Dean's Light Box

Photo a Day: Day 74

I had some computer issues last night and despite my persistence, the computer simply refused to work long enough to post a photo.  So, I'm going to catch up tonight.

While heading back from Bryce Canyon to Boulder for dinner on Friday evening, we came to a view stop on the road right as the sun set and saw this:

 

55mm, 3 seconds, f/16, ISO 200.  I learned that a landscape shot like this does not work well with a wide angle because I wanted to use the foreground to create some interest and lead the eye to the sunlit mesa in the background.  With a wide angle, the mesa becomes so small in the frame that it loses it's impact.  I think the upshot is that camera position is probably more important at getting the right balance of foreground and background into a shot like this than using a wide-angle to "get more stuff" into the frame.

Here is the wide-angle version for comparison:

 

I like what wide-angle does for the foreground but you can see that the mesa sort of gets lost in the background.  Which do you prefer, dear reader?

Photo a Day: Day 73

At Bryce Canyon, we took the Navajo Loop trail which descends (rather rapidly) down into the main Bryce amphitheater then quickly back up through another of the narrow canyons.  There were a ton of people but we managed to get the following shot by looking as much like a professional photographer and model as possible:

18mm, 1.3 seconds, f/16, ISO 200.  DD had to stand as still as possible for the long exposures--this is actually three images blended to control the intense light coming from the upper part of the canyon.  I wish we could have spent a month there...

Photo a Day: Day 72

We take a short break from the trip down south because I'm intrigued by the potential to create panoramic landscapes.  This is inspired by the other-worldly landscapes we saw while down south.  So last evening, I did a bit of research and decided to evaluate a couple of the more capable panoramic software packages out there.  And here is my first attempt from this morning:

From 10 RAW images:  92mm, 1/2 of a second, f/16, ISO 200.  Please excuse the watermarks that AutoPanoPro imposes with the trial version.  I'm fairly impressed with the "stitching" job and I think I may be able to make some decent panoramas once I get a better handle on how the whole process works.  I may also need to find a more effective way to display these types of images online because you don't get the full effect on a little monitor.

Tomorrow, back to the images from Boulder, Bryce, Hell's Backbone, and Escalante.

Photo a Day: Day 71

We're back from our little weekend trip and I'm rather out of energy.  But in an effort to keep at my goal of a photo a day, here's a shot from Bryce Canyon National Park.  Amazingly, the canyon makes it almost impossible to take a bad photograph:

55mm, 1/100th of a second, f/11, ISO 200.  Even in the middle of the day, with "bad light", you can still sometimes get a decent shot.  Actually, the light wasn't at it's worst because we did have a few whispy clouds that diffused the sunlight slightly.

More description and explanation to come once we settle back in to our regular routine.

Photo a Day: Day 70

I worked from home this morning which was a nice change of pace.  After I dropped EV off to catch the bus, I came back home, cleaned up from breakfast and just as I left the kitchen to head for the office, I saw that the moon was setting.  It's amazing to watch because you can actually see the spin of the earth and within just a couple of minutes, the moon is out of sight.

190mm, 1/125th of a second, f/11, ISO 200.

I'm going to be away from the computer through Saturday as we take our little trip to Bryce Canyon and Grand Staircase Escalante national parks.  I'm hoping to grab a few nice images while we're there, of course, but I have to walk a fine line so that my photographic mania doesn't impose too severely on the girls.  DD and I compromised in our planning so that we can stay at Bryce until 25 minutes before official sundown so that I can grab a few shots before the hour and a half drive back to Boulder for dinner.  Thanks DD!

While in Boulder, we'll be staying at a little place that includes several cabins and a yurt.  We had to try the yurt, of course, because how many people can say they've stayed in a yurt?

In addition to the great landscape and macro images I'm hoping for, I'm also thinking I might try for some long exposures after the sun goes down, perhaps experimenting with star trails and shooting off the old Vivitar flash manually during the long exposure.

I also finally decided to get the Nikon SB-800 flash and an iTTL remote sync cord.  The cord arrived today and I'm hoping that the flash is here when we return.  I can hardly wait to get some good portraits when I pull the umbrella and light stands out of the basement!

Photo a Day: Day 69

Sunrise over Summit Park.

50mm, 1/50th of a second, f/11, ISO 200.  Summit Park is this little community nestled amongst the trees at the top of Parley's Summit.  One of my colleagues at work lives here and evidently during the winter, they cannot see out their windows for the accumulated snow.  Not really my cup of tea, but it makes for a rather interesting little landscape at sunrise.  I again enjoy how the cool and warm colors contrast at sunrise with the snow.

Photo a Day: Day 68

Hey skiers, get ready because we just had our first snow.  I made another stop at Lamb's Canyon on the way to work looking for some details affected by the weekend snow:

55mm, 1/2 second, f/16, ISO 200.  This little detail struck me because of the interesting contrast between the warmly colored leaf and the cool colored snow.  There must be a million intimate scenes in these western mountains that embody the "change of seasons" theme.  Maybe I should consider snow-shoeing the trails here as we move into winter.  It'd be great fun for DD, EV, and I to have an excursion into the snowy woods.

Photo a Day: Day 67

As always, I love landscape photography but I had to try something different.  Here we have a different look at fall colors in Lamb's Canyon:

18mm, 2 seconds, f/16, ISO 200.  No tripod here.

Photo a Day: Day 66

A quiet day at home included clean up in preparation for our trip to red rock country (southern Utah) later next week.  EV and I experimented a little with flash right before dinner.  I've come to the conclusion that my vintage Vivitar 283 flash needs some help.  It is evidently dangerous to use it in the hotshoe of modern DSLRs because it puts out much higher voltage than digital cameras can handle.  As such, I've been using one of the little peanut photosensor units from the early 90s to trigger it and it just isn't syncing very well.  Or I'm doing something very wrong.  I might splurge and use my Amazon gift certificates to get a good, solid, manually controlled modern flash.  Vivitar just started making the old 285 in a new version that works with DSLRs last year.  Just the ticket.

At dinner, EV and I enjoyed a rather spectacular sunset.  As predicted by the National Weather Service, we had snow most of the morning and into the early afternoon.  The clouds veiled Lewis Peak at sunset:

200mm, 1/640th of a second, f/8, ISO 200.  Not sure why I used F8.  I had to switch the lens to manual focus mode because the high-key scene confused the camera's autofocus sensor and the lens did it's characteristic "hunting" back and forth.  In some ways I prefer manual focus, at least for landscape work.

Despite the advice of HeyLucy, I went ahead and had Adorama print some of my recent images.  I have to say that I am NOT impressed.  The prints came back looking like they dropped the contrast setting dramatically and desaturated the images.  This is a little disappointing in that the service was supposed to include correction by a live, experienced printing technician.  My $36 refurbished Epson snapshot printer did a much better job.  Ok HeyLucy, this time I take your advice and go with Scott Kelby's suggestion which I have forgotten at this point.  Now what did I do with that email...

Photo a Day: Day 65

Taking a quick trip back to last Saturday and the library, we have here the speeding glass elevator.  These are great fun, particularly with kids who like to dramatize the mild g-force effects of the lift:

18mm, 1/2 of a second, f/22, ISO 200.  The long shutter speed captures the motion of the lift.  The lack of tripod was addressed again by using a railing.