Thank You

I wanted to publicly thank Brooks Jensen and Maureen Gallagher for choosing the above image for inclusion in their book: Our Magnificent Planet 2020; Single-Image Celebrations from LensWork Readers. I am honored to have this image be one of the fine works in this book. Unfortunately this will be a posthumous thank you to Maureen who recently passed away after succumbing to cancer. My condolences go to her partner Brooks. I am sure it was incredibly difficult to complete this book while Maureen was in the last stages of her illness. Although I will never have a chance to thank Maureen personally, I hope to someday be able to thank Brooks in person. Again, humbly, thank you.

Boyd

Boyd TurnerNovember 17, 2020Comment

Black Forest/White Snow

After a historic season of fire across the western United States, winter snows have begun to fall. The cycle begins again. Fire. Water. Growth. Death. Fire. For millennia fire has been a part of the forest. Sometimes with a gentle hand, sometimes with an apocalyptic blow torch. As you may know, we have a personal relationship with fire. (If you didn’t know - scroll through the journal or look at the Land of Fire Gallery). We have seen things others don’t get to. Although we are no longer on the front lines during the summer, there are still many stories to tell after the fire is over. With the winter snows, comes another story: the arrival of water. We journeyed out to one of this year’s fires as the first snow began to lay down a carpet of white over the black vegetation and the scarred soils. We hope you find this visual story interesting as you contemplate another northern hemisphere winter or the beginning of a southern hemisphere fire season.

Log V

Black Pines

Snow Cone

Charred Leaf

Black needle snow

White on black pine

Manzanita and snow spicules

Snow branch

Needles, snow and rock

White path through the black

Boyd TurnerOctober 25, 2020Comment

The Land Between the Rivers

North Central Oregon is one of those long place names that makes sense as a string of words but may not be so easy to find on a map. Or maybe too easy to find on several maps. The problem being, that depending on the map, the boundaries may be wildly different. Does North Central Oregon extend as far north as the Columbia River? As far east as Heppner and Boardman? South to Bend or should we draw a line at Madras? Maybe at the Crooked River?

We aren’t geographers; although we love well drawn maps. And Boyd can be down right fussy about them. (“Where is the date, datum, and scale?” he has been heard to complain.) But this isn’t a blog about maps. It is about photography. In this entry it is about the land between three defining rivers: the Columbia, the Deschutes and the John Day. Because we are not geographers we can choose our own boundaries for North Central Oregon. And we can choose to call it a more descriptive name. The Land Between the Rivers.

Hope you enjoy a look at some of the landscapes in this often ignored part of the Great State of Oregon.

West to Mt. Hood

Palisades on the Deschutes

White River Bridge

Two Shoe

Corduroy Fields and Clouds

Ranks of Power

New Crop

Against the Wind

Fields of Gold

Flyover

Abandoned

Road to Rufus

Two Clouds One River

You can click on each image to open in a new window.

Boyd TurnerJuly 24, 2020Comment

McKenzie Spring

We hoped to have a bunch of new stories by now. But then came Covid-19 lockdown. But with things easing up and spring in full swing, we managed to get out on the McKenzie River on the Willamette National Forest of Oregon. With it being spring, on the west side of the Cascades, it was a little “damp.” But a little “Oregon sunshine” can make for some good days in the forest. We found beautiful flowers, interesting plants, and lots of image opportunities. Hope you enjoy our little taste of McKenzie Spring.

Boyd TurnerMay 24, 2020Comment

Santiam snowshoe

It was a mild day. February isn’t supposed to be “mild”. It’s supposed to be cold, stormy. The time of the year when the indoor chores get done. Not this year in Central Oregon. We have had a lot of sunny days with relatively mild daytime temperatures. On one of these days, we took a snowshoe hike in the area of the Santiam Pass on the Willamette National Forest. We found a land of textures, glare and shadows between Mt. Washington and Three Fingered Jack. Here’s a visual summary of our Santiam snowshoe.

