (Reply)

I finally spent some time today to get through some of my back log of photos. My photography class took a field trip back in November to the Portland Chinese Garden. I was so excited and planned on working on getting some HDR shots and using my tripod (which was a bitch to carry.)

When I got home from the excursion and looked through the photos I was both underwhelmed and overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of shots I had taken. I mean seriously? Talk about extreme overkill. This is why one of my photography goals for 2012 is to concentrate on quality and composition and not on quantity. The sheer volume of almost similar shots taken at different exposures (to try to get HDR material) was just overwhelming to my senses.

Plus since the sky that morning was stark blue with no clouds (seriously? no clouds in Portland in November?) it really wasn't the best place to try out HDR for the first time. And my few attempts after I got home were extremely underwhelming.

So I gave up on these photos. And I also was demotivated from taking other excursions. I was definitely in the "I suck" pit after this trip.

But good news is that a bit of time and detachment from HDR worked it's wonders. I did have to go through a heck of a lot of photos, but I am very happy with the ones I ended up with. None of the are HDR. Very few are cropped - those that are cropped are only slightly cropped to straighten out some edges.

Truly it's hard to take a bad photo of the Chinese pavilion. Which is also what got me discouraged after I realized the photos really weren't that unique. But I think I found a few buried in there that were perhaps a bit unique.

Portland Chinese Garden
November 20, 2011

(click any photo to enlarge)

above :: Taken as I was leaving the garden. I liked the dragon (dragons, right?) statues and then noticed passerbys and thought to try to frame the dragons viewpoint of the pedestrians. ;P

above :: The garden had all these cuby holes in which if you were lucky you could frame other visitors. For such a smallish garden it's amazing all the content.

above :: I was trying for lined perspectives with interesting play of light.

above :: I like the sunshine contrasting with the blue shadow. This window was along a partially covered walkway.

above :: I think this woman was a volunteer as she would occasionally overhear someone's question and answer it.

above :: I'm playing with black and white versions of some photos. Not only for the effect, but also to check out the contrast values in the photos. Sometimes my eye gets deceived by too many colors.

above :: This was a little house nestled into some trees in the garden. I was taken by the light coming in through all the ornately carved windows, so I played with trying to either frame others in the windows or just capturing the light. I'm happy with the results. Especially when I also caught another visitor moving within the structures. I like the blurriness of their movement along with the almost other-worldly quality of the light.

above :: this woman (man?) looks like she's "going into the light" ;P

above :: Of course there were carp throughout the pond. But given the brightness of the sun, it was difficult to get any decent shots of them.

above :: Since it was fall the garden was having a chrysanthemum showing - but it was almost at the tail end of the show and most of the mums were showing the results of some cold days and nights.

above :: this is the Chinese pavilion I mentioned - the one that it's hard to NOT get a good photo of. One of our assignments was to get reflections. But honestly it was no challenge to do so, which had the side effect of demotivating. ;P

Plus the sky held nothing of interest. A few stormy clouds would have been nice.

above :: I did save some of my three-exposure shots of the pavilion to play later with HDR, but for now these are all straight exposures.

above :: To add some interest I started to try to capture other visitors in the shots. We arrived at the garden right when it opened so at first the grounds were a bit empty.

above :: I wanted to try to get the tall skyscrapers reflected in the water. That will be something I can try more with HDR (later).

above :: I wasn't much taken with this shot when I first saw it. Slightly out of focus. But this time around I found myself caught by the play of light in the windows and the angle of the shot.

above :: again with the building reflection.

above :: I know this probably doesn't make any sense, but many of these pavilion shots are almost too pretty/perfect to really appeal to me. I think this is also why I got demotivated. Especially since it wasn't hard to get nice, pretty shots.

above :: I think out of all the pavilion shots, this is one of my favorites. I like the composition of it.

above :: all these cool cutouts throughout the garden. :-)

above :: trying for those framed shots.

On the way to and from the garden I captured some shots of the surrounding downtime Portland streets. And today I discovered that *those* shots had some wonderful light. I was thrilled with them. Much more so than with these. Coming in the next post.