Riding The Edge
Blog
“Somewhere between the heart and the head,
between passion and intellect lies a great photograph” - David Patton
This Riding The Edge Blog is where I share my thoughts on black and white and color photography, how I make my photos, and where I am on my photography journey. If that sounds interesting to you then check back often and come along for the ride!
Looking Up
The more I do nature photography, the more I’m drawn to the chaos of nature. In this photo I’m looking up, I’m seeing the crossing stems and if I use my imagination, the leaves that remind me of butterflies fluttering around. This is what I see on my daily walk.
Dispatches From the Daily Walk-The Photos
Here is another look at the photos that ran in this Seeing Monochrome video https://youtu.be/OYDtpw6Zhng
Click on the thumbnails below to view the photos
Photography Dispatches From The Daily Walk
In this video I'm sharing the black and white nature photography I've be making on the Daily Walk. Come along with my sidekick Nori and I as we take a camera along to photograph nature when something looks interesting.
Trying T-max 400 in 120 for the First Time
In this video I'm taking out my first roll of Kodak T-Max 400 black and white film, loaded in a Pentax 645n medium format camera. I'm no stranger to T-Max 400, I've used many rolls of this film but only in 35mm. I found the results interesting enough that I will be using this film more often. This was the last video I made for Riding The Edge before I decided to close that channel last week. This video was only up a few days before I pulled it, I think it deserves more time to be seen and it fits well with what I am doing here at Seeing Monochrome.
The Daily Walk Photo - Thistle
On our walks, I’ve been chasing a photo of thistle that had a clean background along with the structure of an interesting thistle plant. This has been harder to find than I thought. After all, the area where we sometimes do our walks is along a quarry pond littered with a bunch of thistle, both old growth as well as new growth. I find the graphic nature of the thistle to be an interesting subject for black and white nature photography.
I think I finally found what I was looking for in this image. This photo feels like a piece of art with all of the elements working together. The backlit subject with the smooth tones of the pond as a backdrop helps to make the plant stand out. It’s probably time to take a break on thistle photos, well… for a while.
I used my trusty Nikon D7100 with a 70-200 f4 lens for this handheld shot.
Black and White Film Photography at the Quarry Pond
In this video I'm headed to the quarry pond with my Pentax 645n medium format film camera loaded with a roll of Kodak T-Max 100 for some black and white nature photograph. This is a re-edited version with more of an emphasis on the photography, hopefully you will find this more to your liking. Click below to view the images from this episode.
The Daily Walk Photo
Rain on Daisy
On this morning’s walk, my dog Nori and I were treated to some much-needed rain here in Oregon. It was a cool, damp walk on our usual path on the hill behind our house. Today, I grabbed my favorite walk-around combo, a Nikon D7100 with an old manual focus 55mm macro 3.5 lens. Well, I guess you could also say the D7100 crop sensor camera is also pretty darn old. For black and white photography, I really like the rendering that this combination of camera and lens outputs for a digital camera. Not too sharp but sharp enough, which is what I want for a soft subject like this rain drop-covered daisy.
This image captured the quiet, peaceful nature of this morning’s walk.
It is a very simple photo, and I can’t think of a better way to start this Daily Walk series.
5 Frames on Film | Tri-x and a New Location
In this episode of 5 Frames, I'm trying out a roll of Kodak Tri-X 400 35mm black and white film, as I explore a new nature photography location.
Consider becoming a member of my Patreon page for exclusive photography content: https://www.patreon.com/ridingtheedgephotography
Photo Breakdown | Emerging Spring
One of my favorite images made this spring came from an ordinary daily walk. I noticed a back lit young tree, with its branches fanning out and its leaves beginning to emerge from the stems. I realized that I could line up the subject tree with a dark, older, and much larger background tree to make it stand out. I love the light and energy of this photo. I think the Kodak T-max 400 black and white film used to make this image adds just the right amount of grain, giving it an organic feel.
