Nancy Goodenough

@nancygoodenough.bsky.social

515 Followers 490 Following

I photograph 'The Unexpected.' Have had a camera around my neck since that Brownie in the 1950s. Trying to be a realistic optimist. I'll take optimistic realist, if I can keep it. #photographer #photography

A silhouette of a photographer is seen walking up a road into the Panamint Mountain Range at Badwater in Death Valley. California, US. The clouds are rolling in like ocean waves. Blue Hour creates muted shades of blue, purple and magenta. © Nancy Goodenough
"Once Long Ago..." Photograph of Death Valley Mesquite Dunes manipulated via vertical stretching so slopes become tall mountain peaks, creating a very surreal near-monochrome image in saffron and black. However, the scene is real, just stretched. Unstretched, photographers who have spent time at Stovepipe Wells/Mesquite Dunes in Death Valley will quickly recognize the dunes and the Panamint Mountain Range in the background. NO Artificial Intelligence AI used in image. All by my hand in postprocessing, various versions over the years since photographed on 4/20/2011. © Nancy Goodenough
A Kokanee salmon run is presented as a triptych with black bars between the run divided vertically in three parts. The Kokanee Salmon are 12-20 inches and during spawning, the males turn bright red and develop a humped back and an elongated jaw and the females turn dark red. This run is in Taylor Creek from South Lake Tahoe to Falling Leaf Lake, California and photographed on October 3, 2013. Canon 5DMark3 with Canon 70-300mmL lens. © Nancy Goodenough https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/ltbmu/home/?cid=STELPRDB5196661
A couple in silhouette are on a swinging county fair ride, reaching out to each other holding hands. Bokeh of bright colors, dominated by red, form the background. Taken at Sonoma County Fair.
We see a tortoiseshell-colored cat on the right side of a black background, looking to the right with glaring aqua eyes. Photographed on the streets of Bangkok, Thailand.
Closeup/macro of a dark purple iris, looking like you're viewing into a surreal cave with magical lighting. Copyright Nancy Goodenough 2011
We're at Alcatraz Prison with a brick wall printed with a rectangular red STOP sign on the left, and dark archway with lit arch in background with couple standing and touching heads in silhouette on the right. "Arch" is the theme for #BlueSkyArtShow on March 29, 2025. Copyright Nancy Goodenough 2012
We see a very wide panorama of fluffy clouds in shades of blue, and a silhouette of a hang glider over a silhouette of the land below.
A businessman in Bogota, Colombia is walking past graffiti walls looking at a cell phone. Around the corner is a tall glowing white graffiti of a space alien with its mouth wide open. The idea is to ''Watch Out!'' that the space alien around the corner is about to claim yet another victim of 'Texting-While-Walking.'
Hangglider shown in a sky starting a sunset over the ocean.
Vertical image of the Flatiron Sentinel Building built in 1907 with the 1972 modernistic Transamerica Pyramid on the left, both with shades of teal. The #BlueSkyArtShow for Saturday March 22 is #TheTravel and I envisioned the Flatiron building leaning in to travel in time to communicate with the Pyramid, both iconic structures. With the lyrics, "Are you going to San Francisco..." playing for #WeekLforLyric as this week's #AlphabetChallenge
I found this scene in a wat (temple) near where we were staying for month in Bangkok. I call it "Light of the Buddha on the Buddha" A small amulet of the Buddha is sitting in the large hand of the big Buddha statue, with gold leaf both over the amulet and the large hand of the towering Buddha. I chose this image for the #AlphabetChallenge with it being a #WeekLforLyrics While looking for lyrics to go with my image of the Buddha in the #Hand of the Buddha, I found this wonderful peaceful recording called Chant of Metta (Loving Kindness) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZgsAstw9C0
Image is of a boy at the beach and his reflection in the outgoing tide. We only see the boy in silhouette from the waist down. It is at sunset with beautiful salmon and orchid colors in the sky and rippled water. What the world needs now is a peaceful easy feeling... as well as love, sweet love. For the Lyrics L of #AlphabetChallenge #WeekLforLyrics Fuji X-T2 © Nancy Goodenough 2016
Photographer is climbing at nightfall along the ridge of a dune. There are deep chocolate shadows and blood red highlights as the sun sets on him. There is a texture overlay to add to the moody drama.
