Scott Buckel

Walt Disney Concert Hall

scott — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 06:00:24 +0000

I will readily admit that I really like Frank Gehry’s architecture. The first of his building that I actually saw in person was this one. I have taken photos here on at least four occasions and each and every time I have gotten very different looking images. I took this one the same night as I took the previous two down town Los Angeles posts.

I learned that the guards do not allow tripods on the sidewalk next to building. At least we could use tripods across the street from the concert hall.

I hope you like the image.

Scott

Down Town Los Angeles at Night

scott — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:00:49 +0000

Here’s another image from the same trip I discussed in the post to the blog. I walked around looking for interesting compositions within the city. I really like the pedestrian bridge as it is an interesting structure. I took several photos of it, but did not really like what I got, after a bit of looking I thought about placing it in the foreground with some buildings in the background and with the wide angle lens gave a view of the city that I fell really represents Los Angeles.

I hope you enjoy the image.

Scott

Los Angeles City Hall at Night

scott — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 04:17:55 +0000

A couple of months ago I went with a group of photographers to photograph in downtown Los Angeles. I found that LA was very quite at night with very few people or cars around. I did not know that this park actually even existed and the sculpture in the foreground was very interesting. The lights had not been on for very long when I took this photograph. All in all it was a nice evening.

Thanks for looking!

Scott

Elephant Seals

scott — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 03:51:24 +0000

In early April I drove up to San Simeon to view and photograph the elephant seals. The colony is referred to as the Piedras Blanca colony and they are one of the places that has a facility for individuals to watch them. Overall it was a good trip and I had a good time watching them. I will need to return to be able to seethe large males with their huge proboscis as they are currently at rehabilitating themselves after being n the beach for many months for the breeding season.
As there are lots of photographs from this location I experimented to see if I could give one the sense of place for these seals. These females and juveniles spent lots of time just napping on the beach.

Hope you enjoyed the photo,

Scott

Monrovia Falls Project – April 2010

scott — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:52:44 +0000

If you have been following this blog for a while you will know that I visit and photograph Monrovia Falls on a monthly basis. Well, on April 5th I visited once again and it was raining. The rain and the unusual atmospherics gave me some images that were a little different, some of while I rather liked while some were not so good. I did used a pre-release version of Photoshop CS5 that allowed me to “repair” defects in the images.

The rain upstream had lots of soil and other particulates gave the brown color to the water and the foam gives more a sense of movement.

I hope you enjoyed the image,

Scott

Red-eyed Tree Frog

scott — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 10:00:11 +0000

Red-eyed tree frog has to be one of the most “unreal” looking frog that I have ever seen. Just think green, red, blue. orange and yellow are all present on this frog. The species has to be one of the most charismatic frog and for many this frog is the symbol of the rain forest and Costa Rica.

I photographed this frog under very controlled conditions and I really like the pose.

I hope you enjoyed the photo,

Scott

Trip to Photograph Frogs

scott — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 05:11:59 +0000

One of my favorite groups of animals to watch and photograph is frogs and other amphibians. I took advantage of another photographer organizing a photoshoot with a large variety of these small frogs. I really like this one as it seems to have several possible stories, to me it looks like this small frog may be having a bad day but is persistent and hangs in for the future.

I hope you enjoyed the photo,

Scott

In Memory of my Dad part 2

scott — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:06:16 +0000

I have been thinking about my dad a lot lately one of the main qualities he had that was persistence (maybe it was stubbornness). When he decided that he wanted to accomplish something he worked towards that goal and not let anything get in his way. I think this is one of the qualities that I picked up from him.

The image for this post is part of my project to photograph Monrovia Falls on a monthly basis. Persistence has allowed me to continually find new photographs from the same places. I really like this composition of Monrovia Falls and this trip was the first time I saw this composition.

I think this image reminds me of my dad since persistence lead me to this image.

Thanks for looking,

Scott

Contrasts in Chicago

scott — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:50:19 +0000

When Cynde and I were in Chicago last fall I walked around for several days looking for new photos and enjoying the architecture. I really enjoyed seeing the contrasts in the different buildings and the styles of buildings over the years. One of the things that I particularly enjoyed was the contrasts between the very ornate older buildings with the very modern all glass buildings that were much simpler.

We stayed near the new Trump Towers and I really liked how the very ornate older Wrigley Building contrasted with the extremely tall Trump Tower.

I hope you enjoyed the photo!

Scott

Bodie Bank Vault

scott — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 07:00:41 +0000

I have been working through my Bodie images to put together a series of photographs to put into a photobook. As I walked around Bodie I found the old bank. The main building has fallen and about the only thing left is the old vault.

I hope you enjoyed the photo!

Scott

More from Bodie

scott — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:23:21 +0000

As I spend time with my mother helping her out, I started looking around at images that I could post. I did not bring more recent files with me to work on as I was not that organized when I left for my dad’s funeral. I did really enjoy this trip with Cynde out to Bodie last fall.

Many of the buildings in Bodie have items that were left by the orginal residents give one a view of what people used, but did not think were worth moving with them as they left Bodie. This building is one of the buildings that you can walk into that is near the church.

