For A Forum Member

A week or so ago a member of DPReview posted a thread about trying to get some roofs lined up in a shot, this was my contribution, and was shot with the intention of posting it. These were taken on Valentines Eve as well. Both with 135mm. Here is the thread.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1036&thread=30943027

On a Clear Night the Mountains Are Beautiful

Went to the East side of the Valley Sunday night for a Valentines delivery. Decided to try for a shot I have been wanting to get for a long time. Usually when the Moon is full, this is an OK next best until the next full moon and clear day. The key is the clarity of the air. In the valley we get some inversions that make this kind of shot hard to do.

This first shot is the JPEG straight out of the camera, 28mm f3.5 and 30sec.


This is from the RAW with a Tungsten WB setting in the RAW converter and a little selective desaturation of red and magenta. I like it!

Valentines Evening at the Lake

Valentines Day was a good one for me in many ways. Least of these ways but most important for this blog was the Photos I took on the way home! This is the same Temple as in a very recent post just further down the street. I have done fairly light processing on most of these except the last, which I will comment on later.

There is a bridge over part of Oquirrh Lake west of the Temple, this is taken right on the east end of that bridge, I was happy to get the angle and light I did. Taken with my 135mm


This was turning around and looking west very shortly after, we get some awesome clouds here in the winter sometimes. I love the drama. 135mm.

Taken just North of the bridge, if you look closely you can see part of the stone spiral/ramp in the bottom left of the picture. 50mm,

This is just South of the bridge, the sky was just awesome and I loved the reflection in the water and the texture in the ice on the edge of the shore. There are geese that winter on the lake and get in and out right where I was shooting from. I tried for a slightly different color balance with each shot in Photoshop, basically what looked good to my eye. Please comment and let me know which you like better. 28mm @ f8

This one was my absolute favorite, and I took the time to convert the RAW file to TIFF, and then Photoshop it. I do believe I get less noise and better detail in the sky and darker areas with that workflow. 28mm @f8.

Evening Sunset At Oquirrh Lake

I am excited that I am starting to get sunsets while I am on my way home from work. I have been doing the go in and home in the dark routine for too long. I have been wanting to get more shots of and around this lake close to my home. This sunset wasn't quite as nice as I hoped for, but I was glad to see it for once. This was taken hand held, with my Pentax 28mm, @f5.6.

Warm-Up Shots

This was taken in the morning of Feb 13th, 28mm. this may also become a favorite of mine as well, it matches with the angle of sunrises for a large part of the year, and I can frame out a lot of distracting stuff.

This is a new Temple being built in my area, My long term plan is to take a picture worth printing that is as good as the professional ones that will be taken. Towards that aim I am taking opportunities to take pictures at different times of the day, seasons etc... to learn the best angles and lighting/lens combo. There will be more lights added/turned on as time goes by, this was the first or second night that they left any exterior lights on and I was excited to see how it looked. I didn't have my tripod so I had to up the ISO and hand hold, so the grain/noise is nothing to write home about but I think I like this angle, will need to adjust a little though I did have to clone part of a tree out.