Early Morning Sun Rays in My Forest, photos, part 3
April 26, 2008
Photographs contained in this post are the intellectual copyright Of Dawna Morton. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy in any form. Copies are available for purchase in Dawna’s Zazzle gallery.
Here is my next installment of Early Morning Sun Rays Photos. I hope you enjoy them. If you like these pictures you may also enjoy part 1 and part 2.
There is a variety of evergreen trees here. We have quite a few fir or pine trees, as well as a good number of cedar and maple. Interspersed sparingly are some holly. We have ivy everywhere and climbing up everything. Ivy is not native to Oregon, but for some reason we have it climbing up all the trees at my house. I plan on borrowing some goats, who love to eat ivy (yay 
), seeing as I don’t want to weed 1/4 acre worth of forest by hand. I have a hard enough time keeping up with every thing else I’m doing (such as getting the garden ready to plant and keeping up with the other 1/4 acre of yard).
Aside from the ivy, the other issue that needs to be addressed, although thankfully enough, not apparent in these photos, is the garbage that people have dumped down there over the years. Most of the time the Ivy covers everything so it’s not visible, but around February and March the ivy has died back enough that I can see it all 
. I went down there last week and spent quite some time hauling up buckets of bricks, broken bottles, scrap metal, and several tires.It hardly made a dent in what is down there. I am trying not to get discouraged and apply Flylady’s principle of “I can do anything for 15 minutes.” It was exhausting hauling the tires up my steep ravine. They were only about 5 feet down there, but you would not believe how heavy they felt trying to push, pull, shove, roll, flip and basically wrangle them up that hill. I was worn out enough that I did only one tire on one day and the other several days later.
On the long term what I would love to do is to make some hiking trails down there for the kids (and myself too of course ). It’s going to be a long and slow process, but it will be worth it. Hopefully I can find some native plants that will provide good ground cover and keep the hill from eroding, without being invasive like the ivy.
I’ll be posting updates as I continue to make progress. In the mean time please enjoy some more photos in part 4…
Early Morning Sun Rays in my forest, photos, part 2
April 19, 2008
These photographs, and other blog content, are the intellectual property of Dawna Morton. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy. Photographic prints are available for sale in Dawna’s Zazzle Gallery. Those who are interested in using Dawna’s photos in the media or other ways may contact Dawna by leaving a comment and she will respond to you privately. Thank you.
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As I mentioned in part 1, once I was satisfied with the photos I had taken of the sunburst through the trees, I then moved on to capture some of the more subtle effects of the sun rays on the forest.
I love how the sunbeams create a heavenly light in these pictures. Lighting really does make all the difference in the mood and feeling of a photograph. It can make an ordinary scene into something truly spectacular.
Notice how the focal point is not the forest, but the light itself. It seems to radiate a peace and joy and warmth as its radiant glow illuminates the forest. Soft and ethereal, the sunlight turns an ordinary forest scene into something truly glorious.
These images seem to beckon, inviting a quiet morning walk of tranquil reflection and spiritual reawakening. Moments like these stir a desire to find the divine within us and to strive to attain a higher level of excellence. feeling at peace and harmony, we can then be rejuvenated and re-energized in our efforts to become better.
More Photos in part 3,part 4
If you liked these you may also like my post, sunlight in my forest.
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Dawna’s Fine Art Prints At Imagekind
Early morning sun rays in my forest, photographs, part 1
April 9, 2008
These photos are the intellectual property of Dawna Morton. All Rights reserved. Do not copy without permission. To purchase prints visit my zazzle gallery, or contact me via comments for terms if you would like to use my photos for reference or in the media.
I suppose I have to thank my kids for missing the school bus the other week.
Why? Because, on the way home from the school I noticed the sun shining through the fog and decided to whip out my camera. ( Luckily I had my camera on me. I am trying to get in the habit of taking it every where. I can not count the times I have missed a great picture because I forgot to bring it along, like the morning on the way out of the school parking lot when it was foggy and the sun 
came out and illuminated the fog behind a grouping of trees. I was kicking myself all the way home for having forgotten my camera that day). You never know when you will come across something that moves you and the artist in you demands you take a photo for reference later.
The sun was so bright streaming through the trees that I had to shoot virtually blind on most of these. I would aim as best as I could toward my desired focal point and click hoping I’d gotten it, without really being sure because all I could see through the viewfinder was a bright glare.
It is really important to make sure to check the settings on a digital camera. I normally leave mine on the highest resolution setting as possible, however I had recently put it on low resolution for some
pictures I took with the sole purpose of illustrating my blog posts on framing and for my post on recycling candles. I had already taken several pictures when I realized I had not returned the settings to high resolution. which is too bad because the second of these is one of my favorites of the ones I took that day.
I love how the sunburst causes such a contrast with the deep early morning forested shade. It is all so peaceful and ethereal in its beauty. The light is not often so perfect for taking such great photos. I got a bit carried away and took around 40 in very short order. The refracted light in the camera lens also caused interesting patterns of red and blue hexagons to appear in the sunburst images.
Once I had several images that I felt captured the gloriousness of the bright sunburst I hiked in a bit further and started taking pictures of the more delicate effects of the sun rays themselves.
more of Dawna’s photos in part 2,
part 3part 4
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