Last few days of 2012. A camping trip with the family and three dogs through Owens, Eureka and Saline Valleys.
December 21, 2012
Discovered a great blue heron in the grass close to our house this morning while taking Kira, our new lab/retreiver for a walk.
December 17, 2012
Photos from a one-week vacation/photography trip to Iceland.
ICELAND - MAN
ICELAND - LAND
ICELAND - ICE
The photos below were taken on Ice Cave tours guided by Einar at Local Guides. The weather was heavily overcast and raining on our first day, and although the ice cave we visited was architecturally impressive, it lacked any real color. By the next morning the sky was clear, and Einar took us to a beautiful cave, with a second entrance that aligned with the rising sun to create a wonderful golden glow contrasting with the blues and greens of light filtering through the ice. In addition to Anne and I, Einar and his son Aron were guiding a two-person rtelevision crew, so we made a brief appearance on icelandic television.
ICELAND - WATER
ICELAND - SEA
ICEALAND - FAUNA
ICELAND - FOOD
November 23, 2012
A scientific meeting at Los Alamos National Labs provided an excuse to spend a few days afterwards at Bosque del Apache, perhaps the best location in the country for bird photography. The bird count included about 65,000 ducks, 60,000 light geese and 5,500 sandhill cranes. My visit coincided with the annual Festival of the Cranes, so the photographer count was also very high; and the density of white super-telephoto lenses correspondingly great. My longest lens is a 100-400mm, and I was feeling quite out-gunned by massive 600 and 800mm rigs on gimbal mounts, but took advantage of my much lighter set-up by concentrating on hand-held shots of birds in flight. I had both 7D and 5D MkIII cameras with me, and was interested to compare their respective merits for this type of photography. The crop-factor 7D gave me an equivalent 640mm lens for tighter framing, but the focus on the 5D is much nicer, and its lower noise allowed use of higher ISO settingscorresponding to about a 2-stop faster shutter speed. In the end, my selection of shots below were taken in roughly equal numbers by both cameras - so no clear winner.
Bosque landscapes/skyscapes
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Filligree cloudscape over the crane pond: Bosque del Apache NWR (Click the image to download 40 MB high-res stitched panorama) |
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Bosque Reflections
Geese
Sunset flight sillhouettes
Sandhill crane portraits
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Photomontage of crane take-off sequence: Bosque del Apache NWR |
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Sandhill cranes in flight
Other birds
November 7, 2012
First images from an ongoing project to photograph the San Joaquin Marsh; a University of California Natural Reserve immediately adjacent to the UCI campus where I live and work.
October 28, 2012
A beautiful sunny morning at Bolsa Chica
October 22, 2012
I took a brief trip up to Oregon aiming to photograph Fall colors. The timing was poor, because the first few days coincided with a major storm with unusually heavy rainfall even by Oregonian standards. I flew to Portland, and first visited the coast around Cannon Beach. Only a few photographs to show from there, despite several walks along windswept beaches with torrential blowing rain. My camera mostly stayed safe in my backpack, and despite being nominally weathersealed the inside of my lens fogged up.
After a wet time at the coast I returned to Portland, and from there ventured on day trips along the Columbia River Gorge.
Fall colors along highway 26 west from Portland
Columbia River Gorge - "Waterfall heaven"
September 23, 2012
Photos below are from a month-long trip to South Africa and Namibia. I ended up with >5000 shots (>100 GB) to sort and process, and in the end selected about 180 to upload. They are ordered in rough chronological sequence of our travels.
Etosha National Park
Insects
Birds
Antelopes
Zebra
Lion
Rhino
Giraffe
Elephant
From Sossusvlei we made a big loop west and north through the arid Namib Desert National Park on gravel roads that destroyed a steering component on one of our trucks, necessitating a detour to Walvis Bay for repair.
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Aloe dichotomous
with God-rays # 2: Namib desert, Namibia |
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After leaving Cape Town, we flew to Windhoek, where werented 4wd camper trucks to explore Namibia. Our first destination was the giant sand dunes of Sossusvlei, and the amazingly photogenic dead trees on the Deadvlei pan
Sossusvlei.
Deadvlei
September 19, 2012
New photos from tours to the wine country around Cape Town, and down to the Cape of Good Hope.
September 17, 2012
Cape Town, our first destination in Africa.
Double rainbow over Cape Town and Lion's Head from Signal Hill
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Cape Town panorama before sunrise (click on image to download ~60 Mpixel image file)
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August 04, 2012:
My offica and lab have been covered in plastic sheets the last week, while all the HVAC ductwork is replaced. That provided an excuse to take a long weekend to viit the bristlecone pines and Mono Lake.
Weathered sidings :
Bodie State Park, California |
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July, 2012 :
Returned from a trip to England (Yorkshire) and Scotland (Hebrides). Photographic possibilities were somewhat constrained because American Airlines lost all our checked baggage, including my tripod. (We were finally reuinited with our baggage two weeks after returning home - a month after it was lost.) All my other photographic gear was in my carry-on, but that, and the clothes we happened to be wearing, were pretty much our sole posessions for two weeks.
July 2012
Something new. The start of a collection of photographs to remember excellent meals!
The Black Swan at Oldstead, Yorkshire, England
The Three Chimneys, Isle of Skye
June 6th, 2012: The transit of Venus, photographed from the UCI campus.
Images were captured using a Canon 7D, 400mm f5.6 lens with 1.4x teleconvertor and stacked ND filters for a total of 14 stops attenuation. The setting sun intersected the flight path of planes taking off from John Wayne SNA airport.
Ingress sequence
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May 19-27, 2012: A journey to Utah for the annular solar eclipse of May 20, then hiking through redrock canyons
Great Gallery panorama,
Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands N.P. : Click the image to download 60 Mpixel Hi-Res image file |
May 7, 2012: A few photos taken during a visit to Castine, Maine, for our son's graduation from Maine Maritime Academy
April 22, 2012 : Back to Bolsa Chica. The marine layer was socked in this morning, but I captured some some nice, low-contrast photos of tern courtship displays.
Image sequence of tern food transfer courting ritual : Bolsa Chica
6 fps, sequence is top/botom then left/right. Click the image to download 25Mpix original |
April 14 2012 : The terns have taken over Bolsa Chica
March 25 - April 3 2012 : A long road trip through Arizona, New Mexico and Utah
Bisti Badlands, New Mexico
Navajo slot canyons, Arizona
Bryce Canyon, Utah
Miscellaneous...
White Sands National Monument
Saguaro National Park, Arizona
Hohokam petroglyphs at Painted Rocks, Arizona
Mogollon petroglyphs at Three Rivers site, New Mexico
March 03, 2012 : Pelicans at Bolsa Chica
Feb 19, 2012 : A trip along the Eastern Sierras over President's day weekend. The light was disappointing, but a very calm afternoon made for nice reflections on Mono Lake.
Feb. 12, 2012 : Some new birds at Bolsa Chica
A few shots from an early Sunday morning at Bolsa Chica
Images from a trip over the MLK weekend from the Alabama Hills to Eureka Dunes and on across Steele Pass to Saline Valley
last updated 01/06/2013
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