Hope you enjoy the image,

Scott

In Memory of my Dad

scott — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 06:45:06 +0000

I gave myself a project to photograph Monrovia Falls over a year. Well, I have continued it for longer than a year and I have been struggling with photos the different scenes one will see while hiking to the falls. I have seen this part of the creek for some time now and I have not been able to get a photograph of it the I actually liked. I took this photo on Monday of this week.

My dad passed away yesterday and I could not sleep so I processed a number of pictures in the early hours of this morning. I thik he would have really liked this one.

Thanks for looking,

Scott

Man in Waterfall – More Gorman Falls

scott — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:45:50 +0000

When my brother and visited Gorman Falls in December we noticed a rock formation in the falls that looked like a man sitting in the waterfall. I am always amazed at the shapes of rocks.

Hope you enjoyed the photo,

Scott

Experimenting with Digital Painting

scott — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:44:30 +0000

I have been experimenting with digital painting so I tried working on this image of the bald eagle I posed several weeks ago. I am trying to figure out how to convert my photographs into paintings that have a look and feel of the old naturalists paintings. This is not quite what I envision, but I think I am making progress.

Thanks for looking!

Scott

First Photo of the Year

scott — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:23:29 +0000

Yesterday Cynde and I took a road trip to see and photograph three of the 21 Spanish Missions in California. The first mission we visited was the La Purissma Mission in Lompoc, California. This is the largest of the old missions and it still has many of the features of the traditional old missions. It is a state park and still has large grounds that demonstrate the activities of the missions. In the foreground of this image there is a hide drying station and one sees the cemetery and the main church.

We had a great day of driving around and seeing some of California’s history.

Hope you enjoyed the photo,

Scott

More From Colorado Bend State Park

scott — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:30:10 +0000

The past few days I have been working through my images from the hike with my brother to Gorman Falls in Bend, Texas. As I write this I am almost through my initial processing of the images I captured while on this trip and I will be getting to other aspects of the trip some there after.

I spent about 2 hours at this location looking for good clean compositions that gave one a feel for the the site and this was quite difficult in that there is a large amount of brush and small trees just in front of the falls. The area near the falls is restricted due to the sensitivity of the area and I was photographing just behind the small fence which is a short “cliff” next to the pool of water in front of the falls. I will like post a panoramic image of the falls in the near future and I think that will make the above text a little more clear.

I have been debating if it would be worth the effort to clone out some of the distracting elements. . .

I hope you enjoyed the image,

Scott

Trip to Texas

scott — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:11:12 +0000

I recently took about a two week road trip to Texas. I drove from California and on the first day I made it all the way to San Antonio, New Mexico. I photographed the early light at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and then got back on the road to visit Gorman Falls in Bend, Texas. Well I got part way to the Colorado Bend State Park that day, but not quite. I stopped over near Junction, Texas to get some sleep and got up early to visit the park. When I arrived at the park I found that it was closed for deer hunting and would reopen on Friday at 2pm. I decided to head for the coast and visit family for a few days and return at thee end of my planned trip.

Cynde flew in over the weekend and we traveled to Rockport, Texas to explore and watch Whooping Cranes (photos later!). I called my brother to stay at his house and have him ride up and see the falls. We drove up to the the park and we had a nice hike to Gorman Falls. These falls just do not look like anything I would have expected in Texas! They were amazing and we had a good time photographing the falls.

I hope you enjoyed the photo and there will be more to come from this trip.

Scott

Alaskan Scenic

scott — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:15:32 +0000

One afternoon we drove further up river from our initial photographic location. We were looking for trumpeter swans and landscape photographs. I thought this scene was similar to many different holiday scenics I have seen on holiday cards in the past.

Snowy Alaskan Scene

Hope you liked the photo!

Scott

Another Bald Eagle

scott — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:08:04 +0000

I traveled to Alaska recently as noted in yesterday’s blog post. One of the interesting things about this large gathering of bald eagles is that they displace each other. One eagle will be feeding on a salmon and another eagle will fly by and “attack” the feeding eagle. Some times the eagle the new arrival will start feeding on the salmon while other times the feeding eagle fend off the new arrival. These was a fair amount of drama on the river!

This eagle had just displaced another eagle and I like the way his talons are in motion grabbing the salmon.

Bald Eagle feeding on a salmon

I hope you liked the image!

Scott

Bald Eagles of the Chilkat River

scott — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:06:41 +0000

I traveled to Haines, Alaska about a week ago to photograph Bald Eagles. A large gathering of eagles occurs a long the Chilkat River every year and this gathering has about 3500 to 4000 eagles in the area. This river has one of the last salmon runs of the year and a portion of the river freezes very slowly each year allowing for open water and fish for the eagles to eat.

The trip was a good one with the photography getting better each and every day. Monday was probably the darkest of the days with very overcast skies and some snow. This portrait of a bald eagle was one of the first photos I took on this trip.

Bald Eagle perched over the Chilkat River

I’ll be sharing more of images from this trip over the next month or so. I hope you enjoyed the photo!

Scott