Camera: Nikon N80
Lens: 70-200mm F/4 G
5 Frames Episode Three
In episode three of 5 Frames, I'm making intimate landscapes and painterly black and white images in the forests of the Cascade Mountains. For the images in this video I'm using the Pentax 645n medium format film camera and the Nikon n80 35mm film cameras. My film choices are Kodak T-max 100 in 120 and T-max 400 35mm black and white film.
Consider becoming a member of my Patreon page for exclusive photography content: https://www.patreon.com/ridingtheedgephotography
5 Frames Episode Two
In this episode of 5 Frames an old friend, the Pentax 645n comes home for some black and white film photography. These are my five favorite black and white nature photos that I made over the last few weeks. Come along to see what I have found with my cameras.
Consider becoming a member of my Patreon page for exclusive photography content: https://www.patreon.com/ridingtheedgephotography
5 Frames Episode One
In episode one of 5 Frames, I'm sharing black and white photos that range from chaos and messy to minimalist in nature. All the images in this episode are made on a roll of Kodak T-max 100 black and white film. The camera used was a Nikon F4 with a Nikon 17-35mm and a 70-200mm lenses.
Photography Community
In this Riding The Edge Photography episode I talk about wanting to build a photography community on my Patreon page and while I was at it I test a couple of my Nikon lenses adapted to the Sony A7R2. Click to view the images below that are from this episode.
Black and White Photography in the Oregon Cascades
This week I’m visiting a lake in the Oregon Cascades for some black and white nature photography. I went to scout out the lake but stay for awhile to play with my camera. Below are the photos that appear in this episode.
The Daily Walk Photo | New Growth Spotlight
Today on The Daily Walk I just followed the light to make a black and white image of new plant growth being highlighted by the morning sun.
I used a Sony A7R2 with an adapted Nikon 55mm micro lens to make this photo. This is becoming my favorite walk around camera and lens combo.
The Daily Walk Photo | Invasive Beauty
This is a black and white photo I made while on today’s daily walk with my dog Nori. The image is made of a blackberry vine, an invasive species here in the Pacific Northwest. While I don’t much like this plant I can still admire its beauty and tenacity, and it is still a part of nature.
Made with a handheld Sony A7R2 and an adapted Nikon 70-200mm f4 G lens.
Field Notes | Waves
Waves of sand in the land of light and shadow on the Oregon dunes.
These are my some of my thoughts when making this black and white image on the Oregon Dunes.
Another Look at Kodak Tmax Black and White Film
In this Riding The Edge episode I take another look at Kodak’s Tmax 100 black and white film. It has been at least a coupe years since I’ve used any Kodak films, so I thought it was a good time to see if this film has a look I’d like to reach for when out doing fine art nature photography. Is there room in my camera bag for Tmax 100? Based on what I’m seeing with this first roll, I’ll be coming back for more.
Chasing a Dream, the Elusive Black and White Photograph
The Disappearing Lake | This is an image I’ve been trying to recreate since 2016.
There is a lake in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon that drains every summer through holes in the volcanic rock on the lake bottom, then refills when the rains and snow return in the winter. In 2016, I made a unique photo of one of these holes where the water drains. While I do like the image I made in 2016, I would return every year trying to re do that original composition but with better light and better camera gear. The problem with trying to recreate that image is that the window of time for those conditions is usually very short. Every year, I would return and every year I missed that window where the water would drain just right, pouring into the hole from all sides. The shot I was looking for just wasn’t there. Even so, I always made other photos on those annual visits to this little lake, and some I ended up liking a lot, maybe even more than that original photo. It’s been a few years since I’ve been back. On my last visit, it looked like what I was looking for would no longer be possible because of how the lake’s bottom has changed over time. I’ve been thinking it might be time to pay another visit to the little lake. Even if that elusive photo I’ve been chasing for so many years will probably not be a possibility, there may still be other photos waiting to be discovered.
Chasing a Dream is a video I made after my last visit to the lake, a project that I started in 2016. This video was originally published on my Riding The Edge YouTube channel, after only a few hundred views I reposted this video to my smaller Seeing Monochrome Channel and it as done much better there with thousands of views.
Photos I’ve made while chasing a dream