'Fading Beauty' is a Wabi Sabi (Japanese for finding beauty in aging and decaying objects) portrait of the inner workings of a Magnolia 'Tulip Tree' flower, showing the stamen and pistils. The petals have an out-of-focus texture in pastel colors. Taken by an iPhone 14 Max Pro in 2023 and processed like it's a work of art with a black border. In traditional Japanese aesthetics,wabi-sabi (侘び寂び) is centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" in nature. It is prevalent in many forms of Japanese art.
Portrait shot of a 6" Giant South American Grasshopper in red and green colors on a branch with a faded green background in La Guajira Peninsula, Colombia. Locals refer to it as a 'flying lobster!' I was excited to see it fly by and right away chase after it to photograph when it landed on a tree branch. It's huge! Sounded like a helicopter flying by.
View of yellow sunrays radiate from the redwood forest outside our bedroom window. At the bottom of the photograph, you can see the roof of our living room below us. Taken on December 14, 2020 at 10:21am with an iPhone 6s Plus. The best camera is the one you have with you.
Titled "Ice Goddess" image has a Tesla-Tower-like look (Nicola Tesla, not the car!), posted for Alphabet Challenge with the theme Week K for Kinetic. It has lots of kinetic energy. Sky is cobalt blue with green shadows. the Ice Goddess is a white column with a glowing white head and tentacles of white and green emanating out like Tesla Towers do. It's actually a photograph taken in 2010 of local fireworks for US Independence Day.
Three Thai monks of Wat Ba are eating from their "sai baht" bowls. "Sai baht" is the giving of food and alms into monks' bowls as the monks walk by in a pre-sunrise procession. Above them in the wat (monastery) is a set of four large windows with decorative Xs. On the shiny floor below the monks, the four colorful windows are reflected with wavy lines and color, as if reflected in water. The wat is in a small town in Northern Thailand called Ban Lao.
Dark and dramatic panoramic scene of silhouettes of a gull flying over Arch Rock and a gull standing on a rock. Sky has dramatic clouds blending into a sunset to the right.
A finger of a bronze Buddha hand sculpture gently touches a green leaf of grass covered with new dew. Large green clover is out-of-focus in the background.
We are outside Alcatraz Prison, with decaying walls, looking inside, which is a feeling of white white blankness, representing how it must feel inside the prison.
Two zebras stampeding toward viewer with dust flying from their hoofs. Monochrome.
A photographer is heading home alone on the dune. Dune is purple with orange sky, surreal, abstract and moody. Taken with Fuji X-T2 and Fujinon 55-200mm lens in 2018.
"Yearning: A Portrait" - a young monkey behind bars that pull at one of his eyes. I felt profound sadness seeing this 2-week old Patas Monkey in captivity. He looks like an old man to me and the bars divide us. Today's theme is Divide.
