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If I Published My Own Post Cards
I’ve been taking photos for years, starting in middle school and continuing to today. I spent years working on black-and-white photos in the darkroom and really loved the control one has over your photos’ look. The birth of digital photography has brought that joy back. With great tools like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, I can crop, adjust contrast, and tweak however I’d like. I can even “cheat” by removing unwanted items from a photo (although I do that sparingly: One must protect the integrity of the image unless one just calls it “art”).
At this point, I have about 9,500 pictures in my Lightroom catalog, going back about three years. I find there are some I really like. So I thought, which one of these would I want to publish as postcards or in a calendar? That is the subject of this post: To share some of my photographs that I particularly like. Selecting the photos was difficult. Even with excluding people pictures (mostly family and friends, so not internet-eligible), my original culling left me with over 30 photos. The standard I learned in the 1980s was that a National Geographic photographer would take 20,000 photos to print 15, so quantity enables quality. So, I had to get below 30.
As it is, I am still imposing 10 of my photos on you. So I hope you like them. And forgive my vanity in posting them.
The first is a real favorite. Just a bird on a rock, but all the subtle grays and sky really are nice. Taken at McCarty’s Cove in Marquette, Michigan.
McCarty’s Cove, Marquette. Michigan
We had a road trip earlier this year and I took a ton of photos at the Grand Canyon. We were lucky to have storms to liven up the view.
Grand Canyon and storms from Pima Point
This ore dock in downtown Marquette, Michigan has been out of use since the mid 1970s. It used to deliver chunk ore as opposed to the processed pellets used today. There was a railroad bridge that extended over downtown to the dock in the front of the picture, so now this really looks like a relic.
The downtown Marquette iron ore dock, once used to load iron ore on ships
Living in Southern California, we “visit” the snow. What a change from when I lived with it. I like the subtle tones and shapes in this image.
Fog and snow near Idylwild, California
High clouds, dusk, a bare tree, what else does one need?
Tree and rock in Lake Riverside
This is a temple in Telakadu, India. I like how the interior is indirectly illuminated by the bright sunlight.
The interior is quite pretty
Matheran, India is a hill station — a mountain top resort — near Mumbai. We saw an amazing sunset there.
The sunset from Sunset Point, Matheran, India
This is a special woods trail for me. In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this picture is a classic early summer image of the woods.
The trail through the woods between Conway Lake and Lake Superior
Along the road from downtown Anacortes, Washington to the Washington State Ferry Terminal, there is a very active shipyard. Walking through it, it is clear that it has been active for a long time. This oil truck has no doubt been parked for an extended period.
A colorful old oil delivery truck.
Finally, a late afternoon picture from Hermit’s Rest at the Grand Canyon. I’ll admit I took 500 shots on the sunset tour alone. I was bracketing the exposures to get all the subtle tones and differences in brightness.
Sunset and storm over the Grand Canyon from Hermit’s Rest
Thanks for looking.
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Published in Group Writing
I like the first one and the last one best. In the first one, the mistiness of the horizon line makes it seem to disappear into legend. And I like the shadow effects on the clouds in the last one. I like that effect where clouds can appear quite black against a lighter sky, instead of the normal opposite.
8 is my favorite. It reminds me of Arkansas. Forests and mountains are always my favorite landscape scenes. All of your pictures are beautiful though. You have a really good eye!
I’d pay for #1 and 2 for sure. I also really like the photo of the old ore dock in MI as an artifact of technology, and for the bittersweet nostalgia it evokes.
Very good.
I like the tree and rock.
I miss postcards. You can still buy them, but why, when you can take a picture on your phone and send it off instantly? Over the years I sent a lot to my parents. They saved them and I now have them in a box somewhere.
This is my favorite. You’ve taken something not at all stereotypically “scenic” (not even as scenic as dilapidated cars, which are a staple of American photography), and shown how beautiful and mysterious it is – almost a “floating torii” or modernistic cathedral.
Also makes me wonder if that face of the dock is oriented in such a way to catch sunrise or sunset light, and what that would look like.
Truly inspirational. Your photos are beautiful and so interesting.
It certainly gives me incentive to try to figure out that fancy camera I bought last winter :)
BTW That gull on the rock is contest material.
