Tag: Photos

Bisti Wilderness Area – Fall 2018 – Afternoon Day 2

I rested during the day, after my early morning shoot, and spent some time studying the photographs in the book gifted to me by John Eric Hawkins.  John Eric went out a bit earlier than I did that afternoon and I headed out again around 5PM.

My destination for sunset photos was again The Nursery, where I would shoot with my Nikon 24mm PC-E lens.  I do not have much experience with this lens, but I thought this would be a good place to use it.  In my morning conversation with John Eric Hawkins, I asked him what he thought of my idea of using the tilt/shift lens in The Nursery.  He agreed that would be a good place to make use of this type lens.

As I neared my destination, I saw John Eric shooting in an area with small features, that I had scouted the previous day.  I recognized that area as a good place to shoot and I had thought that I might get back there at some point during my visit, so I was intrigued that John Eric was shooting there.  We chatted for brief while.  He really liked that little area for shooting and contrasted it to The Nursery.  As we were chatting, he told me that the 85mm 1.8 lens was a good one for shooting here.  I had recently seen other landscape photos taken with that lens and I could easily see that he was correct in his assertion.  I had a Nikon 85mm 1.8 lens back in my vehicle and I had hoped to get a chance to try it out for landscape shots somewhere on this particular trip, but I never had time to do so. Not wanting to distract John Eric for very long from his shoot, I continued on to The Nursery, which John Eric pointed to from our location, indicating that I could walk more directly to it than the route that I had set up on my GPS via a satellite map view.

Arriving in The Nursery, there was no one else around and I had the place completely to myself for the duration of my shoot.  Again the late day light was very good.

I began experimenting with the PC lens before the golden hour, just to get comfortable with the technique of using this unique lens.  I’ve blogged about this lens and technique previously, but here is a brief description of how to use this type lens.  The general procedure that I use, after setting my composition and determining a starting point for an exposure,  is to focus on the nearest object in the composition, using a large aperture, then tilt the lens to bring distant objects in the composition into focus.  At least with large apertures, the focus on the very nearest point in the composition tends to fall out of focus as those in the distance come into focus.  Decreasing the aperture a little helps with this problem.

I found shooting with the PC lens was a challenge, especially determining when I had proper focus on distant objects, as I tilted the lens.  It appeared that only a very small tilt on the order of 1-2 degrees was required to bring distant objects into focus and it was very difficult to determine when the focus was optimum. The PC-E 24mm is an entirely manual lens, with the exception of metering prior to tilting or shifting the lens.  I was also trying to use large apertures with the tilt and still get good depth of field, since this is one of the capabilities with this lens.

I had what I considered good compositions, with the “cracked eggs” in the foreground and the hillsides in the background or an array of the “cracked eggs” and the focus looked good to me in the field.  However, after reviewing my photos on a large screen, I was very disappointed.  Nearly all of the images were poorly focused or had very shallow DOF.

So what went wrong on this shoot?  There may be several possibilities.  Firstly, the very slight tilt range with very slight changes affecting the focus made it difficult to fine tune the focus.  It is also possible that the tilt might have moved slightly after it was set, even if I locked down the tilt mechanism or maybe locking the mechanism might have resulted in a slight tilt.  Secondly, maybe my eyes can no longer properly detect sharp focus.  Thirdly, maybe I expected too much DOF from this lens with large apertures in landscape photos with lots of depth and maybe I should have shot f/11 to f/16.  In hindsight, I certainly should have made each image with a range of apertures, since I had so little experience with this lens.

On the positive side, this was an experiment, which even though, it was mostly a failure, I can at least learn from the poor results and hopefully get better results with the next trial with this lens and I must practice more with the lens before depending upon it in a shoot of this type.

If any readers have experience with using the PC-E 24mm (or any other tilt/shift lens) for landscape photography, I would appreciate your feedback on this topic.

I only deemed 4 (or parts of 4, cropping some of the images to remove out of focus portions) of the 70+ images that I made on this shoot to be presentable and those are included here.

Bisti “Cracked Eggs”. Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm, f/8, 1/125s, ISO 64, edited in Adobe LR and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
Bisti “Cracked Eggs” in “The Nursery”. Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm, f/8, 1/160s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe LR and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
Bisti “Cracked Egg” Texture. Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm (severe crop), f/3.5, 1/500s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe LR and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
Bisti “Cracked Eggs” in “The Nursery”. Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm, f/3.5, 1/50s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe LR and Nik Color Efex Pro 4.
Bisti “Cracked Eggs” in “The Nursery”. Nikon D850, Nikon PC-E 24mm, f/3.5, 1/50s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe LR and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.

