Eliot Porter

The first picture is "water seeps" in Glen Canyon in Utah, September 1962. For those of you that don't know what water seeps are, from Wikipedia: "A seep is a moist or wet place where water, usually groundwater, reaches the earth's surface from an underground aquifer." So, the water seeped out from underground and trailed down the side of the rock. The second picture is a cliff-side / sunrise / moon reflection in a pool of water in Navajo Creek, Glen Canyon in 1961. And the third picture is a spectacular image of the sunrise in the Central Pacific Ocean / Antarctica in 1974 (a year after I was born!).

In the first photo, the colors are stunning. The blues topped by stark black bordered by shades of pink, white and rose-brown are wonderful to see. I'm guessing Eliot used a wide to mid-range aperture and a close zoom to capture these brilliant colors.
In the second photo, the deep black and silver shadows are a stark contrast to the bright sunny reflection in the small pool of water. The lucky addition of the tiny white moon in the wide blue sky was wonderful. The golden yellow-browns of the cliffs are a stunning contrast to the cloudless blue sky as well. I'm guessing he used the same techniques as in the first photo: wide to mid-range aperture and a close zoom.
In the third photo, those amazing red-orange clouds stand starkly out in the multi-blue colored sky. There even appears to be some rain falling gently down in the distance. For this shot, Eliot would have used a closed aperture (to give a deep depth of field), a higher speed shutter (to eliminate any motion - boat, hand, wind, or otherwise), and zoomed wide.

I love the stark, wild contrasts of the colors in his photos. It was very difficult to pick the ones I wanted to show the most from all the photos he had taken. I feel like I'm standing right there looking at the cliffs or the sky and water.

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