Drought's BaneSunset in Silicon Valley California I must have had some kind of precognition into the future because I don't normally keep my camera in the trunk of my car, but after trying to photograph the fog yesterday I decided to leave my camera in the trunk "just in case". Sure enough, that time happened to occur on Wednesday. Willie and I arrived at our favorite San Jose spot just as Lukas Wenger and his wife pulled up. Jave arrived shortly after and we set off to find "the cracks". I decided I wanted setup near some still water that I had found, knowing that I could shoot east or west from here and still include both cracks and reflection in the water. Turns out the sky in the east did nothing but man… the sky in the west!!! Wilson Ng and Matt Levine showed up just as the sunset started to get good. There weren't any of those high, thin, textured clouds that we photographers normally like. Instead, the entire sky just LIT up. Lit up is probably the wrong term -- it EXPLODED with color! Rain started to fall in the west and the rain clouds started turning yellow, orange, and pink! We stood there hooting and hollering at how beautiful the sky looked. Man was that a beautiful night! For anyone who wants to find this spot, I offer you a warning: Despite knowing the safety issues here, I pulled "a Willie" tonight. Our first time here Willie got stuck in the mud and had to be rescued by another friend. Knowing this, I am normally very careful and test each step before I put any weight down. At one point during this sunset I started walking around trying to find other compositions. As I walked around this little pond of water I started to see the entire pond just GLOW with beautiful red and orange colors; I wanted to get closer. I was so excited that I started to run. I took about 2 steps and realized I was stuck … knee deep in the thick, gross mud. I was able to get myself out but it could have easily been much worse for me. If you find this place, be extremely careful that you do NOT get stuck! Seriously -- even when I knew about, I still got stuck! Cleaning up the mud was not fun, took a long time, and smells horrible! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 17mm, f/18, 3 sec, ISO 80 Lee Filter Holder + HiTech 0.6 ND Grad
Jungle RetreatHacienda Concepcion, Amazon Rainforest Madre de Dios River, Peru For years I've wanted to travel to Peru to see 2 things: Machu Picchu and the Amazon Jungle. With my roommate finishing her PhD she decided she wanted to head to Peru for her graduation celebration and she invited me to tag along. We spent 2 weeks doing pretty much everything there was to do in Peru and it started with 4 days in the Amazon Rainforest! We flew into Puerto Maldonado and after a 30 minute boat ride we arrived at our jungle lodge, Hacienda Concepcion. Built within the last year, this retreat was absolutely wonderful. We all had private cabanas, complete with mosquito netting, private bathrooms, hammocks facing out onto the jungle, delicious food and amazing jungle excursions. This was by far the best part of our trip. The first night we arrived we were taken on a river tour by boat where we saw Caymen, birds, and some other animals that only come out at night. To my surprise, we also saw the Milky Way in all of its glory -- and boy was it visible to the naked eye. I got really excited because that meant I could break out the new D800 and give it a whirl! When we were back at the lodge I grabbed the camera and walked down to the area where our cabanas were situated. The cabanas were lit by very dim gas lanterns and gave off just enough light so that I could expose for both the milky way and the cabanas all in 1 exposure! Unfortunately I had left my ultra-wide lens at home, not thinking I'd need it for the trip, so instead I shot 16 images and stitched them together in Photoshop CS6. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 24mm, f2/.8, 25 sec, ISO 3200 16 images stitched together in Photoshop CS6
Emerald JewelsSunrise at Emerald Bay Lake Tahoe, California A couple weeks ago Willie asked me to reserve the weekend of March 30, 2012 for a photo-trip. About the same time, my roommate and a bunch of my friends decided to make that same weekend a Tahoe get-away/ski-trip weekend. I wanted to do both so I convinced Willie to join and we'd shoot Lake Tahoe. We had been monitoring the weather all week and it seemed like every 5 hours the report changed. A large storm was rolling in but nobody could decide when exactly it would hit. We knew we wanted to shoot Bonsai Rock (which I have previously photographed) and Emerald Bay. Planning this photo trip turned into a nightmare because we weren't sure what sunrises or sunsets would be good and we couldn't figure out if the roads would even be open. The road to Emerald Bay had been closed all week due to snow / avalanche control but finally opened as we drove up to Tahoe. Friday night we drove to Bonsai Rock and had a skunked sunset (but I did manage to get a photo that I was happy with thanks to the Lee Big Stopper, coming soon). Saturday morning we woke up at 5:15am (ouch), wiped the sand out of eyes and hit the road. I had done some research and found that Emerald Bay was not only really close to our cabin but also pretty easy to photograph. Just pull off on one of the turn-outs, find a spot that doesn't have trees, and shoot. We were the only ones on the road when we got to Emerald Bay and only a few cars passed us as we watched the sunrise. There were a LOT of clouds (as you can see) but we were lucky and an opening in the east allowed the sunrise to sneak through and light up the clouds. We were treated for a beautiful sunrise (finally Mama Nature played nice for us!). Thanks to a super massive wind that had blown in, Emerald Bay also had some neat wave action going on (which you can see in this photo). Willie used his new Singh-Ray Reverse ND Grad and was able to get a large dynamic range with very little clipping. My HiTech Reverse ND isn't as soft and was doing some ugly things to the hill on the left so I had to settle for 2 filters and some bracketing. This shot is a 2-exposure blend, although the underexposed photo was only used in the bright section on the right of the photo, above the mountains and below the clouds. Nikon D700 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S: 24mm, f/18, 10 sec, ISO 100 Lee Filter Holder + (0.9 + 0.3) HiTech Soft ND Grad's
