IC 4603

June 12, 2011 by admin | Comments Off

IC 4603 is reflection nebula in Ophiuchus. This is a very colorful area of the Milky Way, this reflection nebula is surrounded by dark nebula, which is gas too dense to let light pass through. Taken with a cooled ccd camera, a QSI583wsg and a Borg 125mm f3.8 refractor. This combination yields an effective focal length of 484mm. This is a total of about 3 hours of exposure time, the monochrome images are taken through color filters and then calibrated and stacked to produce the color image. Taken on the night of June 4, 2011, near the town of Anza, CA.

Zephirin and Sherman

June 12, 2011 by admin | Comments Off

Here are some shots from a shoot to help build portfolios. The models were Zephirin and Sherman, did some experimenting in final processing to make them distinctive and to make the best use of the lighting. A fun shoot.

Downtown Los Angeles – A different perspective…..

May 25, 2011 by admin | 1 Comment

Here are a few shots taken from a small private plane at night over downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood. It was a really fun trip and an interesting experience, the pilot Fei, was great and very accommodating. We were in a Piper Cherokee, which is a low wing plane, so that meant we had to roll the aircraft for me to get a shot without the wing in the way. You can see it in a few shots. The night was rather pleasant and we took off from El Monte airport. This was on Friday night, May 20, 2011. I have to say this was extremely difficult photography, the subject is dark with a some really bright highlights, the plane is moving at about 100mph and was constantly moving (which was a good thing for a fixed wing plane!). So I had a lot of images that showed rotation, and also movement. Shots were taken with a 21mm f2.8, 85mm f1.8 and a 50mm f1.4, all wide open and very high ISO, which varied depending on the overall brightness, even with the fast lenses and high ISO it was tough to get the shutter speed high enough to not show motion blur. This is something I definitely want to try again and I think I will have a lot better success. Some of the shots, especially the close ups over the building reminded me of ‘Blade Runner’. Click on any thumbnail to see a larger version, thanks for looking!

Horseshoe Bend

May 22, 2011 by admin | 2 Comments

After visiting Secret Canyon, on May 11, Greg and I decided to visit Horseshoe Bend. This is located not too far from Secret Canyon, and is a quite popular spot now, located south of Page, AZ and just off highway 89. This bend on the Colorado River is quite large and the depth of the canyon walls is quite difficult to gauge unless you have been there. The first images were taken with a Samyang 14mm lens on my Canon 5D MarkII, the second image is a conversion to black and white. To give an idea of the scale there is a small boat, which looks like a small white dot, on the bend at about the 4 or 5 o’clock position. This boat had two fisherman who were slowly drifting down the river. The next shot was taken with a 15mm fisheye lens, and shows the distortion from the fisheye projection, I think it works rather well in this image, and also I converted it to black and white. It was a nice day and the clouds drifting through made for some interesting skies. Click on any thumbnail to see a larger version.

Secret Canyon

May 18, 2011 by admin | Comments Off

The day after Greg and I got to Page, May 11, we went on a tour of Secret Canyon, which is just south of Page. It is somewhat near Antelope Canyon but in a different wash, I will bet that area has a lot of slot canyons. What makes this canyon nice is that only one tour guide has permission to go to it, and they limit the tours to a maximum of 6 people. We were fortunate to be the only ones in the canyon. The guide, Robert, was very knowledgeable and a good driver and he sure knew how to drive that Hummer. There was some interesting parts that really needed to have the 4-wheel drive and he was able to show off some of the abilities of the vehicle. Here are a few images from the canyon. Hope you enjoy them, click on any of the thumbnails to see a larger version.

Quick trip to Page, AZ

May 15, 2011 by admin | Comments Off

My friend Greg and I decided to do a whirlwind trip to Page, AZ to do some photography on May 10 and 11. In particular we wanted to shoot some slot canyons. Greg had come across a relatively new and not well publicized slot canyon called “Secret Canyon”. After some discussion and review of our schedules we could not make a prolonged trip to the area, so we left on a Tuesday morning and drove the 8.5 hours to Page. Once there we had some time to kill and did some shooting around Wahweap Marina overlook and in an area near the Glen Canyon dam. The following day we headed to the slot canyon, to be documented in my next post. Here are some shots that were taken on the Tuesday late afternoon. Hope you enjoy them.

Joshua Tree in HDR

April 17, 2011 by admin | Comments Off

Here is a 5 shot HDR shot bracketed at 1EV steps taken with a Canon 5D MarkII using a Zeiss 21mm f2.8 lens. Taken in Joshua Tree National Park, a fun day with lots of clouds streaming through, we even got snowed on briefly. Too bad there were not more flowers out, some years are better than others. Still a fun day.

Misty Surf 2

April 16, 2011 by admin | Comments Off

Here is another shot from the Aliso Beach point, about 9o seconds exposure with a variable ND filter. I like this composition because of the channel leading out.

Misty Surf

April 2, 2011 by admin | Comments Off

90 second exposure at ISO 100 and f22

Tried something a little different, I have seen pictures before with the ocean looking all misty, created by doing a long exposure, so I wanted to try it out. So went down to Aliso Beach and down to the point and tried it out with the variable ND filter. Here is one of the better images. Hope you like it.

Welcome to my site…..

April 2, 2011 by admin | 1 Comment

Hi, there and welcome to my site. I am just getting started, but I hope to post regularly, as time permits. I will be posting current and new images, new techniques, reviews, and whatever else is currently on my mind. I have many photographic interests from landscapes to astrophotography. So I hope you enjoy.