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Every October I travel back to Michigan to spend a weekend (reunion?) with my closest college friends. We rent a house on the lake (not so much this year, but there was a river!), cook a lot of amazing food, drink a lot of drinks, and have a good ol' time just hanging out and forgetting about the real world for a while. Living in California this is a great time for me to catch up with my friends and remind them that I still exist! For me, it's also a great chance to photograph the fall colors, as they're usually in full bloom while I visit! Sadly, this year was about a week too late but I decided to try something different….. When we went out to the river to start a campfire I brought my camera with me. I pointed it to the sky a bit, bumped the ISO up a tad, opened up the aperture to let as much light in as possible and then let the timer just start taking 1 min, 45 second photos over and over. I only let it go about 45 minutes so I don't have much of a time-lapse but I did get some neat images here. It's amazing how much color the camera can pick out just off the moon and a campfire! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/2.8, 105 sec, ISO 500, Tripod No HDR, minor adjustments only
Pink Valley View Yosemite National Park California I've been following David Shield's photos for a while on Flickr and over the past year or so we've built up a Flickr friendship. David lives in the area and we tend to be in similar places at the same time but never in the *same exact spot* at the same time. I let David know that we'd be in Yosemite this last weekend and he replied that he would be too -- at Valley View for sunset! Valley View was about the last place we wanted to shoot since it's shot over and over and over again (and I already have several photos from Valley View) so we thought we might meet up with him afterwards. Willie, Will and I scouted all over Yosemite Valley for the perfect autumn sunset location. Unfortunately mother nature was working against us and the leaves hadn't turned color yet or where they had, it was pretty ugly spot other than 1 pretty tree. We finally decided to just go to Valley View and meet David. We arrived to Valley View pretty late and had to rush to find a spot. I setup at the typical spot but I really liked that the low river exposed rocks and shrubs that I had never seen before! As the sun set the granite began to glow pink -- which was actually pretty awesome! Towards the end of the show David finally strolled over and asked if we were us and sure enough, we met David Shields! Super nice guy and I'm glad I finally got to meet him. Hopefully we can meet up again for some future shooting. If you haven't seen his photos, stroll on over to his stream! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S 17mm, f/13, 0.5 sec, ISO 200 B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer, Hitech Soft ND Grad's Color Cast removed using recommendation from D Breezy
Golden Hour Bokeh Yosemite National Park California After freezing all night in our tent cabin we woke up early to try to grab some great morning light. Willie and Will wanted to take photos of a big tree in an open meadow with Half Dome but I wasn't all that interested so I threw on the macro lens and walked around the meadow. I've already posted one shot but I thought I'd post this other perspective of the same little flower guy. I thought there was some nice shape to this plant other than just the dew (which I posted previously). I also loved the bokeh in this shot Nikon D300s w/Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro: 105mm, f/6.3, 1/25 sec, ISO 400, Tripod
Spikey Thingy Plant Yosemite National Park California After freezing all night in our tent cabin we woke up early to try to grab some great morning light. Willie and Will wanted to take photos of a big tree in an open meadow with Half Dome but I wasn't all that interested so I threw on the macro lens and walked around the meadow. While walking around I found this neat little spiky flower thing that had some frost/dew on it (which you can barely tell) and I thought it had some great shape. This photo's kinda boring, kinda simple but also kinda interesting and neat. Not much to say about it but thought i'd share! Nikon D300s w/Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro: 105mm, f/2.8, 1/160 sec, ISO 400
Sunrise over Lake Michigan lights up the trees all red and glowy
Perfect Falls Lower Bridealveil Falls Yosemite National Park, CA For anyone who's followed my photos for a while this photo may be familiar. I took a very very similar shot about 2-3 years ago. 2 years ago I discovered (as did many others) that when the falls are barely trickling you can walk into the rocks and towards the granite rock face behind Bridalveil. When you get closer all of a sudden this gorgeous little waterfall opens up (I'll call it Lower Bridalveil Falls). I originally took this on a Nikon D40x, handheld, since i had decided to leave my camera/tripod in the car (oops!). I've been wanting to take a better (high quality) photo ever since. Willie, Will, and I only had about 40 minutes before we wanted to hit the road so we ran super fast to the start of the little river where I knew this waterfall would be. We had to slow down when we got to the rocks because they were REALLY slippery and it was fairly complicated making our way through the maze of rocks over to Lower Bridalveil. We got there, setup our tripods as best we could, clicked away, and then raced back. Unfortunately Willie slipped at one point and bumped his shin a bit. He could still walk but it was uncomfortable. I'm not sure I like my new photo better but it was taken with a better camera, with better glass, and with a tripod, so yea. Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 27mm, f/10, 0.4 sec, ISO 200, Tripod B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer. Can't remember if I used ND Grad's
A couple years back I was in Yosemite when there wasn't much water and I was able to walk all the way into Bridalveil Falls, almost to the rock face behind the falls. Along the way I found an amazing little mini-falls that turned into one of my favorite photos. While preparing for this Yosemite trip I noticed that Yosemite falls still had water, although only a trickle. I figured that we might be able to get pretty close to Lower Yosemite Falls and it might also make for an interesting photo. Early Sunday morning we woke up and drove over to the lower falls. The water was just a trickle and we could walk along the rocks to get closer to Lower Yosemite Falls. Embarrassingly, along the rock-skipping journey I heard a giant "Rrrrrrriiiiiiiipppp" and looked down to see that my pants had split along my thigh! Luckily they held together long enough to take my photos and get back to my campsite to change. Anyways, I digress…. We were able to get surprisingly close to the rock face that hides behind Yosemite Falls and along the way I kept noticing that where Lower Yosemite Falls hits the rock and creates another falls was this gorgeous scene, which you see above. The further back I walked the better the scene got. The sun started to creep up the granite rock face so I through on the polarizer to block some of the glare off the rocks and used my ND grad's to darken the area that was starting to see the sun. Although I really liked this photo in color (see extra photo in the comments), I thought that a sepia version might make this more unique. I liked that it gave this an almost old time feel to the falls -- like an antique photo! In other news, my newly ordered (but slightly used) D700 arrives soon! I'm excited! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S 42mm, f/16, 0.6 sec, ISO 160, Feisol Tripod B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer, Hitech 0.9 ND Soft, and 0.6 ND Soft.
California Falls Too, Ya Know Yosemite National Park California Willie, Will, and I specifically spent last weekend in Yosemite so that we could capture the fall colors. Unfortunately on Saturday there wasn't much color and while there was a bit more on Sunday, we didn't really find any photogenic spots to photograph. It seemed like all the colorful trees were next to boring ugly spots and not next to anything pretty, like the Merced River. We arrived around 2pm and spent the next 3.5 hours trying to find a spot for sunset. While exploring I walked down to the Merced River where I had seen a couple yellow trees. Although the trees were on the wrong side of the river for sunset, there were numerous leaves that had fallen and made for pretty photos. Note that the leaves fell on this log on their own. I did not place anything or alter the scene in any way. I also did not increase the saturation in this photo. About the only thing I did was reduce some of the noise from taking it at ISO 640 on my D300s. Lazily I left my camera bag in the car and only had my 17-35mm lens on. It would have been better if I had the 24-70 or my 105mm macro but oh well. This came out great anyways. I had to use LiveView to get low and get close enough to this leaf! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S 35mm, f/2.8, 1/250 sec, ISO 640, Handheld
Every October I travel back to Michigan to spend a weekend (reunion?) with my closest college friends. We rent a house on the lake (not so much this year, but there was a river!), cook a lot of amazing food, drink a lot of drinks, and have a good ol' time just hanging out and forgetting about the real world for a while. Living in California this is a great time for me to catch up with my friends and remind them that I still exist! For me, it's also a great chance to photograph the fall colors, as they're usually in full bloom while I visit! Sadly, this year was about a week too late but I decided to try something different…..

