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Not far out of Death Valley, there's a small ghost town called Rhyolite. It's the first opportunity I've had to shoot anything like this, and I really really enjoyed it. The ruins really made for some awesome black and white shots, and the clouds were being particularly cooperative.
At any rate, here's my favorite shot from there, although to be fair, I haven't tried editing any of the others yet.
Aperture: f/8
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 18mm
Monopod
Depending on the weather (it snowed 4 inches here last night), I may try to hit a bunch of ghost towns in Utah and do some photography.
When we were in Death Valley National Park this past week, I had something really awesome happen to me. As my dad and I were driving from one part of the park to the other, we passed a coyote walking up the road in the opposite direction. I'm not much of a wildlife photographer, but I figured it would be worth the picture. So we stopped in the middle of the desolate road and turned around. By the time we were facing the other direction, I looked out the windshield and saw... the same coyote, running back towards our car. It proceeded to sit politely about 5 feet from my window, waiting for me to feed it something. He didn't seem to mind when I switched lenses twice to get a variety of different shots. And at one point, when I had the 100mm f/2.8 macro lens out, he yawned, timing it perfectly with my burst shooting.
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 100mm
Handheld
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 100mm
Handheld
So let's stop for a moment and list all of the things that converged for these lucky shots:
1) We saw a coyote
2) This coyote had been fed, and was therefore extremely tame
3) I was within easy reach of my camera gear
4) It was overcast, in Death Valley (which happens maybe once a year), providing bright, but very diffuse light
5) It was 78°F outside, rather than 120°F, which I suspect is why the coyote was out in the first place
6) He yawned just like that exactly when I had my best lens on for the job.
I couldn't have planned for better conditions. Thank you, nature.
I just got back from a lovely vacation with my dad, where we hit various photo locations, saw family, etc. One of my favorite pictures from the trip was taken at Seal Beach in Orange County, California.
Aperture: f/16
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 18mm
Tripod
It was an uncharacteristically cloudy and rainy day at the beach, which had several nice side-effects: diffuse light, awesome moody clouds (recovered from the RAW file via Lightroom), and very few people at the beach to clutter up my shot. The one guy standing about halfway down the pier kind of bothers me, but he fits in with the shot okay, and I didn't want to spend an hour cloning him out.
Anyway, I got this and a whole bunch of other shots I'm very happy with on the trip. More to come as I get around to editing them.
Remember when I used to post on this blog? Yeah, I know I've been awful. The worst part is that I don't even have any excuses. On the contrary. I have tons of free time. I've even been shooting a lot of photos. Just not posting.
Anyway, there's your sad excuse for an explanation. On to the photos. I've been going out and about, up various local canyons, etc. for a couple of weeks now, looking for those magical fall landscapes, especially waterscapes. I went a long way up American Fork canyon this morning/afternoon with my dad and finally got some good shots.
Aperture: f/16
Shutter Speed: 1.3 seconds
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 18mm
Tripod
Aperture: f/3.2
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 100mm
Handheld
Aperture: f/11
Shutter Speed: 1/6
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 18mm
Tripod
On an unrelated note, Flickr stopped letting me get to the actual URL of where my images are hosted, because they had problems with people hotlinking without putting links back to Flickr. I proudly say I was never part of that problem. But regardless, my images will be a little differently sized now, and clicking on them leads to the Flickr page rather than a direct enlargement. If you want to see the photos bigger, you can do so from the Flickr page.
