Sometimes you have to take what you can get...

Some days you can plan things and they work great, other days you try to plan things for photography and you get nothing. This is my usual modus operandi. If I plan it I usually don't get what I planned. Improvisation and being prepared (i.e. carrying a lot of stuff I seldom use but when I leave it home it is the one piece I need!) are what get me by.

Case in point. Thought about taking my camera to work Friday after missing the sunrise cuz I slept in. Figured it was too big of a pain. Well if I had had it I could have gotten a much better shot than this one. With a Full double all the way across..... ggggrrrrrrr!

This this morning I go the lake hoping for a sunrise like there was on Friday, did I get it? Nope, but I did get a few interesting shots. This is the panorama I went to shoot, but was hoping to have more vertical to shoot.

As I left, thinking it was over and a fizzle, it started to heat up, but not in a way that my original spot would help. So I grabbed this on the way back to the truck.

And went to my best local vantage point and snapped off the rest of these. I do like them, but just wish my plans would work some better sometimes!!!

Assorted and Sundry Shots from A week ago last Saturday.

Went to a family re-union recently. As I gadded about with my camera I took a few shots that I wanted to share.

This little lamb was a curious and energetic fella/gal. She/He stood out from the darker folks she was around. (Sigma 17-70)

Even cuter (but dirtier) close up. (Sigma 17-70)

This guy has some pretty wacky horns, but was tough to get a decent photo of, he liked to hide in the shade. (All with Pentax 55-300)

No matter what I do with the photo he still looks kinda funny. Still love my bro. no matter how funny he looks!

My cousins husband, not the best lighting, but thought is was fun how sharp my new/used Pentax K35mm f3.5 is. With dramatic blur added.

There is an elusive concept called "Bokeh" I am not sure how fantastic this lens is (K35mm f3.5) but it isn't bad either, I figured that the out of focus stuff in the background would look terrible, but it ain't that bad.

I really liked the contrastiness of this shot.

Quintessential kid food shot, Ice Cream with Gummi Bears!!!!

3650 Seconds and 757 Seconds

As is often my wont, I did something crazy the other night. I ran away to the mountains! I have been wanting to try some more moonlight photography and I had a day I was able to take off work so I figured I would give it a shot.

There is a mountain by a lake (Bald Mountain & Mirror Lake) that I used to visit a lot when I was a kid. I have long wanted to capture on film the feeling of sneaking down to the lake in the middle of the night to look at the stars and the mountain reflecting in the lake by the light of the moon.

This is my first attempt at this, I didn't choose the correct phase of the moon/time of night it rises to capture the mountain like I wanted to. However I did get a fun shot of the mountains to the north of the lake with the moon illuminating them.

So here is an exposure of 3650 seconds (Just over an hour), Pentax K200D, Sigma 10-20 f4-5.6 lens at 10mm. ISO 100, f5.6, wired locking shutter release on a tripod (duh!).

There are some falls off of the road back to town, with some trails along the side where you can get some decent vantage points. I thought it would be fun to play there and see what I could get. The moon was not shining on the falls so I had to use my LED headlamp and LED MagLight to light things up while the shutter was open. The only difference from the previous shot was the duration of the exposure. 757 seconds.

As an aside, shooting shots like this is technically very difficult. It helps to get there BEFORE sunset when there is light to compose the shot. Then wait for dark. I would certainly have made a different composition to the waterfall had I the opportunity to survey the area more. Trying to compose a shot while waving a flashlight around and looking through the viewfinder and trying to lock down the tripod head is hard.... REALLY hard!