An Evening in Yosemite National Park
I was in Yosemite National Park last weekend and had a chance to venture out for an evening of night sky photography. The moon was a little more full than I like for night sky shots but the light was still pretty amazing. Once my eyes were adapted to the moon light there was no need for a headlamp the rest of the evening. There had been several reports of bears in the areas I was shooting so I was a little wigged out being alone, in the dark, in the woods on the valley floor. Thankfully I didn’t come across any of the bears. These three shots are all multi-image panoramics and mosaics ranging from five to 24 shots. All the shots were 30 seconds, f/4, ISO800 with my D3 and various focal length lenses. My intervelometer was broken so I couldn’t easily do any shots over 30 seconds. The moon was so bright that I could have stopped down to f/6.3 to f/8, dropped the ISO to 200-400 and let the shutter run for a few minutes but I only had a short amount of time so I had to work really fast.
Austin
This has taken me way too long to post. Lindsay, Austin and I had a family day in Old Town Pasadena and took the D3X I had on loan from Nikon and my new 50mm f/1.4 for a test drive. We wandered around the old alley ways in search of cool textures and light to take some Mother-Son photos. We all enjoyed the day and the photos with the new lens came out great.
New Panoramas
In the past year or so, the software that I use to process my photos (Lightroom3) and stitch panoramas (was PTAssembler, now PTGui) has improved dramatically. The improvement was enough to send me on a mission to re-process and re-stitch every last panoramic and mosaic photo I have ever taken. I went back in the archives to 2004 and have made it up to early 2006 and I am still not even half way through all the 20,000+ photos that make up all these panoramas. To date I have output 958 individual panoramic photos. I used to not have the processing power to stitch everything from a shoot so I would look over the masses of images and select what I thought were the best 2-3 to process and stitch. This often meant that dozens of potentially good images were never put together for consideration. With the new software and new computers I am able to stitch the good, the bad and the ugly. In doing so I have come across several dozen panoramas that I have never seen before. Here are a few gems from the latest batch of stitching.
Muir Woods
Muir Woods
Golden Gate Bridge
El Capitan: Yosemite National Park, CA
For my Friends in Florida
I just recently came across a favorite photo of mine that I have never really shared with anyone. During my last year of college I spent a lot of time birding out in Titusville, Florida. On one of my trips to Black Point Wildlife Preserve I came across this scene and knew it would make a great photo one day. The day I found this scene was, unfortunately, not the most inspiring in terms of lighting. I returned week after week trying to catch the vision I had in my head. On some trips the camera would not even make it out of the bag. Then on one of my last weekly trips out to Black Point, before leaving for California, and after nearly a year of watching and waiting I hit the jackpot. The water was calm, the light was soft, the sky was colorful and I was standing on the bank of the inter-coastal with my camera waiting. I show very few photos from Florida. I started my career in photography in Florida but honed my skills out west. So this photo is for all my friends in Florida. Enjoy.
Black Point Wildlife Preserve
Death Valley Winter 2010
I tried to write several posts that broke down my Death Valley trip into sections by day and location but felt that it wasn’t working. This trip was all about photos and I felt that my words were not doing the trip justice. I am going to run with the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” and delete the previous Death Valley posts and just make a single post with 90 of the best images that describe the trip. Part of the fun of going on a photography expedition is just getting to the location; so along with the fine art images I will include some of the travel photos that include my friends and my new Land Cruiser. Disregard my previous Death Valley posts and click the image below to enjoy a visual journey through my favorite places in Death Valley National Park.
Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse
I was fortunate enough to be in Orlando, Florida for this most recent Lunar Eclipse where I have access to some very nice telescopes. These shots were taken with a William Optics FLT-110 refractor and a 2x Televue Powermate.