When we went out to the river to start a campfire I brought my camera with me. I pointed it to the sky a bit, bumped the ISO up a tad, opened up the aperture to let as much light in as possible and then let the timer just start taking 1 min, 45 second photos over and over. I only let it go about 45 minutes so I don't have much of a time-lapse but I did get some neat images here. It's amazing how much color the camera can pick out just off the moon and a campfire!

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/2.8, 105 sec, ISO 500, Tripod
No HDR, minor adjustments only
Every October I travel back to Michigan to spend a weekend (reunion?) with my closest college friends. We rent a house on the lake (not so much this year, but there was a river!), cook a lot of amazing food, drink a lot of drinks, and have a good ol' time just hanging out and forgetting about the real world for a while. Living in California this is a great time for me to catch up with my friends and remind them that I still exist! For me, it's also a great chance to photograph the fall colors, as they're usually in full bloom while I visit! Sadly, this year was about a week too late but I decided to try something different….. When we went out to the river to start a campfire I brought my camera with me. I pointed it to the sky a bit, bumped the ISO up a tad, opened up the aperture to let as much light in as possible and then let the timer just start taking 1 min, 45 second photos over and over. I only let it go about 45 minutes so I don't have much of a time-lapse but I did get some neat images here. It's amazing how much color the camera can pick out just off the moon and a campfire! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/2.8, 105 sec, ISO 500, Tripod No HDR, minor adjustments only
Every October I travel back to Michigan to spend a weekend (reunion?) with my closest college friends. We rent a house on the lake (not so much this year, but there was a river!), cook a lot of amazing food, drink a lot of drinks, and have a good ol' time just hanging out and forgetting about the real world for a while. Living in California this is a great time for me to catch up with my friends and remind them that I still exist! For me, it's also a great chance to photograph the fall colors, as they're usually in full bloom while I visit! Sadly, this year was about a week too late but I decided to try something different…..

When we went out to the river to start a campfire I brought my camera with me. I pointed it to the sky a bit, bumped the ISO up a tad, opened up the aperture to let as much light in as possible and then let the timer just start taking 1 min, 45 second photos over and over. I only let it go about 45 minutes so I don't have much of a time-lapse but I did get some neat images here. It's amazing how much color the camera can pick out just off the moon and a campfire!

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
17mm, f/2.8, 105 sec, ISO 500, Tripod
No HDR, minor adjustments only
See photo in original gallery.
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