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Annular Solar Eclipse Stanford Dish Palo Alto, CA Update: View my timelapse video of the entire event here. An annular solar eclipse doesn't happen all that often but on May 20, 2012 it happened to fall on the same day as one of my favorite Bay Area California events: Bay to Breakers (B2B). B2B is a race from one end of the SF Bay to the other end of SF by the Ocean (thus "Bay" to "Breakers"). While a number of people actually run the race, the real fun is for all the non-runners who dress up in costumes, have a couple drinks, and then just have one big massive party as they walk the course (usually not getting to the end). Instead of skipping B2B and driving up to Tahoe or Reno to witness the full annual eclipse, I decided to compromise and did both. My group of friends decided to dress as American Gladiators. Our costumes turned out great and I had an absolute blast. Unfortunately, we had so much fun that I didn't get home until 5:15pm -- right when the annual solar eclipse was starting! I changed out of my costume, grabbed my gear, and raced to the Stanford Dish, which is both a hiking trail and a giant Satellite Dish that a number of small satellites communicate with. The hike is paved, wide open, and a bit higher in elevation. I figured I'd get a good view of the sun from there. When I arrived I had planned on hiking to the highest point on the hike. As soon as I went up the first big hill I noticed a very large group of people viewing the eclipse from right there. Not only was the spot good enough, but it also had a perfect view of "The Dish". I figured I could get a photo of the eclipse and blend it in with a photo of The Dish (I later decided perhaps I won't cheat and do this). I setup shop and started snapping away. To get this shot I had to buy a special Solar Filter for my camera -- essentially a really dark cover for the camera -- so that I didn't fry my sensor. It pretty much kills all light and only lets the sun in, so all I saw with the sun and a bunch of black. At the same time as buying the filter, I picked up a bunch of 99cent solar glasses for viewing with your eye. I brought a couple with me in case people would appreciate sharing. Turns out I was right -- by the end of the evening I had a large group of new friends that were all huddled around me, sharing the solar glasses or looking at the photos through my camera. Eventually I just left the camera on LiveView as my intervalometer clicked away photos every 20 seconds. I put them 11 photos together onto one image to show you how the 90% of the moon covered the sun! I met a number of really wonderful people today. It was so fun to share the solar glasses and the photos from my camera with all of you. I hope your children also have a renewed excitement for science education! The next solar eclipse will occur on August 20th, 2017 and will be a total eclipse as it crosses from the Columbia River through Georgia. Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 200mm, f/5, 1/60 sec sec, ISO 400 11 photos combined in Photoshop CS5
Drenched Cascade Falls Yosemite National Park, CA Last year Willie, Will, and I got our first great moonbow photo while on top of the Upper Yosemite Falls trail. Thanks to some professors in Texas just about anyone can find out when the moon bows in Yosemite will occur. Trying to avoid the hoards of crowds at the Sentinal Bridge parking lot we decided to try to find a more unique moonbow and something different from last year. Willie and I had seen a number of timescape videos, most notably Steve Bumgardner's official video for the Yosemite Conservancy, in which moonbows were photographed at Cascade Falls. We knew we had to try this! I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get to the proper location to shoot a moonbow at Cascade Falls. You need to get high enough and east enough to get around a jut in the rocks (you can see it here, where the water flows over, blocking the top of the falls) to get the proper angle to see the top of the falls, which has a really nice "S" curve to it. I used Google Earth and a number of other peoples images to get a vague idea of what we had to do. We found out that Steve traveled up from the bottom (along highway CA-140) but I thought you might be able to drop in from the top. When I arrived at Yosemite on Saturday I quickly ruled out the top-down approach. I hopped in the car, drove down to the bottom, and started on up. After an hour of completely sweating, super steep climbing, and searching high and low, I gave up on finding "the perfect spot". It was just too dangerous and without proper climbing gear I couldn't see any way to get to the spot that Steve took his photo. Dropping down a bit we found a nice area