April | 2016 | Seldomly Updated

Somedays, it is hard to believe there is this much beauty in the world.

This past fall, I took my dog, Obie, with me on a roadtrip to the west coast. I had just been laid off from my job, and I had also just adopted Obie, so I figured that was as good a time as any to take a roadtrip, and hit some National Parks I hadn’t made it to yet. Here are some nice photos I took while I was in Glacier National Park.

Obie tests the waters of Swiftcurrent Lake

She says, “The water’s nice. Come on in.”

Dog-gone-wild.

Sunlight pushes past Mt. Grinnell

A Closer Look: Autumn Colors

I had previously shared this photo, but it was so good I had to post it again. I also have an alternate photo, shot simultaneously with my D700, which also happened to catch the same shooting star.

This is the alternate shot; with the 24mm f/1.4, you can see it has captured more details in the peaks rather than just the silhouette of the peaks.

A couple nights after the supermoon, but even without the full moon, it was bright enough to light up the scenery and obscure the Milky Way.

The next morning was a struggle to get up and moving. But when you have scenes like this, you can’t just sleep in. Long exposure shot with a 10 stop ND filter and a polarizing filter.

It was a lot colder than I anticipated in late September, and so I camping meant I had to sleep in my tent with multiple layers on in my sleeping bag. I camped at the Many Glaciers side of the park, and although the campsite was busy, I was able to find a spot even though I had showed up late that evening. There was a lot more of the park I missed, even though I ended up driving the Going-to-the-Sun Road on the way out, but I made relatively few stops there as I made my way further west.

Landscape photography can be hard in that way. If you don’t already have an idea of where to photograph, you might spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect spot, or you might waste a lot of time thinking there is a better spot somewhere else. In the end, you just have to work with what you have. Sometimes, you just aren’t spending enough time in a place to be too picky, and there are only certain windows of time which will allow you the photo you envisioned. And sometimes, you just get lucky with the right conditions and get to take home some nice photos.

Paris Underground 001

I took this photo 4 years ago in Paris, France, and I just found this sitting in draft form on my wordpress. (So consider this a #TBT, throwback Thursday.) The composition isn’t superb; the right side is lacking in something interesting, so it makes the image seem a little off-balance. What I really like about it is the timing. I’m impressed I was able to capture the image with with the gap in the train cars framing the fella in the back. I couldn’t tell you exactly what is happening with that dude, but hey, I like it.

I really liked that 20mm lens; it was small and compact, and at f/2.8, pretty dang fast. It does some weird distortions, so it’s not great for architecture or anything with a lot of straight lines, but you can fix some of that in post. But it’s great for discreet photos like this where you want a wide angle without standing out with a huge lens, and you can hand hold these slower shutter speeds without too much visible camera shake.