Vortex

Liberty bell and Merced river, Yosemite National Park, Christmas 2011. Buy a print.
Tech data for the nerds: Nikon D300, Tokina 11-16mm at 11mm, f/5.6, 1/60s, ISO 200 handheld
Google+ post. Same image on flickr.

This was from a late afternoon hike with my daughter to Nevada Falls on Christmas day. The image was processed in Lightroom 4 beta which is able to extract amazing amounts of shadow detail from images such as this. Normally I would have used a grad neutral density filter here but this was just a grabshot at the moment. I also created a black and white version of this that I really like:


Liberty bell and Merced river Black and White, Yosemite National Park, Christmas 2011. Buy a print.
Same tech data as above.

Ice fall in black and white

I suddenly remembered that I had visualized the icy waterfall image (Vernal falls in Yosemite) from a few days ago in black and white. Shades of Ansel I guess. I only looked at the images many days later when I got home as I intentionally did not bring a laptop on our Cali vacation so I forgot about that completely. I was taken away by the fact that the late afternoon light came through much better than I had anticipated in the raw images and so the color version was still great. Anyway, here is the image as I imagined it would turn out. I like this quite a bit myself.


Ice Fall Black and White. Buy a print. Same image on flickr. Google+ post.
High resolution composite of 9 images from a Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 18-55 mm DX lens at 32 mm, f/11, and 1/4 second shutter. Field of view equivalent to using a 11.5 mm lens on DX or 17 mm on a full frame camera.

El Capitan sunset

During the few days over Christmas I spent with my family in Yosemite, we had just gorgeous weather every day. Unfortunately for photography that is not ideal. There also was not a flake of snow in sight. Nevertheless I got some nice images out of the trip. The below is a sunset image looking at El Capitan and Bridal Veil falls. I believe this view is called "Gates of the Valley". When I got here in the evening before sunset it looked like nothing was going to happen as some high clouds were turning everything dull and gray. However, for two minutes or so right at sunset, the sun peeked below those clouds. I shot of a few guide images using my Tokina 11-16mm and then created a composite using my nodal ninja rotator and a 35 mm lens. The light had already faded before I was able to change my setup to get a high res image, so the red is more soft than it was in the guide images and the contrast lower. Also in this image, the red is like a little band of light instead of the entire top of the rock. I like it this way.

El Capitan sunset. Buy a print. Google+ post. Flickr image.
High resolution composite stitched from 9 images from a Nikon D300. Nikkor 35 mm f1.8 DX at f/11, 0.5s, ISO 200. 1 stop grad ND applied in software.

As a comparison, here is a guide image that I shot right before the high resolution composite above.


Red, White, and Blue. Buy a print.
Nikon D300. Tokina 11-16 mm f2.8 at 14 mm, f/11, 0.6s, ISO 200. 2 stop graduated ND.

The red was much brighter here than in the high resolution image taken a minute later or so. A nice example of how much timing matters in landscape photography.

Sequioa

This is an image of a group of giant sequioa that can be seen in the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park. This group is very well known and is called the "Bachelor and the Three Graces." As the google link before shows, one can find thousands of images of this across the web. This photo breaks all the rules you are supposed to follow for the photography of these trees. They should be in fog (no fog for any of the days we were in Yosemite so no go there), snow (no snow in Yosemite this year!), and definitely not full sunlight. I largely just focused on the composition of the image with the foreground tree dark and brooding and the background trees (the graces in the name) in radiant sunlight and to juxtaapose these. I basically took it to hone my skills. To my surprise it actually is quite an interesting image. I made a 16x20 print of it that is just luminescent with beautiful deep but detailed shadows and radiant highlights. The detail on the bark in this high resolution image is stunning (at least I think so ;-) ). The image is pretty close to how it came from camera and stitching.


Bachelor and three (?) graces. Buy a print.
Composite of 12 images. D300, ISO 200, nikkor 18-55mm at 48 mm, f/11, 1/10s. Circular polarizer.

I also generated a tighter image that I took to black and white. It is meant to convey the size and solidity of the trees by excluding most of them.


trunks. Buy a print.
Composite of 9 images. D300, ISO 200, nikkor 18-55mm at 48 mm, f/11, 1/10s. Circular polarizer.

For those socially inclined:
Flickr image. Google+ post.

Ice Fall

This image was taken on Christmas day at Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park. I hiked up to this falls and the next one with my daughter. This year, there was basically no snow whatsoever in Yosemite making the waterfalls run very low. People working in the park were all worried and surprised by this long drought. Normally this falls is as wide as the lighter area you can see in the image. It was cold enough however for the water mist to freeze up. Quite spectacular. I tried to capture the extreme contrast in light and feeling between warm mountain and cold waterfall here.


Ice fall. Buy a print.
50 MP Composite of 9 images from a Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 18-55 mm DX lens at 32 mm, f/11, and 1/4 second shutter. Field of view equivalent to using a 11.5 mm lens on DX or 17 mm on FX.
Same image on flickr. Google+ post on the image.