My Guitar

I don't recall if I've posted about my guitar on this blog or not, but I finally generated a nice photo of it.


Long story short, I started building a custom guitar for myself about 18 months ago (last July). Lots of things like school, etc. got in the way of my having as much time as I wanted to work on it, so it took a really long time. But now it is very nearly finished. I am expecting to sand flat the last 10 coats of lacquer and then cut polish to a finish this Wednesday.

But for the time being, the guitar looks awesome in the sunlight. The slightly excessive amount of lacquer on it is extremely reflective, but not yet flat; so the reflections take on interesting textures.




Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 50mm
Handheld


I'm proud of the guitar, and have been enjoying playing it—the tone worked out to be exactly how I planned it back when I was first selecting my materials.

Shooting a Ghost Town

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.

Sometimes You get Lucky

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.