My First Panorama Shot(s)

If you scroll down you will see my previous post about my trip to the Utah State Capital, these are panoramas I shot there. The bottom one is incomplete because the the panorama software had issues with the matching parts of the image and did some really weird distortions trying to make the two ends the same. Just a pain, so the bottom one only goes to the far side of the rotunda.

Anyway, Enjoy! This is a 180+ degree shot looking from the north side of the rotunda, rotating from the East Hall to the West Hall.

A Few Goofy Self Portraits

Not a self portrait shooter at all, not much of a portrait shooter really. Just don't enjoy it much. But I felt it was time to shoot a few "selfers" it came at a serendipitious time, there was a thread on DPReview on self portraits in the afternoon on Sat that I just happened to have images handy for. That was nice.

Anyway here I am in all my goofy glory.

This is at one of my favorite places by where I live. This is a manmade lake but I still love to go up there, it is peaceful and quiet and a place to think.

I can often be found in this position, thinking, or just trying to clear my mind. Don't tell me wife but I (on occasion) stop for a little while on my way home to take a breather before jumping into the chaos of kids and dinner and bedtime. Need to drink a little peace into my soul.

These next shots were taken in the Utah State Capital, see below for other interior shots. As I was getting ready to leave, after wandering the upper galleries, I noticed a shaft of light from one of the windows in the rotunda resting on the railing of the stairs. Being the goofball I am I couldn't resist laying on in for one shot.

These are all taken just to the right of that stair case. the light moved off the railing and onto the floor. I had a lot of fun with these.

Tough Guy pose. Yep, just a pose.....

Looking off into the ??????

I vill break you!!!

Uh Oh, the aliens are about to beam me up!

Utah State Capital

I have wanted to get up to Salt Lake City and take some photo's of our State Capital for awhile. Well I had a day that was slow at work and I ran away to play. I didn't even think that it would be so empty until I got there, though I hoped to beat the crowds byt getting there fairly early. Utah recently went to a 4 day/40 hour work week with Friday as the day off, which meant that I pretty much had the place to myself. Except for the busload of German Tourists. It is an eerie feeling to be in a place that is usually fairly loud and bustling and have it be empty and quiet except for your footsteps that echo. Kinda fun though.

Here is one of the lions that "guard" the East entrance. In times past I have climbed on them while on dates and being a little crazy. Ah... the good old days. With the recent renovation, these boys are looking good. OH! Did I not mention that? In the last few years they did a full remodel/seismic upgrade and it looks really really good. As I hope to show you in my next few shots... It is worth a try right?

As you would expect with a building like this, the rotunda/dome is the focal point, it is beautifully painted and a treat to see.

There are 4 arches around the outside of the rotunda I'm not sure why but I really loved the way they look, even though I am more of an Gothic than Roman Arch kind of guy.

Looking back to the East stair to the gallery. I would love to use this as the backdrop to a fancy couple in full evening wear. Probably a cliche, bet it has been done to death before.

I spent 15-20 minutes waiting for this guy to leave, but he was wandering around measuring the floor to put something square in the middle. Finally I came to my senses and thought that this would make a great picture. Static huge building with just a tiny sign of life.

Walking the gallery I thought this was an interesting view.

Back outside for some exterior shots. This is the south face (Facade?) of the Capital Building.

I have always like that Utah's building does look a LOT like the U.S. Capital in Washington D.C.

Just liked the framing, nothing special.

Reflections

I am not a naturally reflective kind of person, no introspection gene I guess... ;-) But I do like reflections in water and other objects. I was up rather early last thursday, I normally commute on a mountain bike and need to be up before dawn. Well I needed to drive due to an after work commitment and was planning to sleep in. Well, my body woke me up anyway so I decided to grab my camera and hit the lake on my way. These shots and my subsequent Daisy post are the results of my early morning endeavors.

This is just about as still as I ever see this lake, the wind blows nearly constantly on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley

This is actually the bottom 1/2 of another shot, cropped and roatated 180 degrees.

This is from a slightly different vantage fromt the shot above, I also processed it a bit differently, tell me if you like it.

