Patch of Columbine

I shot this image a few weeks ago in Mayflower Gulch. I was there with my daughter to photograph the sunset which is often spectacular there. This evening, we had mostly gray skies and light drizzle rain. We still had a good time and once in a while some color appeared. There actually were a few seconds of good color that I was lucky enough to catch (you might see one of the images next to this post in the featured gallery sidebar). I will blog about those images later. The Columbine image below is a high resolution stitch that will print 6 feet high while retaining exquisite detail.


Assembled from 9 images, D300, ISO 200, 18-55 mm Nikor at 35mm, f/16, 1/30s. Grad ND to darken the sky.
Buy a print of this image.
See this image on flickr.

Leafy forest

I've had this gallery linked as a featured gallery for a while now, but realized I should highlight some images. These were all shot on some hikes in the Blue Ridge mountains. I showed some waterfalls from the same place before here. First, the main smugmug gallery is here if you'd like to explore more.

Crossed purposes

Nikon D300, ISO 200, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 at 11mm, f/8, 1/40s. Buy a print.

lightplay

Nikon D300, ISO 200, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 at 11mm, f/8, 1/25s. Buy a print.

leafy

Nikon D300, ISO 200, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 at 11mm, f/16, 1/10s. Buy a print.

Patch

Nikon D300, ISO 200, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 at 11mm, f/16, 1/6s. Buy a print.

Soft bed

Nikon D300, ISO 200, Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 at 11mm, f/11, 1/13s. Buy a print.
See it in color here. The purplish white in the back are seas of mountain laurels. You can see more laurels here and here.

Lastly, a simple slideshow of all images in the smugmug gallery:

Browsers used on this blog

Is this a reflection of your geekiness?

(From Google Analytics for this site - a truly awesome and free resource)
The high occurrence of Safari is probably a reflection of the photographer crowd visiting this site, and Firefox and Chrome for the more computer geeks, but the very small amount of IE users visiting (only 17%) is a surprise to me. I use Safari, Firefox and Chrome myself and never use IE even on Windows machines but most of the people I know that use Windows still default to IE.

Black and white conversions of snowy landscapes

I was rummaging through old material in Lightroom recently and I noticed some shots from an awesome multihut ski trip I did a few years ago (2008) with some friends. I wrote then about it on my blog and my friend Teresa actually made a writeup of that trip at that time here, where you can see some of the very few photographs that ever got made of me (elusive guy). I am in the red wind shell most of the time in the pictures from Teresa.

Anyway, I noticed that I never got around stitching several multi-image shots I made back then. For weight I was carrying my old Nikon D50 with the kit lens and I did not bring a tripod (more booze could be packed this way). In some cases I was doing handheld multishot panoramas to create higher resolution landscapes. If you do this right, they can still be stitched well even though you might have to do a little touch up afterwards. I worked up a few of these lost landscapes and below I'll post some. I am most focusing here on the aspect of black and white conversion as I noticed that this really works well with some of these. For example, this shot from the front of the Goodwin/Greene hut was captured around sunset. The sun was coming through a thin cloud of snow crystals and generated this absolutely gorgeous light. I cannot believe I never stitched this image.


5 shots using a Nikon D50, 18-55mm kit lense at 18mm, ISO 200, f/10, 1/320s. Assembled in hugin. Pretty much as shot - no nasty HDR. Buy a print

This image really has to be seen large, which you can if you click on the link. To get back here use your browser's back button.

I converted this to black and white in Lightroom simulating a light red filter which again has to be seen large.

Buy a print

Another new image that I really like is this panorama of our group coming up on a pass, rising out of a foggy valley.

5 images from a Nikon D50, 18-55mm kit lens at 30 mm, ISO 200, f/11, 1/500s. Buy a print

In the same place, but looking in the other direction, I took this image:

6 images from Nikon D50, 18-55mm kit lens at 24mm, ISO 200, f/11, 1/500s. Buy a print.
At the moment, my blog's banner has another version of this image that was taken a few minutes later after the clouds on Castle and Cathedral peaks cleared up a little. This cloudy view is also quite nice and will print really nice large for on your wall ;-)

I have several more images waiting to be born in my library from this trip. We'll see when I get to them. I still have a gigantic backlog to deal with with some very nice images in them too that I haven't spoken about yet. I have a little picasa gallery of new snowy black and white conversions here.

Fourth of July Fireworks slideshow

4th of July fireworks from Jao van de Lagemaat on Vimeo.

These are shots I made of our town's 4th of July fireworks. The music is Calexico's Mid-Town from their album Hot Rail.

Earlier I posted the below quadtich on flickr:

The same image is also on picasa/Googleplus.

Mesa Arch

As I have written before, I visited Canyonlands last year in order to ride the white rim trail on my mountain bike. The bike I rode it unfortunately was stolen, but I digress. Because I got there the evening before (Halloween actually) our ride and was camping out on the campground (nobody there at that time of year), I visited false kiva in the evening and did Mesa Arch the next morning. A great surprise was to meet my buddy Dave at the trailhead. I have written about the gaggle of photographers at Mesa Arch before. This place is extraordinarily popular since it is an ultrashort hike and sunrise is spectacular. Some clouds would have made the scene better (with some gap light preferably) than I captured here but nevertheless I am happy with what I got.


Mesa Arch sunstar. Buy a print.
Assembled from 15 shots (3 rows of 5) at 35mm, ISO 200, f/16, 1/5s. This is an ultrahigh resolution image. In large prints, you will notice reflections from puddles of water standing in the little pits that you see all around white rim.


Why it glows. Buy a print.
Single shot, Nikon 18-55mm at 18mm, ISO 200, f/16, 1/40s handheld.


Everybody left, still glowing! Buy a print.
Single shot, Tokina 11-16mm at 11mm, ISO 200, f/8, 1/100s


Washerwoman and La Sals framed. Buy a print.
Single shot, ISO 200, 18-55mm Nikon at 48mm, f/9, 1/60s

See the entire gallery at my smugmug site. Many more Canyonlands images are here.