Golden Gate Bridge at Dusk

November 24, 2010

This was my favorite shot from the trip and was taken from the same location as the sunset version, though the difficulty of shooting without a boat in the frame was even more difficult due to the 44 second exposure. For some reason I like the muted color of the bridge, the purple and blue colors in the sky, the lights on the bridge, and the creamy look of the waves in the foreground.

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Golden Gate Bridge at Sunset

November 23, 2010

We had spectacular weather for our visit to San Francisco and I can’t miss attempts at photographing the landmark of the city – the Golden Gate Bridge. I figured, due to Fort Point’s vantage point underneath the bridge at the south side, I could get some nice shots of the bridge in addition to photographing the fort. Fortunately nature cooperated, providing great side lighting in the fort during the afternoon and nice sunset lighting on the Golden Gate Bridge as the sun went down.

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Spiral Staircase at Fort Point

November 20, 2010

A photograph looking up a spiral staircase at the Fort Point Historic Site in San Francisco, California. The shot would have been impossible without being able to move my tripod’s center post to the horizontal position. The trickiest part of the shot was stabilizing my tripod’s legs and getting to where I could frame the shot without knocking my gear into the stairwell.

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Officers’ Quarters at Fort Point

November 19, 2010

The officers’ quarters in Fort Point National Historic Site – San Francisco, California. I totally owe my wife for finding this spot and letting me know it was there. The perspective of the corridor of open doorways really leads the eye into the photograph, providing tremendous depth. Lining up the shot and timing it when nobody was wandering into the frame were quite the challenges on this one.

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Panoramic of San Francisco at Night

November 17, 2010

A panoramic photograph of the San Francisco skyline at night as seen from Alcatraz Island.

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Fort Point Corridor – San Francisco, California

November 15, 2010

If you are ever going to be in San Francisco, I highly recommend visiting Fort Point, which is just under the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It is an old fort that used to be armed to the gills with cannon and it is a photographer’s dream. Of course, the history of the place is fascinating but I mainly wanted to visit for the photography. My wife was nice in tagging along but she loved the location, too. While I ran around like a kid in a candy store she read the history of the place.

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Haystack Rock at Dusk

August 16, 2010

Dusk is my favorite time of day because of the colors on display – a mix of cool blues and purples with vivid, warm oranges, reds, and yellows. I feel that dusk has a certain mood to it that makes for great pictures and, fortunately, I don’t have to get up early in the morning to capture it! These photos were taken a bit after the one in yesterday’s post. I was looking for a shot that would focus primarily on the waves crashing against Haystack Rock but, once I got to what I thought might be a good location to do so, I realized I could go wide and capture a pretty moody picture due to the darkness settling in, the setting sun, and the amazing looking rocks in the water. I swapped lenses, framed the shot, and then got the camera setup on the tripod. I took probably fifteen different shots like this with varying compositions, with and without a polarizing filter (I wanted the extra stops of darkness the polarizer would provide – and thus a longer shutter speed – rather than using the filter for its polarizing capabilities). I also timed my shots to coincide with different patterns in the waves [...]

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Cannon Beach at Sunset

August 15, 2010

Cannon Beach in Oregon is one of the most spectacular beaches I have been to. It’s a beautiful town with well-maintained beach homes and great, scenic coastline. If you’re looking for rugged Oregon coastline then Cannon Beach isn’t the location to visit, but it has sandy beaches and some unique, scenic coastline (especially if you have seen the movie “Goonies”). I visited Cannon Beach for a couple of days and hoped to get some good weather. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy the entire time I was there but there was a brief period during which the sun made an appearance and I had made the trip to the beach in hopes that I could capitalize on the brief opening in the clouds during sunset. After searching for a decent location I settled in and waited for the sun to work its magic. I tried to time my shots properly so as to capture the warm sunlight and good waves along the beach. I was hoping for the waves to provide some leading lines into the frame and I was able to get some decent lines to coincide with the excellent lighting we briefly received. The one real difficulty for me was the large number of [...]

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Snow Canyon State Park – First Visit

July 6, 2010

I had to go to St. George for work this past week so we decided to make a family trip of it. My wife and kids had never been to either Zion or Bryce National Park so, in addition to lounging by the pool (well, the family did more of that than I did as I had to work), we hopped over to those parks for some hiking and to enjoy the beautiful scenery. We also managed to make it to Snow Canyon State Park, which is just north of St. George. I had never been there but I heard that it was quite amazing and, I must say, the reports are accurate. It was beautiful and I was able to spend a brief amount of time taking some photos. Since I had never been there I wasn’t sure what to expect or when the best light would be available, but I took some shots anyway. We made our way over there at about 6:00 PM and the lighting was decent. Though we didn’t have much time to spend hiking and photographing, it was a lot of fun and I definitely plan on returning when I have more time for photography. The below shot was [...]

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Hayden Peak in Spring

June 18, 2010

Hayden Peak is in the Uinta Mountains in northern Utah. The Uintas are one of the only east-to-west mountain ranges in the Western Hemisphere and is one of the largest primitive wilderness areas within the United States. We are lucky to have such beautiful country so close to home. We took a family trip up there today and schedules permitted me to hang around Hayden Peak for sunset. This is a shot I’ve had on my “to photograph” list for some time so I was happy for the chance. My first couple of compositions were not too pleasing but I settled with my third composition. All framed the peak with the pines as you see here but I tried different angles, finally settling on this one. I wish there had been more dramatic skies but you work with what you have, I guess. I do like the frozen lake toward the bottom of the frame, though. The blue water coming through the ice is pretty neat. Oh, and I had to break out the trusty hyperfocal distance table to get the focus just right.

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