Farm images

D300, ISO 1600, Tokina 11-16 mm at 11 mm, f2.8, 1/3s handheld.
These are pictures of the farm where my sister and my father's wife board their horses in the Netherlands. When we were there last winter, we went out for a horseback ride in the bucolic Dutch landscape. Of course it started snowing like crazy while we were out there.


Old barn window boarded up with pastic
D300, Nikkor 18-200mm at 22mm, ISO 6400, f3.8, 1/15s


This is Kasper, a gorgeous and very large horse. He was waiting to go back into the stable. The yellow light is from one little really old light bulb to the left.
D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 12mm, ISO 1600, f2.8, 1/15s


Supplies
D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 11mm, ISO 1600, f2.8, 1/13s


Old car
D300, Nikkor 18-200mm at 44mm, ISO 800, f4.5, 1/6s

Winter in the polder

Nostalgia
D300 at ISO 800, Nikkor 18-200 mm f3.5 at 95mm, f/5.3, 1/40s


Winter 2
D300 at ISO 1600, Tokina 11-16,mm f2.8 at 11.5mm, f/2.8, 1/20s

Photographers at Mesa Arch

The Gaggle

Last November, I was in Canyonlands for a ride around White Rim. The first night I arrived there (Hallow's eve) I visited False Kiva, which is an awesome archeological site. After a very frosty night, I got up early enough to break down my tent (frost on it!) and drive over to Mesa Arch trailhead. This is an extremely popular site for photographers to go in the morning as it is a 10 minute hike to a very spectacular view. The rising sun lights the canyon wall below this arch and makes the bottom glow bright red. When I got to the trailhead, a truck pulls up next to me and it turns out to be my buddy Dave. He apparently arrived at the campground very late at night and slept in the back of his truck and heard me drive off, jumped up and followed me. Dave must have been very cold, but he is probably used to it as he is a colonel in the Air Force that spent quite a bit of time in various places around the world. I have had a gallery up on smugmug for a while that I will describe on my blog some time in the future. For now, here are some pictures of the gaggle of photographers that showed up. It can get much worse apparently.


Did we get the shot?


My buddy Dave and my homemade panohead.

Leaning

A light tower at the Apex park trailhead framed against a threatening sky

Apex park

Apex open space is one of my favorite places to ride my bike because it is right around the corner from where I work. A typical ride there takes 45 minutes to 1:15 if I ride every trail in there. So great for a lunch ride. I usually carry my phone and take some pictures.

These are from two days ago when it was raining incessantly, but I still was crazy enough to go out.

Pano from 4 vertical pictures. My boss called me on the phone right here so good opportunity to take a few pictures.

Lone tree


Light and dark


The next day (so yesterday) I went there again and took these on the enchanted forest trail

Cathedral


Snake

I have an older image also in black and white looking at this same bowed tree from the other direction.

I have photographed many times in this park. This year the flowers are late and there are no Arnicas yet. There are quite a few Larkspur, mouse ears, and white violets out. The Arnicas are my favorite in this park though.

It's not about the camera - photoshoot with just an iphone and some reflectors

These folks did a followup on a the f-stoppers iphone photoshoot. It's a session with just an iPhone and a few reflectors. Some great pictures coming out of there, proving again that the photographer matters most.

Macs finally getting targetted

I came across this hilarious rather crude, but mac targeted fake antivirus ad today trying to make me think I was infected. Looked like a redirect done by an ad on a major commercial website (salon.com in this case). These people are worse even than bicycle thieves. I am not linking to it and you should not try typing over the address to the website.

Edit: hilarious take on the hubbub by the Macalope.

Amazing sunrise on Sprague Lake

The following images are from a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park back in January. I was planning to hike up to one of the high mountain lakes from Bear Lake trailhead, but when I got to the trailhead early before sunrise it was blowing snow really hard up there and was dastardly cold. Not conditions in which you want to hike for a few hours and not get anything worthwhile. I waited for an hour or so drinking my coffee and eating some sandwiches to see whether the weather would let up. But it didn't and I decided to go back down. The clouds that the snow was dumping out were really only hanging on the peaks around the basin and going down I noticed that it was relatively clear around Sprague lake. Sprague Lake is a popular very short trail that you can hike around with kids and be back before the whining starts. In winter it offers nice views of the basin. I hiked up the lake and found a great position and some interesting structures in the snow and the sunrise was spectacular. These images are taken away from the basin that kept being shrouded in clouds.


Symmetry. Buy a print. Also on flickr.
Assembled from 9 images (3 rows of 3) at 50mm, ISO 200, f/16, 1/20s


The wave. Horizontal crop of the above image. Buy a print.


Blobs. Buy a print.
Assembled from 9 images (3 rows of 3) at 50mm, ISO 200, f/16, 1/20s


Red dawn. A little later the colors changed. Buy a print.
Assembled from 10 images (2 rows of 5) at 50mm, ISO 200, f/16, 1/20s.

It was incredibly cold standing there in the blowing wind over the ice but undoubtedly better than up higher.

Scientific principles for everybody's toolkit

I ran across this very nice article where quite a few prominent scientists and geeks were asked which scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit. Richard Dawkins (a hero of mine) for example highlights the double blind experiment, which indeed is extraordinarily important in weeding out charlatans and hidden and subjective bias. The latter is something very insidious that the experimenter is often not even consciously aware of. It is well worth a read in its entirety.

The Dawkins contribution also reminded me of a fantastic talk at one of the TED conferences by James Randi. It is absolutely superb and I urge everybody to watch it.

Lake sunrise accidental timelapse

left top: ISO 100, 18-55mm at 18mm, f/11, 10s, right top: 1/6s
left middle: f/13, 1/30s, right middle: 1/4s
left bottom: 1/13s, right bottom: f/11, 1/80s

Accidental timelapse of Blue lake during one sunrise. the Color changes from purple to bright yellow. A cloud on the horizon came by in the middle of the sequence lowering the shutter speed for two shots contrary to what you would expect. Didn't hurt the color though. There is a bigger version on flickr too.

I also created a funny timelapse of all my shots that morning in that direction. Since I moved around quite a bit, I had to align all the shots using hugin (an open source panorama creation tool) and to heavily crop to avoid the image jumping around too much. The video is available in HD on vimeo.

Sunrise timelapse at Blue Lake from Jao van de Lagemaat on Vimeo.