As usual, these images are posted to my Flickr page, where they may be more easily viewed.

I had planned to get up early the next morning and shoot again at sunrise in the area with the many wing like hoodoos with the Nikon 14-24mm wide angle, which is easier to get more DOF with than the 24-70mm; however, as I walked back to the parking area with the desert rapidly going into darkness, feeling the tiredness setting in, I realized that with a long drive ahead the next day, that it would not be a good idea to start that drive after a short night of sleep and after hiking into and out of Bisti again.  A morning shoot would have resulted in a late start on my long drive, so I slept in until just prior to sunrise Monday morning.  When I peeked out the window, just after awaking, I saw that it was going to be a glorious sunrise with colorful clouds in the eastern sky and I immediately regretted my decision not to do the early morning shoot.

After getting everything packed away and ready for the road trip, I wrote a note to John Eric, since I had not seen any activity from his RV.  As I was about to leave the note on the driver’s side door of John’s RV, he called to me from inside, telling me to come around to the sliding door side.  He and Jean were just finishing breakfast and they were planning to leave that morning, too.  He commented that I must have had a very good morning for shooting and I had to inform him that I had not gone out.  I thanked John again for the book and we chatted for a few minutes before I got underway.

It was only late in the day, as I approached Amarillo, that I realized that my decision not to shoot that morning was for the best.  Otherwise, I would have probably been driving after dark, tired, and less alert, resulting in less safe driving.

There may be only one more minor post related to this fall trip.  I do not know when I will get time for another photo trip.  I expect it will be in the New Year before I get time for another trip, so either there will be an extended break in these posts or, maybe, I might blog about much earlier trips, as I do have several interesting stories and photos that I could share from past years.

Here’s hoping and wishing that you all have a happy end of the year holiday season!

Ken

2018 Colorado Fall Color Road Trip – Day 3 – Sunset – Supplement

After the previous post, I realized that I had forgotten to include a few iPhone photos of my final campsite along Owl Creek Pass Road.  So this is just a brief post to add those photos.  Thanks for your indulgence.

The final campsite along Owl Creek Pass Road, Colorado. Fall 2018, iPhone photo, edited in Adobe LR and Nik Color Efex Pro 4.
A panorama at the last campsite along Owl Creek Pass Road, Colorado. Fall 2018, iPhone photo, edited in Adobe LR and Nik Color Efex Pro 4.
Panorama of last campsite along Owl Creek Pass Road, Colorado, Fall 2018. iPhone Photo, edited in Adobe LR and Nik Color Efex Pro 4.

2018 Colorado Fall Color Road Trip – Day 3 – Sunset

After early and mid-morning photos on day 3 along Owl Creek Pass Road, I drove around exploring other areas and spur roads off of the main forest road, looking for another suitable campsite that would put me near a place for sunset photos.  Many of the best campsites were already taken and I ended up across the creek from my first night’s campsite, where I saw a couple of hunters breaking camp.  I pulled into the site, struck up a conversation with the hunters, the younger one a chemical engineer from Missouri and son-in law of the older one from Arkansas.  The older hunter has been coming to this area since the 1970s.  They had been elk hunting, unsuccessfully; but they had an antler shed, which they offered to me.  Having no desire for the shed, I left it at the campsite for someone else to find.  After they finished loading their considerable camping and hunting equipment, including an OHV, onto a trailer and into their pickup trucks, they headed out and I moved into the flattest area of the site.  This campsite was very open and it was a sunny day, so I put out the solar panels and allowed them to charge the Sportsmobile batteries, until about an hour before sunset, then I packed those away, since I did not want to pack them up after dark and I expected it would be dark soon after my sunset shots.

The views from this site were very similar to those on my first night and first morning of camping, but with more trees and the creek between me and the mountainside.  I walked around the area and down along the creek, looking for suitable places from which to shoot, then had a sandwich, potato chips and Gatorade for dinner, while waiting for the late afternoon light.

The photos from this site were so similar to those from the first day of shooting and with more clutter in the foreground, that I initially thought about not including any in this blog; but as I looked at them a second time, I thought some might look better, if converted to monotone or edited with one of my other image editors, in addition to Lightroom adjustments to the raw images.  So I did just that, experimenting with Nik Silver Effects Pro and Color Effects 4 and Skylum Luminar 2018 software.

The photos posted here are also posted to Flickr (just click on an image), where the images will be sharper and brighter than in this post.