It’s so many things.
Poetic.
Thank you very much.
I have seen pictures of the dock taken at sunrise with the Sun framed in the middle of the dock. Quite pretty.
This view of the dock was only possible after the trestle leading from the shore to the dock was removed in 2000. Here is a picture of the dock showing the trestle:
Thank you very much. It was completely unplanned and not noticed at the time. I was down at the beach with my younger daughter and taking pictures. The sky was great with all kinds of clouds shifting and the Sun hitting them from different angles. I saw the gull on the rock and said, that gull looks interesting. It was only after I got back and was going through the photos that I noticed how it worked with the rock and the clouds. Again, thank you.
Lovely pictures, Clavius. And I do know what you mean. It’s really great when someone looks at it and asks if you used a filter because those colors couldn’t be real, but they are.
Mission Point Beach at sundown
Maybe it’s because I come from an area that is mostly a flat area covered in corn and soybeans, but I love the variety here in Michigan.
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Thank you for the kind comments. The variety in light, geography, and color in Michigan is great. Living in the UP, we had long, lingering sunsets as the Sun slowly sank below the horizon at a steep angle. Then there is the dim twilight of winter creeping up mid-morning. And the contrast between the starkness of winter and the lush green summer. And don’t forget all the lakes. Three of the pictures above are from the UP.
Really beautiful.
You can make your own greeting cards with prints from those pictures. Last year, I went to the Paper Source store and bought blank cards just slightly larger than 4X6, printed my own shots from our cruise to Alaska, and glued them to the front. Instant Christmas cards.
I’ve also had very good luck with Costco Photo Services. They will put photos on cards and there are many options. They also will respect the color adjustments you make (as long as you include that in the on-line submission).
Excellent. I like #2 the best: the serious perspective provided by the clouds shows just how grand the Grand Canyon is—pictures never do it justice, but yours is very close.
I agree with @midge about #3.
#1 Oil truck
#2 Ore dock
But if you publish a picture calendar let me know.
I like them all, very, very much. All of them are beautiful and worth making into card for sale.
They’re planning to develop the ore dock into a… public garden?…
Whatever it is, if this development doesn’t go bust, anyone wanting to get shots of the sun rising through the dock better do it soon.
Marquette county was the only county in the UP not to vote Trump. Hence there is a big government feel there.
The dock itself sits on wooden piers (yes, wooden). They sit in very cold water and are very stable. And the cost of demolishing the thing, wow, I can’t imagine it. Although now that the city owns it, I guess they are ultimately responsible. Having walked on it 20 years ago, I expect it to sit unchanged, for many years.
You are too kind.
I like the iron ore dock and the truck. You cropped the dock picture pretty close. Was there a reasonable possibility of giving it a little more room?
Mrs R wanted to visit the UP this summer. We’ve driven through it many times, but this time we visited. I don’t think I got any photos as good as yours.
Calling EJ Hill. How about a Ricochet Calendar, with photos taken by Ricochet members. EJ could offer through the Ricochet Store. We could all submit photos taken at various times of the year, and either we could all vote on the best ones, or just let EJ pick. That might be a great fund-raiser for Ricochet. In 2009, I took my best pictures from my Israel trip, and had Shutterfly make calendars which I gave to family for Chanukah. They cost about $25 each. Clavius gets at least one month!
Beautiful, Clavius. Thanks so much for sharing these! I especially liked the Idyllwild shot (I used to go to the Zen Center up there) and bare trees are just so dramatic! Great job.
Thank you very much for the kind comments.
If I remember correctly, I was fairly close to the dock so there was little extra around it in the original. I’ll go back and look.
Thank you everyone for the kind words.
Wonderful pictures! I agree with you # 1 is my favorite, then: 2,8,9,10. Enjoy the composition in all of them.
The plan is not to demolish the ore dock, but to glass it in so it becomes a convention center with indoor greenhouse and outdoor (rooftop) gardens. Here’s their mockup:
Gotta put that colorful hot-air balloon in there. Only a fool wouldn’t see it’s an integral part of the remodeling :-)
Yes, a remarkable plan. And I would not want to be in a hot air balloon over Lake Superior.
These are great. Thanks for sharing.