Glacier National Park

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Justin Le

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

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Justin Le

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.

Wigglegram

Posted on March 28, 2016 by Justin Le

Joey-and-Tracy

You may recall how I extolled the virtues of GIFs in a previous post. I mean, we are in the future now, and one can only expect to have moving portraits like they have in Harry Potter. I think they called them magical portraits, but I like to call them wigglegrams.

My friends Joey and Tracy were kind enough to ask me to take some photos of them for some save the dates cards they’ll be sending out. Of course, I never turn down an opportunity to hang out with friends, so we went out and wandered around their neighborhood of Old Town, Chicago. I found a nice wall to photograph them, and they decided to just levitate in front of it like this. Legend has it that they are still floating there to this day.

I kid, but I did take a couple of other nice photos of them. I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to include a lot more of the environment in these portraits, and I could mix it up with some tighter compositions. Anyway, I’m a little behind on posting these, but congrats Joey and Tracy! You are both great, and even more so together!

port-08 port-07

Wander with Friends

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Justin Le

Just returned from a trip overseas with some friends to the UK and Ireland. It’s amazing what a difference traveling with great friends is. I’ve done some solo trips where I’ve explored cities on my own, but it’s is so great to explore things you might not find on your own, or are what you think outside your interests.

I brought way too much camera equipment, and didn’t use some of it. I need to learn to travel lighter. It was my first time trying to travel with a film camera, but I still had to bring a digital camera with a few lenses. Next time, I’ll just bring my medium format Bronica ETRSi, and my Nikon D800 with the 35mm f/2.0. I’m excited to see how those film photos turned out, but for now, here’s a couple of quick photos.

Here’s a gif of us before going out to dinner.

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And here’s a pic of me sitting in a coffee shop in Dublin, with my new travel hat.

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It’s been a while… Cape Perpetua & The Milky Way

Posted on March 1, 2016 by Justin Le

Hi all, thanks for waiting patiently by your computer, tablets or mobile devices for me to update my blog. I promise I am going to do right by you, and I will start posting more. And doing so regularly. (My doctor says that being regular is good.) Sometimes I feel like the words I write are just filler, but I like to think of it as fiber, which will help you digest each of the photos I post.

Just about all the photos I post are in JPEG format. It’s a lossy compressed image format, and is short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, who set the standard for this format first in 1992. In all that time, the format and compression have improved, but sometimes, when I want to share a photo, a JPEG just isn’t gonna cut it. It’s just lacking something. Sometimes, you don’t want a still photo to be so… still. Here enters the GIF.

GIFs have been around since the mid-80’s, and they haven’t always been very good quality, but it’s beautiful what you can do with them these days. I took two photos, and aligned them in photoshop to make this lil animation. One is a nice silhouette (a word which I still need to use spell checker for) of the hillside and an awesome road sign, while the other image captures the glow from a car passing by on the road above.

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This is Cape Perpetua in Oregon. From my roadtrip in October. Oregon has so many beautiful oceanside campsites, it’s unfair. The reason I love these oceanside campsites are because 1) you can hear the waves as you drift off to sleep in your tent, b) you have an unobstructed view of the sunset and the milky way (when the weather is cooperative) and 3) you’re usually far away from light pollution.

Alright, thus ends this post. So, hopefully it’s not too long before my next post, but I appreciate you all waiting anyway!