One of only two color photos chosen to post from this shoot. I’m not really enthralled by this composition and in particular the bland sky, but I think it might be the best of the color images that I captured during this shoot. I processed the raw image in Lightroom and Luminar 2018. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 46mm, f/11, 0.4s, ISO 160.
This is the best sunset light that I saw on this feature. I might have brought out the colors in the foreground a bit more, but I wanted the emphasis to be on the rocks in the mountainside.  Raw image processed in Lightroom and Nik Color Effects Pro 4. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 70mm, f/11, 1/20s, ISO 160.
I really wanted to see the cliff face in this image appear colorful in the setting sunlight, but it never got as much light on it as I wanted. At least, the color bands, shadows and highlight along the rock face add interest in this version. The trees in the foreground are colorful, with contrasting color and shapes, but just did not seem to work as well in the color image.
This large cliff face was just south of my campsite. The rock is not colorful and the setting sun did not produce a colorful glow at any time as the sun went low on the horizon, so this and all the other color photos of this feature were bland. In this B&W conversion, I wanted to emphasize the rock along the edge and top of the mountainside, while keeping hints of the trees in fall color in the foreground. The sky was mostly bland, adding minimal interest, other than the cloud along the right side, so I made the sky go mostly dark, making the cliffside look as if it had been purposely light painted. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 70mm, f/11, 1/10s, ISO 64.
Those of you who have viewed the photos from my first blog about this photo trip will recognize this feature.  In this B&W version,  I like the contrasts produced by variations in the tree foliage color and the shape of the trees in the foreground, as well as the highlight on the rock outcrops. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 70mm, f/11, 1/13s, ISO 160.
This is a similar view to that in the above photo, with more sky, less of the trees in the foreground and more of the mountainside.  The sky was bland, so I let it go black to emphasize the rock along the skyline, while retaining the hints of fall color in the deciduous trees. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 70mm, f/11, 1/15s, ISO 64.
The rock face in the original color photo is very colorful in the setting sunlight; but the foreground is distracting in the color photo. I have kept a hint of the foreground color in the trees in this image, while highlighting the rocks with its texture and shadows. I like the way the two tall evergreen trees appear to be pointing towards the rising moon and the diagonal lines formed by the tree lines and the jagged, horizontal line of the top of the mountainside, both converging near the rising moon. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 70mm, f/11, 1/15s, IDO 64.
I was trying to capture the reflection of color in the sky in the branch of the creek near the center of this image, but it just did not fit well with the rest of the image. I like this B&W conversion with the fall color in the trees, showing up brightly against the dark evergreens. I do not like the tree along the left edge, but I could not find a pleasing composition of this scene that excluded that tree. There is also a halo effect, produced by the Nik Silver Effects Pro software, that is quite noticeable along the top of the peak on the right side of the image. I do not really like this effect; but I currently do not know how to eliminate it. I’m sure there must be a way to tone this down. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 30mm, f/11, 1/3s, ISO 160.

The opinions expressed about the images here are my subjective ones.  I welcome your feedback, opinions and critiques, as I can always use those to improve my work.

Scenes Along Colorado 4 Wheel Drive Roads in the Ouray, Silverton and Telluride Areas of Colorado, Part 2

As the title implies, this is a continuation of the previous post.  The photos in this post are a combination of iPhone and DSLR photos and were taken while traversing these 4 wheel drive roads:  Imogene Pass, Engineer Pass, California Pass and maybe others. (I neglected to take notes of where we were each day and I can’t positively identify the location of some of the photos that I acquired and I am not using a GPS device on my current camera.  This is an issue that I must address in the future).

A typical view that one sees along these roads in the higher elevations is as shown here:

A typical mountain view from a high mountain pass road (iPhone)

We traveled Imogene Pass Road from the Ouray side, accessing it from US 550, splitting off from the road that goes to Yankee Boy Basin (covered in a previous post).  Imogen Pass is the second highest mountain pass in Colorado at 13, 114 feet.  It is rated as moderate, which means that only suitably equipped 4 wheel drive vehicles should attempt this road.  There are Jeep rentals in the local area and we saw many of the rental vehicles on this road, as well as some specialized tour vehicles with seating for passengers in a flat bed area.  Those tour vehicles looked a bit large for these type roads, but apparently their drivers are experienced in driving these roads.  The seating in the tour vehicles appeared to all be in the open, meaning one might get wet and cold, when caught in one of the frequent mountain showers, if not properly prepared for the weather.  Views along the road can be spectacular.  These two photos show the view looking back down the road that we traveled up to the pass:

A view from Imogene Pass Summit (Nikon D850, Nikkor 14-24mm, handheld)
A view from Imogene Pass summit (Nikon D850, Nikkor 14-24mm, handheld) (More zoomed in than the previous photo).