that gave a beautiful view of the main falls. In the afternoon weather the area was dry and pretty easy to get to. When Willie, Will, and I returned at night we were in for a shock -- the winds had picked up and were spraying mist all over the spot! Not wanting to be drenched for 2 hours we moved back to a safe distance where we go stay both dry and warm. There was a super moon this evening (the largest moon of the year) and we had hoped that its brightness would put on a great moonbow show, but we didn't know when exactly it would start. Every so often I would head back out to the falls to double check on the moonbow. Finally around 9:10pm we saw a faint bow and raced back to get our gear. It was super slippery on the rocks to our spots and we took extra caution not to slip and die. By now it felt like it was raining and we knew we had to be quick to get our shots. Proper planning was key to this. I brought along a rain-shield for my camera to keep my camera dry and attached the hood to the lens helped reduce a small amount of water hitting the lens. I also brought along 5 micro-fiber cloths because I knew I'd be wiping the lens dry quite often and they would get wet fast. I had just enough time to wipe the lens clean and then take a shot before the lens was completely covered. I went through 3 micro-fiber cloths in the 35 minutes that we were out there. Once we finally returned to dry land we realized how *completely* soaked we all were. It wasn't until the sun came up the next day that I was able to fully dry all my equipment! This years moon bows were much more faint than last years. We could just make out a silvery bow with our eyes, compared to last years full blast of color. Additionally, it wasn't until I looked at the LCD later that I realized we caught a small hint of a DOUBLE MOONBOW! Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 42mm, f/4, 30 sec, ISO 640
Eagle Ray Sunrise at Eagle Falls Lake Tahoe, California After Willie and I watched a beautiful sunrise over Emerald Bay we decided to see how easy it would be to find Eagle Falls. We knew the general location but we weren't sure if the falls was right off the trail, if we had to hike down to the lake, or what. Turns out it's a LOT easier to find than we thought. And by a lot easier I mean it's literally right off the road (you can see it from the road). It took a little bit of log walking, tree branch hangin' on, and some skippin' over rocks to get over here to get the composition we wanted. By this time the clouds were rollin' in pretty heavily and although we knew the color was gone we thought we'd have some fun taking some test shots anyways. I wanted to use the branches to add some interest to the foreground as well as frame the shot. I figured the tree could help frame this as well. The sunrise managed to squeak through the clouds and made a couple light-rays which I thought were neat. Without any color I thought I'd turn this into a black and white and see how it turned out. I used Nik's Silver Efex Pro to convert this and pull out some contrast and structure in the photo. Did I over process this? After the conversion I tried to pull the contrast back even more but I think a lot of that motion was in the RAW file from the long exposure. Thoughts? Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/9, 0.5 sec, ISO 100 B+W Circular Polarizer + HiTech 0.6 Soft Grad ND
End of the Road Old Mill Beach Westport, Connecticut Back in March I flew home to surprise my mom for her "30th Birthday" (at least that's what we're calling it). My brothers flew in and a couple of her best friends also made the treck over. She was completely surprised and we had a wonderful weekend! The weather also turned out to be absolutely perfect and I spent one night eating fried chicken on a picnic blanket at the beach while we "watched" the sunset "together". I say "watched" and "together" in quotes because it was more like my mom sitting on the picnic blanket while I ran around with my camera trying to snap photos, and occasionally coming back for a couple minutes while my Lee Big Stopper exposed a 5 minuet shot. Earlier in the day it had been pretty cloudy at the beach and I ran home and grabbed my camera and dashed back to the beach. I threw on the Lee Big Stopper to see if I could capture some cloud movement. This is a long exposure at Old Mill Beach, Westport, CT; LE to make the water glassy and make some nice pastel motions in the sky. Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 24mm, f/22, 111 sec, ISO 100, Tripod B+W Circular Polarizer + Lee Big Stopper
Purple jacket
Pretty necklace
Out of this world
Reading her card
Pretty necklace
Pretty necklace
Pretty necklace
See photo in original gallery.
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