A musician is playing his brass instrument leaning against a post in an abandoned building filled with grafitti. Abandoned Comstock Silver Mill, American Flats, NV (demolished in 2014) - Columns appear to listen attentively to musician This was a fun image. And a lot of work. The background is from the ruins of the United Comstock Merger Mill at American Flats, Nevada, demolished in late 2014. "The working life of this cyanide-processing operation, once the largest in the country, began in 1922 and ended just four years later with the collapse in the price of silver. All salvageable equipment and building materials were removed soon afterward. The eight buildings on the site slowly decayed, but provided an engaging post-apocalyptic setting for graffiti artists, photographers, and airsoft warriors. For many growing up in the area the site served as a favored coming-of-age venue for escaping parental authority." (From All Around Nevada) My husband and I found it and photographed these ruins in 2013 over two days. I took an online class in compositing. Sure, I knew how to composite, but this took us so much further, adding atmosphere and ensuring that the light fit the image, including adding appropriate shadows. The musician was photographed late on Christmas Eve, I think in 2012, in San Francisco. His notes eerily echoed thru the empty canyons of downtown highrises. I knew this was who I wanted to later composite into the Comstock ruin. This is the mood I'd envisioned with the grafittied columns seeming to lean forward to listen as if the musician's audience. Enjoy. If you like this sort of thing. n https://allaroundnevada.com/americanflat/ http://www.nv-landmarks.com/towns-ab/americanflats.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xotaj-ywdkE
Red and Green Kokanee Salmon rising out of water showing teeth. During spawning, the males turn bright red and develop that humped back and an elongated jaw. They are landlocked and spawn in Taylor Creek, coming from Fallen Leaf Lake near Lake Tahoe. CA Oct 7, 2013 Canon 5D3 Canon 70-300L https://wildlife.ca.gov/Fishing/Inland/Kokanee https://visitlaketahoe.com/attractions/fall-fish-fest-editorial/
For #ThrowbackThursday: Two pictures, one a square b/w vacation print with my father and I'm wearing a camera around my neck. Circa: Brownie Other of colorful graffiti at 1920s United Comstock Mining Co. cyanide mill at American Flat, Nevada, image taken in 2013, demolished in 2014: https://allaroundnevada.com/americanflat/ http://www.nv-landmarks.com/towns-ab/americanflats.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xotaj-ywdkE I'm wearing a lot of Canon gear around my neck and lenses around my waist, with a hand on another camera on a tripod. Later, aging shoulders and knees moved me from Canon to Fuji, also with fine optics, while much lighter and smaller gear. Now I mostly carry that flat camera, an iPhone. I still get the shot. My mother gets photo credit for the first image. My husband, Gary Goodenough, gets photo credit for the second one.
"First Light" - Sun rays coming thru the woods onto a beast mostly in shadow. A rhinoceros, but indistinct on purpose. Another one I've worked on for years, this one from 2016. I wanted to make the First Light the subject, not the beast. Dark dark, and then there's the light beginning to expose the beast. It is now as I envisioned, between a painting and a photograph, sort of how the Pictorialists envisioned photography.
A drive-by image shot of wind turbines on the side of a mountain on 29 Palms Highway NW of Palm Springs, possibly San Gorgonio Pass, on February 7, 2016 returning from Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. In teal-tinted monochrome with the bright white wind turbines in a single row.
My artistic rendition to express sadness in what is happening in Ukraine... with hope for the future in its seeds producing a new season of sunflowers, this strong and powerful symbol of Ukraine. From our garden to you.
You can see what it looks like behind the scenes in a dark backroom at a Laotian wet market selling fish and other live animals. Feb 6, 2018 Phosi Market, Luang Prabang, Laos
Honeybee with pollen from pattypan squash flower... I spent so long with the honeybee, I anthropomorphized the bee like she looks up to me and asks, "You leaving soon, or what?" since I had the 80mm macro lens right up against her face much of the time. Most of the time though all I saw was the butt end of the honeybee as she gathered pollen under the stamen.
San Francisco Folsom Street scene with tall Miss Pinky, a cross-dresser in a mask and short dress. Another blonde woman in the near distance, similar stance, leaning against store wall. The juxtaposition is what caught my eye. Similarities and dissimilarities.
Mother and young rhesus monkey at Angkor Wat in Cambodia are eating food scavenged from tourists. Both are staring at the photographer. The young monkey has what looks like a mohawk haircut, which is typical of the growth pattern of young rhesus monkeys.
Taken from Dante's View of Badwater in Death Valley. Colors are duotones of blues to give a feeling of water in Badwater and lavender sunrays just before sunset for dramatic effect.
Dunes resemble reclining nudes, with texture.
2 vague black abstract silhouettes of men with red and black striped background gives a sense of danger and fear to be careful and get out now.
Navy blue background with undulating white stripes that resemble ocean waves are actually backlit dunes.
Palouse in autumn, harvest, Steptoe Butte in background, cottonball clouds in sky