Roaming around the garden I found these and the light was nice in the late afternoon. Taken with the Fuji X-Pro 1, 60mm lens at f5.4 and 1/4000 exposure. Sometimes it is fun just to walk around the garden and see what you can find, you never now what you may find. Enjoy.
This week’s image comes from the Getty Center. Taken with a Fuji X-Pro 1 and 18mm f2 lens, setting were ISO 800, 1/25 at f8. I love black and white and not all images work well in black and white, but I felt that this one did, hope you did too.
Long exposure photography can yield some interesting images even during the day, this image used a Lee Big Stopper, 10 stop ND filter in front of the Fuji 18mm lens at f16 and ISO 200 with the wonderful Fuji X-Pro 1 camera. This yielded a 15 second exposure of the incoming surf at Treasure Island in Laguna Beach, CA. There are some nice tidepools but you have to watch the incoming waves as the tide comes in, they can catch you by surprise. I did not get wet on this trip, but there were a few people there that did not watch the wave patterns! Several large waves arrived during this exposure and that leads to the misty water look during this exposure and overcast skies made for a nice even light. Hope you enjoy it.
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.
This weeks is a view of the Japanese Garden at Descanso Gardens in La Canada on a nice sunny spring afternoon. Taken with a Canon 5DmarkII and a Tokina 16-28mm lens at f11. Beautiful garden but very difficult to capture, lots of different light zones. Hope you enjoy it.
This week’s image was one I took back in May of 2011, but I have since learned some new skills in editing and I think it has made some improvements to the image. This was taken near Page, Arizona, some nice sandstone sculpted by wind and rain, taken with a Canon 5Dm2 and a Zeiss 21mm lens. I really like the 3d effect, this was just an awesome day to be out doing some photography. Enjoy.
The summer Milky Way over the Sierra Nevada from the Alabama Hills, this image was taken last August but I finally got around to processing it. This is a single image taken with a Samyang 14mm f2.8 lens at f2.8 and ISO 3200 with a Canon 5Dm2. The moon had just risen up behind me and that is what illuminated the foreground and the mountain range, this 30 second exposure makes it look like daylight, almost. The Alabama Hills is a nice place to visit and is a familiar backdrop for a lot of Hollywood movies. This is located just outside Lone Pine, CA and in the mountain range to the right of the center of the image is Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the Continental United States. The image turned out a lot better than I thought it would so I am pretty happy with it. Hope you enjoy it also.
Here is this week’s image, a sunset shot, looking at Catalina Island with the sun setting behind it. I rushed home because the sunset was so colorful, this was near the end, did not have time to setup a tripod so I rested the camera on the railing and turned on the IS to help stabilize the shot. This is a 1 second exposure at f4.0 taken with a 24-105mm lens at 73mm on a Canon 5dMII. All I did was adjust the contrast I did not add any saturation or change the color this is how it came out of the camera with just a little contrast adjustment. Amazing colors, I really need to make sure I carry my camera around with me, but at least I did not miss all of it, it was nice to watch the colors while driving too and just enjoy it visually. Thanks for looking.
Here are some shots of fall color from the Eastern Sierra. There had been a snow storm two days before I got up there, arrived on Oct. 7,2011. The snow had not yet melted and I was hoping that the snow and wind had not removed all the leaves, as can happen during a storm. I was fortunate, the leaves were in tact. In fact they were still mostly green on a lot of the aspens, which would seem to indicate the fall colors are happening a bit later than normal for the area. They were not at peak, the lower elevations were still green while some of the higher elevations were just starting with a few areas already well on their way. To find the more colorful areas meant I had to a be a little more selective but anytime out doing photography is a good time! So I had a real good time. I visited the Bishop area, around South Lake and Lake Sabrina. I did go on the road to North Lake, but found a lot of people, and snow and ice; with the warmth from the sun it was turning to mud. It also appeared that a lot of the tress around North Lake had already lost their leaves or did so during the storm. So after I got to the top I turned around and went back down. I also visited sites further north, Rock Creek, McGee Creek, and Lundy Canyon. In Lundy Canyon there was still a lot of green trees and the area around the beaver ponds was still mostly green. There was some steam rising from Lundy Lake, that was a nice treat. I think the Rock Creek area seemed to have the best color. I also took a drive up Tioga Pass and that had quite a bit of snow. It had been closed on the day I arrived but they opened it on Saturday morning. Ellery Lake had some nice reflections that vanished as soon as the breeze kicked up.
One of the things I did different on this trip was to not bring a lot of equipment. I know sometimes I get too caught up playing with the gear, and usually a lot of equipment never gets used. So my tactic was to just bring a minimal amount of gear. Only brought one body, the Canon 5D Mark II, some extra batteries and the usual things like a release, tripod, filters, etc. Lenses were limited to a Canon 70-200mm f4L, 50mm f1.4, a Zeiss 35mm f2, and a Zeiss 21mm f2.8. The most used lenses were the Canon 70-200 and the Zeiss 35mm. The nice thing about the Zeiss is it makes me slow down and plan the shot a little more carefully, with manual focus it is a more conscious effort to get the shot the way I envisioned.
Overall I am quite happy with the results and hope you enjoy them as well.
There was some nice clouds on Friday, some remnants of a tropical storm, so I setup on the roof and shot a few panos of the setting sun. These are 5 sets of image in portrait orientation with 3 exposures per frame to capture all the details and the available light. Processed in PTGUI and Photoshop. Shot in Laguna Beach and within about 5 minutes of each other. Shot with a Canon 5D Mark II and a Samyang 14mm f2.8 lens. Click on the thumbnails to see larger versions.
