Category Archives: newimages

Venus Transit

June 5, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Here are some images from the Venus transit, which occurred on June 5, 2012. These were taken from Santa Ana, CA on the top level of a parking structure. I used my Canon 1D M4 with a 100-400mm at 400mm and a 1.4x which gave me a focal length of  560mm, these are crops of the image, taken using a solar filter. You can see several sunspots in addition to Venus as it moved across the face of the sun. These were taken over a period of about 3 hours. Hope you enjoy them, click on the images to see larger versions.

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Image of the week #19

May 13, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

I am still loving shooting with my X-Pro 1, this weeks image is a statue at the Huntington Library, this statue resides between two galleries. Taken with the 35mm f1.4 at f8 and ISO 200. Converted to black and white with Silver Efex Pro 2.

 

Image of the week #17

April 30, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Spring is a fun time of year, here in L.A. it can mean anything from hot spells, to rain, to grey overcast skies, and this year it was a little strange. First we got hardly any rain during our normal rainy season and had heat instead, the lack of rain and heat really messed up the normal wildflower prospects. So you have to wonder to other places to find some flowers. This weeks image is from the Huntington Library gardens. They have a very nice cactus section and a lot of them were in the processing of blooming.  This weeks image was also taken with my new camera, the Fuji X-Pro 1. I really like this new camera, a very nice and compact, well at least more compact than the dslr I normally use. Great optics, great image quality and all packaged in an interesting retro kind of case. A nostalgic trip back to rangefinder type cameras, although not a rangefinder per se, the handling is very similar. Great camera. Since Adobe has not released the raw file processing ability I have been using the in camera jpgs and it is capable of generating great images. This weeks image was taken with the Fuji 35mm f1.4 lens and using the Velvia film simulation mode. I bracketed the exposure and blending the files using exposure fusion. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Image of the week #15

April 16, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Spring is here, flowers are out and the weather is definitely getting warmer, and warmer. Since we seem to go into extremes, cold then hot, it can make it rough on finding spring flowers. So when the wildflowers are not producing, the gardens get worked. This is from Descanso Gardens, they always have a nice display of tulips.  The was taken in a patch that was partially shaded and what I did was accentuate the shadows and the highlighted areas.  The translucent appearance of the tulips when backlit caught my eye. Taken with a Canon 5DmarkII and 70-200mm f4 at f4 and 163mm. Enjoy.

 

Image of the week #13

April 1, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

This week’s image was taken at the San Juan Capistrano Mission, this was the first time I have visited that Mission and found it to be quite an interesting place. There is a lot to see and especially to photograph, lots of textures and a nice garden as well as lots of history to be seen. Quite an interesting place and one I think I will be returning to sometime soon. It was a cloudy day with a slight drizzle which made for dull grey skies but makes for nice diffused lighting. I was surprised at how large the grounds were and how nicely they have been maintained. The Chapel is still active although they have built a new modern Basilica at the far end of the property and is really mostly isolated from the older historic mission.

Well it was hard to pick a single image for use, so I decided to throw up a few more images from the trip. The nice thing is that they did allow tripods so that was really nice. The textures of the brick and adobe were really nice, I never did see the whole grounds so it will definitely get a second visit. The last two shots below are not technically from the mission grounds they are from the railroad depot across the street. I met a few other photographers from google+ there and had a great time meeting them and seeing what they were shooting.

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Image of the week #10

March 11, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Well it is hard to believe that 10 weeks have already gone by since the start of the year, time flies so to speak. This week’s image is of a stack of railroad wheels that are now scrap that were sent back for repair/service. This open air yard had hundreds of these wheel sets, most with recent dates on them. On the premises are some large buildings where they seem to work 7 days a week on these wheels. It is impressive to see how massive they are and I know I could not get one to budge, so literally there are tons of them at this location. I have no other information on what they do or how they repair them, but the wheels themselves make for interesting subjects. These are located in Mojave, Ca. This was taken with a Canon 5DmII and a Zeiss 35mm f2 lens, and processed in photomatix, lightroom and then turned to black and white using Silver Efex Pro 2. I think the border really adds to the feel of this image, and the late day light made for some long soft shadows. It is hard to get an idea of size but I am sure most of you have seen railroad cars so that might help give some scale.  Hope you enjoy it.

Railroad wheel sets

Image of the week #8

February 27, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Orchids! This was taken at the Los Angeles Arboretum, and is a stack of 12 images to get the all of the orchids into focus at one time. So 12 different images were taken and stacked together only using the pieces that were in focus. This is one solution to increase the DOF of an image. Taken with a 180mm macro lens at f11. Stacked with Zerene stacker software.

 

Image of the week #6

February 13, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Here is an image that is a little outside the norm for me, taken at a class on using flash. The class was specifically how to use speedlights to light a subject, it was actually two different classes, one on Saturday which covered using mostly ettl and on camera flash. Then Sunday was more about using the flash in manual mode and with light modifiers. Both classes also dealt with removing the flash off camera and using it more creatively. This image of Brittany was taken against a wall in shadow from the sun, so it was very even and dull lighting. A single flash with a warming gel was used with a small softbox. It really did give some nice light on the subject reminding me of sunset colors at the the beach. I thought it worked really well and the model was really great to shoot. She had some great poses and was very patient. This shot is almost straight out of the camera, very little editing was done and no cropping. Taken with a Canon 5Dm2 and a 580exII with a Honl 8 inch portable softbox and a CTO gel, 24-105mm lens at 82mm. I was quite happy with both classes and it was through the Julia Dean Photo Workshops, got a lot out of the classes, especially on the Sunday. Julia Dean taught the class on Saturday, Crash Flash I. David Honl taught the Sunday class, Crash Flash II.

 

Image of the week #5

February 6, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Here is a shot from inside the San Gabriel Mission, this is a small alcove off of the main church interior. The green color comes from the sun shining through green tinted windows up on on the walls of the main chapel. Why green I do not know but it made the whole inside of the church cast in a green light. The San Gabriel Mission was the 4th mission in California to be built, although it was not known as California then. It was founded on 8 September 1771, it is filled with all kinds of interesting historical pieces. The photo was taken handheld with a Canon 1Dm4, Samyang 14mm f2.8 at f.28 and ISO 3200.

Image of the week #3

January 22, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

This week I had a harder time getting some shots, really did not shoot a lot, got caught up in the day to day of life. This shot was an experiment, (aren’t they all! ). Taken hand held inside a dimly lit church, All Saints Episcopal, in Pasadena.  Shot with a Samyang 14mm f2.8 using a Canon 1DM4, ISO 3200, f2.8 and a 3 shot bracket at +/- 2 stops. Starting exposure was around 1/60. This is also a vertically stacked panorama, some call a vertorama, as it shows all the way back behind me as well. So the top part of the image is actually above and behind me, I was bent over backwards while shooting this sequence. Field of view is around 75 x 176 degrees. The panorama is made from 4 frames, each 3 exposures, Ptgui did a great job of stitching although there are still some stitching errors. I am pretty pleased with it, especially getting the panorama to stitch without using a tripod or pano head.