Tag Archives: Nikon

Wander with Friends

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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

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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!

The Milky Way, a Shooting Star, and Mt Grinnell over Swiftcurrent Lake in Glacier National Park

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Mt Grinnell, the Milky Way, and a Shooting Star over Swiftcurrent Lake in Glacier National Park

Took this photo a month ago while camping in Glacier National Park. This is a still from a timelapse sequence I was shooting. I’ll be posting that video soon enough! In any case, I thought the lake and the reflection of the sky would be a nice foreground element, but with the water moving so much (the aptly named swift current), it does reduce the reflection quite a bit.

Supermoonar Eclipse in Montana

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A little over a week ago, I spent some time out visiting my brother in Montana. I got to check out a bunch of awesome festivities at the school he works at, attend a powwow, and help take some photos at the cross country meet he organized. During that time, there was a supermoon, and a lunar eclipse happening. Pretty awesome stuff, but conditions weren’t super great for viewing, as it was cloudy out as the moon was rising, so we missed out on seeing the supermoon at it’s biggest… when it’s near the horizon. So, with that, I set up my cameras to take some timelapses as the moon came up and went through the eclipse.

Since I’ve been roadtripping, I didn’t have the gear with me that I really wanted to shoot the moon… a 300mm lens with a teleconverter, so I was stuck with just using what I had (aww, poor me…). Anyway, I did learn a few things through this process…

  • The lunar eclipse is hard to shoot and have a very balanced image with the bright part of the moon, and the eclipsed part of the moon properly exposed. So kudos to those who did it super well.
  • When shooting timelapse with a long lens, you have to shoot at a different frequency, as the motion of the moon (rotation of the earth) is more exaggerated due to the longer focal length.
  • And, contrary to milky way photos, you are probably better off shooting somewhere bright, like in the city, so as to match the moon’s brightness more, and create a more dynamic image (instead of just the moon on a black background, you could have the moon against a lit up city skyline).
  • You’ll probably want a super long focal length and a subject far away to exaggerate the size of the moon in comparison to the subject.

Anyway, those are some of my takeaway thoughts on this process. The final-ish product is below… Take a looksee and tell me what you think. (And hopefully, that’s the only time I ever use the word “looksee” on my blog.)

Also, consider watching on the vimeo site for the HD quality version.

Oregon Through Timelapse

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A General Life Update Where I Make Excuses:

So, it’s been more than a little while since I’ve updated… I’ve been focusing more on film photography this summer, so there hasn’t been as much to share. I have a few rolls that I’ve stashed away, that I am hoping to develop and scan myself, but am holding off until I have a few more rolls finished.

I have picked up a few new cameras, which I really should feature in a little “cameraporn” series, so I will try to do that in the next few weeks. It’ll be a Fujica GW690II, and a Mamiya RZ67proII. I am really enjoying the image quality from these larger sized medium format cameras… You’ll see what I mean when I finally get around to posting those pics.

In any case, you’ll likely be seeing a few more updates than you have been getting from me earlier this year, since now I have a bit more time on my hands… Why you ask? (Well, I’ll tell you, even though you didn’t ask.) Well, because a couple weeks ago, the company I was working at laid me off…

At first, I was a little upset, and maybe a little surprised, although I shouldn’t have been. The past year, my company had merged with another, and I had been working to manage the process of several plant closures we had been going through to achieve the “synergy targets” that the board was looking for. It meant I was in the know on some layoffs, even if I had no real control over them or how it happened. But, they layoffs continued with a voluntary separation, and then involuntary layoffs. I made it through those, but then the company made some organizational changes, and decided they didn’t need project manager any longer. It was just strange to be on both sides of the coin there. No major qualms about it though; it’s actually been quite a blessing in disguise! It happened at an opportune time for me, as I had just been trying to finalize my plans for how I could stretch rest of my vacation time this year, only to find out, that I now have plenty of time to vacation!

I’m planning on taking some time to reevaluate what direction I want my career to head in, as well as take some time to explore and learn, and spend time with my loved ones. But enough about me…

And now to get to the point… Oregon Through Timelapse:

You may have seen the photos I posted when I camped in Oregon. I had done a few timelapses, which I compiled with a couple from the last time I was in Oregon to come up with this short video… I hope you like it! I put it together a a couple months ago, so I’m not sure why I’m just now getting around to sharing it! Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about the timelapses. I am never sure how much to bore people with details, and I’m probably a little to lazy to go back and look up anything without being sure people want to know!

Anyways, thanks as always for following, and reading my words and looking at my photos. I do a lot of this stuff for my own personal benefit, but it’s also nice to know that other people enjoy it too!