Boyd TurnerFebruary 27, 2020Comment

Kathy's Favorites from 2019

Hi. It’s Kathy. I don’t write here that often but since Boyd posted his top 15 I thought I should put my Top 15 up also. And yes, it was a big flower year!

As Boyd said in his post, we are trying something new. These are just a portion of each image. Click on the thumbnail to see the whole image.

Ice Crystal 24

Desert Mallow

Sierra Gold

Purple Petals

Blue Petals

White River Falls

Flower Star

Frost Crystals and Petals

Ocotillo Leaves

Refracted Streambed

Spines and Blossom

Steens Stallion

Tip of the Spear

Desert Blue

Wildhorse Lake

Boyd TurnerFebruary 22, 2020Comment

That went quick.

Seriously we try to post at least once a month. This has not been achieved as we only posted 9 times in 2019. We will try again in 2020. But we are already a month behind. Wow. Where does the time go?

For now here are Boyd’s 15 favorite images from 2019. This is kind of an eclectic mess. But we have plans for some interesting places in 2020, so hopefully more interesting stories and images will follow more frequently.

I’m trying something new. These are just a portion of each image. Click on the thumbnail to see the whole image.

Wave of the Wizard

Bent and pierced

Sun daisy

Embrace

Splash of Silver

Spinoff

Flowers amid a skeleton

Tufa and contrails

Fluted bud

Leaf curves

Twisted Awns

Cold flames in a fall rain

First rain, Last berry

A plant, a rock, and a river

Wizard's cauldron

Boyd TurnerFebruary 14, 2020Comment

Tarde en El Morro

We recently found ourselves in the Caribbean with some time to explore old San Juan, Puerto Rico. And old means really old. Back to the days of shortly after Columbus old. We took time on a very warm day to walk the Morro and the Cristobal forts. Built in the days of Dutch raiders and English privateers the Moro protects the entrance to the strategic port of San Juan. After 400 years of invaders and hurricanes, that the structures still stand is a testament to the effort that went into their construction. We were so impressed with the structures (and the 87F heat and 87% humidity) we thought we should share our afternoon at El Morro.

Boyd TurnerNovember 18, 2019Comment

Frame rate or what the tree saw

Let’s start with the second part of the title first. Trees can live much longer than humans. The average pine tree in the western US might have a lifespan of 300 plus years. An oak tree might also be good for a couple of hundred years or more. Bristlecone pine can be 2,000 years old, or more. What if trees have a perception of time? Would they perceive a day or an hour or a minute in the same way as a human? Us humans perceive motion with a certain frame rate. If you go to the cinema the film in the old days showed at approximately 24 frames per second. Video generates around 30 frames per second. Trees potentially live 30 times the lifespan of a human. What if their frame rate is a thirtieth that of a human? What would that look like? What would a tree see if it was growing alongside a river? What if I slow my camera down so that I’m taking one frame every 4-6 seconds. Would it be what the tree saw? Look at the images below and see if you can see like a tree.

Ok the titles might be a little fruity or nutty. But I think trees may be serious thinkers and would give serious titles. After all they have deep roots. And time.

Boyd TurnerOctober 8, 2019Comment

Unconstrained

Maybe you have noticed that Instagram and Facebook have hard parameters for aspect ratios for photos. In case you didn’t know, aspect ratio is the length of one side of an image to the other side. These big media sharing sites really like the aspect ratio of a cell phone screen, especially a cell phone held upright in the portrait mode, not the landscape mode.

Maybe you don’t care. We think you will care after you see the full version of these panoramas. You can click on these and they should expand to a larger size. Hopefully you will see these on a big screen (27” high res monitors work well) but even a pad will do, just don’t expect much out of that phone.

Maybe you still won’t care about panos after you look at the larger version of these panoramas. That’s ok, you don’t have to like what we like. But sometimes a good visual story just demands a good pano.

Sometimes it’s about a great sky…