A view in the opposite direction, in which we would continue is shown in this photo:

Imogene Pass Summit view (Nikon D850, Nikkor 14-24mm, handheld)

As along most of these roads, there are numerous abandoned mine sites.  The Imogene Pass road goes through the large Tomboy mine site, which was a really large operation, before it was abandoned in 1928.  The remains of the buildings cover a rather large area and one could spend quite a bit of time wandering around the site.  However, these abandoned mining areas can be dangerous and nearly all are on private property with warning signs not to enter old mines or buildings.  Tomboy is one of the highest ghost towns in the US.  There was a store, school, living quarters for miners and even a YMCA.

A few of the many ruins at the Tomboy Mine townsite (Nikon D850, Nikkor 14-24mm, handheld)

One can often see views of other mountain roads from these high mountain roadways.  One of the famously difficult 4 wheel drive roads is Black Bear, which has numerous sharp switchbacks, that typically require at least two point turns, even for short wheel base vehicles.  We got a glimpse of Black Bear as we neared Telluride on the way down from Imogene Pass.

A view of the sharp switch backs on the difficult Black Bear 4 wheel drive (Nikon D850, Nikkor 14-24mm, handheld)

This is not a great photo, a big zoom would have worked better for showing the details of the switchbacks, but I only had a wide angle with me.  Look closely in the green area just below the peak about one third across the photo from the left and you can see the trace of the roadway down the steep mountainside.  There is also a long waterfall almost in the center of the photo in the cliff face.  One has to look very closely to see the waterfall in this photo.

To drive Engineer Pass, we began just off of US 550 between Ouray and Silverton.  This road is rated as moderate and I think most of the difficult part is near the starting point off of US 550.  After passing through that portion, much of the road is fairly easy (easy for me, since I was not driving).  We did not continue the road down into Lake City, electing to go to the ghost town of Animas Forks and continuing along other roads from Animas Forks, over California Pass, down Corkscrew Gulch and arriving back at US 550.

An abandoned mine site as seen from Engineer Pass road (iPhone)
Odom Point along the Engineer Pass road route (iPhone)
Engineer Pass Road (iPhone)
An old mine line shack on the road between Engineer Pass and Animas Forks (iPhone)
Animas Forks Ghost Town near Silverton, Colorado (iPhone)

Animas Forks is a mining ghost town near Silverton, Colorado.  It can be accessed by a passenger vehicle in the summer months along County Road 2 from Silverton or via a number of other 4 wheel drive roads.  There are a number of fairly well preserved building at this site and, as you will see in these photos, is a popular site to visit.

A few of the four wheel drive vehicles in the parking area at Animas Forks ghost town (Nikon D850, Nikkor 14-24mm, handheld)
Old mine building foundation at Animas Forks ghost town (Nikon D850, Nikkor 14-24mm, handheld)
One of the better preserved buildings in Animas Forks ghost town (Nikon D850, Nikkor 14-24mm, handheld)

From Animas Forks, we proceeded along another 4 wheel drive road to California Pass.

A view from California Pass Summit (iPhone)
California Pass Summit (iPhone)
The Jeep at California Pass Summit (iPhone) (Note the GoPro on the driver side front fender).
Long winding 4 wheel drive roads just below California Pass summit (iPhone)

We continued along the road that passes to the left of the lake in the above photo.  The road to the right of the lake goes to another much more difficult 4 wheel drive road.

A lake just below California Pass summit (iPhone) (A closer view of the lake seen in the previous photo)
An abandoned mine sluice along the California Pass Road (iPhone)
Clouds gathering over the aptly named Red Mountains, California Pass Road (iPhone)

We continued back to US 550 on Corkscrew 4 wheel drive, but I did not get any interesting photos along that route.

This marks the end of my July trip to Colorado.  The following photos are a few iPhone shots that I took on the route back home.

The Sportsmobile at Lake Meredith National Recreation Area, Texas (iPhone)
A panorama of a portion of Lake Meredith (iPhone)
A warning sign at a Texas Panhandle Rest Stop (iPhone)

 

 

 

 

 

Joshua Tree National Park

My oldest son and I spent a few days in Joshua Tree National Park in southern California the last week of March, 2018.  While exploring one of the less visited areas, we spotted a dead tree that we immediately knew presented numerous photo opportunities.  We returned to this tree on two evenings to photograph it, capture stars and star trails with the tree as fore ground.

My son referred to the tree as the “ghost tree”.  I thought it looked more like the “grim reaper tree”.

In addition to the star trails, numerous air plane paths are also apparent.