Thursday Morning Daisies

Daisies at the lake, simple yet beautiful in their simplicity. This lake by my house has these daisies every year in the spring then sunflowers in the summer. One of the first shots I took after getting my camera last year was of some daisies at this lake. So I came back for more.

The water droplet on this one just caught my eye, fortunately the Sigma 17-70 was able to catch it too, man when that thing gets the focus on, it is sharp. Guess using a tripod for macro work would help I guess.
I really got into the color of the light, the daisies are white but the light was a perfect golden color.

If you click on this one you get a near 100% crop of the water droplet, I really REALLY need to move a 1:1 macro lens up the list.

As you can see the play of light on the drops of water on the flowers was a large part of what I was trying to capture.

Here are some less close up shots that show the area a little better.

When will I be able to look at a flower and not want to take a picture?

We bought that Memorial Day standby: Mums, and delivered some last weekend. Monday I had a few spare moments and decided it was time to see what my Screwmount 200mm Vivitar f3.5 could do with a 2x teleconverter at closest focus. This is what I got, not half bad for a free lens set up dontcha think?

Now to something a little closer to a Macro lens, my Sigma 17-70, this shot is stopped down quite a bit for DOF, I like it quite a bit.

This is nearly wide open, also a fun effect.

I know that these are not necessarially the best flower shots ever taken, but I enjoyed taking them.

Two from this morning

3 shot HDR taken while waiting for the next shot to develop. Sigma 17-70 and Pentax K200D


Got up early and decided to try for a shot I have been wanting to get for awhile. Before someone builds a house in my way... Taken as the first rays of sunshine hit the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. Tours are going on now through August, (The reason for the tents you see around it) when it will be dedicated. I am super thrilled to have a temple this close to my home. For those of you not of my faith, temples are the most important buildings we have.

This is a 5 shot HDR, not because I needed to, but I liked the way it enhanced the colors from the sunrise. I wish that there had been less haze but not much I can do about that at this stage of the game. Shot with my Vivitar 200mm f3.5 screwmount lens @ f8 and various exposures. I hope to catch this on both a clearer day and as a sunset in the winter, I should be able to get a good sunset from this angle if I keep my eyes open and get lucky.

Unsuccessful Underlit Lightbox Shots

Decided to try some underlighting after seeing an on-line acquaintance play with it. Don't think my rube goldberg set up was really up to the task but it was fun to play with it. I basically used a piece of 8x12 glass laid between two Xerox Boxes. With various amounts of paper and tissue in strategic places to adjust how much light came through. I think I really need to do it in a soft box type setting with some side lighting too. Hmmm...

Here is my set up from the shooting side. There is a optical slave trigger on the flash triggered by the flash on my camera reflected away from the subject by tinfoil.

And from the back side.

A non manipulated shot, no post processing done at all, note the crooked camera!

Non HDR with a hand held flash off to the side triggering the underflash.

HDR processed shot similar to above and straightened and the glass edge cloned out.

This is a Caithness Glass Paperweight, I decided to shoot at the same time.

And the HDR version, I don't think HDR works as well for this as I would have liked.

Southern Utah Redux in Black and White

I used a new setting I just learned about for Unsharp Mask, it is: 20% Sharpening, Radius of 60, Threshold 0. It seems to produce a nice contrast bump without some of the nasty side effects of the contrast slider. I rather like it so far. I decided to label each shot this time just for grins.

Here they are:



Over or Under? Stone Faced

Balancing Act

Temple of the Sun

Solitude

Detritus

Another HDR from the same night as the previous ones.

I could get to like playing with these things!

My First HDR

This first one is done using one of the two tone mapping settings, the one that doesn't put a watermark on the photo. I think that if I can get the right sunset, I will be VERY pleased. And yes that is a crescent moon up there. That is what it looks like when your eyes are not messing with your head.

This is the setting that leaves the watermark, and a different look. This one tends to preserve highlights more, but I think at the cost of looking artificially flat.

Yep, downloaded the trial version of Photomatix tonight, boy it really works nice. I may have to save up and pay for the fully featured version. ;-)