Draper Days

 What the heck are Draper Days you may ask, it is the annual celebration of the town I grew up in, home to a pretty decent parade, car show, buncha booths, and evening entertainment with fireworks. I always go if I can, and enjoy the small town feel. I enjoyed the car show this year. I took only my older body (K200D) and an old Manual Focus 24mm f2.8 lens. the combo works for me for most purposes.

Cool old ambulance from the parade. They just don't make them like they used to!

Wide open @ f2.8 I was able to nail the focus on the birds head, the bright points in the background are not perfectly shaped but I don't really care, the rendering is really quite interesting to me.

To me the detailing of the older cars really is just fun. The chrome, shapes & patterns are just cool.

This shot has grown on me since I took it, no car is more American than a Cadillac!

This truck was so similar to my Dad's old truck I HAD to take a photo. Lots of memories made in that truck.

This is the only shot not taken with my K200D/24mm combo, took this with my K5 and DFA 100 Macro and Metz Flash, it is a 10 stripe June Bug that was stuck on it's back. Not my favorite subject but definitely one I hope to shoot more when I have the time. Macro is just interesting!

Photographing no matter what is going on!!!!

I usually have more than my share of good luck, but occasionally it runs cold. It did the week after the 4th of July. Safe driving all the way to Oregon and back. Then driving through the mountains early in the morning to tow a trailer home from Scout Camp... Boom! Suicidal deer in the grill. Sigh... Anyway, after driving a short distance to where I knew I would have cell service, having a highway patrol car come by before I even called (Blessing there, beyond coincidence) having my insurance company be on the ball when I called and getting everything to work out just fine including getting someone else on the road to tow the trailer, all before 6:30 am. (Maybe my luck wasn't that bad... see what I mean?)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, I'm a photographer, so, while waiting for the tow truck, the sun is coming up, the light is perfect, grab that camera and go!!! Fruits of my labor? Here you go, all taken from the view area looking NW from Bald Mountain Pass in the Uinta National Forest.

Portland Oregon Temple

I love to take photos of our temples. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (A.K.A Mormon Church) Temples are sacred space that is Gods House on the earth. I love the external beauty and the grounds. I just love them, and taking pictures of them makes me love them all the more. When we were on a recent trip to Oregon I made a point of spending time at the temple to improve my portfolio and capture the beauty of the Portland Oregon Temple. You will have to excuse the number of photos I took and posted here, I simply can't thin them down.

Sepia Tone seems to be "all that" popularity wise, but eh.... Not my fave.

Course the sky is boring without something... sigh...

Perspective correction is tough with these buildings due to the height of them, This was a toughie, and I am not yet satisfied.

This one I think, achieved a nice balance of correcting the vertical perspective distortion without making it look unnatural.

Shooting into the late late afternoon sun made this especially difficult, HDR and careful processing served this shot well.

Again, vertical perspective correction is a bugger, the first below is pleasingly corrected to my eye, though I could do more, the second is uncorrected.

This is just a crazy fisheye, which I honestly like the best.....

Same lens, vertical orientation and non HDR.

I have been turning to stitched panoramas recently to give me greater resolution for larger print capability, as well as simply getting shots I cannot get any other way. Which gets more complicated when it is also necessary to shoot bracketed shots for HDR. I think that both of these turned out nicely, the biggest problem is printing them as they are definitely a non-standard size.

A Trip to Oregon

I love to travel, I love to travel even more when I can stop and take pictures. As I have said before, it is the little details of a trip I remember the most, a shape, a scene that was memorable. So this is why I have selected these shots as a separate post from the previous post of my temple shots, these are the things I choose to remember from this trip.

A wheel on an old steam tractor where we ate lunch.

A particularly nice set of clouds at sunset.

Mt. Hood in the last light.

Waterdrops in a plastic glass at a wedding reception.

The gigantic maple leaves on the trees around our B&B

The lane leaving our B&B

The Columbia River Gorge from a viewpoint I had never been to before.

A sunset over the Snake River.

These are a few of my favorite things.....

Mega Moon

Apparently I sorta missed the point of the Mega Moon thing, according to my wife, I went to a lake above 10,000 ft and used the moon to illuminate things rather than as the subject of my photos. I don't care so much, as you will have seen in a post higher up on the page but written after this one, I did indeed shoot the moon the next night and got some awesome shots too!

Back to the high lake, Mirror Lake in the Uinta National Forest, a beautiful spot, and one I went to many times with my family as a child/teenager. I have been wanting to take a long exposure photo of Bald Mountain reflected in this lake, originally with star trails and long long LONG exposure, but I am just getting too old to sit in the cold for that long. It is never hot up there at night.

Well, I set up at the spot I wanted to, found a canoe there!!! Perfect! And sat down to wait for the right light. The sunset was nothing, but the light got good, and the fishermen came out to see if they were biting. The fish were indeed. I was amazed at how still these folks stood, these next several shots range from 15-30 seconds, and the fishermen was remarkably still. I wish they would email me, I would LOVE to get copies of these shots to them.

Not entirely sure what I messed up with the White Balance, but the colors shifted due to the light and the weirdness of the photographer. I like the shot above, it looks warmer in tone, but the bottom one reflects reality more.

As it got darker, and the lake smoother, It still wasn't quite the right light. So, I took a nap.

Even later the sky was getting perfect, the moon was coming up, but the lake was just NOT calming down like I thought it would. I was getting a little frustrated and more than a little cold!

Finally, finally FINALLY, it got calm, I got the shot I wanted and I ran away. I don't know that it is as cool as I envisioned, but I still like it because of the effort involved in getting it!

Shooting Temples, My Favorite Pastime!

Greetings! Been awhile, hasn't it? Sorry for those of you who come regularly, I will be trying to catch up on the last two months. It has been a busy summer. Trip to Oregon, and a trip to Texas, a BIG engagement photo shoot, and wedding invitation design session. Lots of good things going on.

So... June... I spent a few evenings checking out new vantage points I have not tried yet. I think I am getting somewhere. I need to wait for the right sky for this angle, but it just may be worth the trips and wait.

This is a HDR, the sky was just too bright. I ended up emphasizing the different colors of lights due to the increase in saturation that comes from HDR. Nee to re-visit this at some point and try for something a little more unique.

The weekend of the super moon was a busy one, I again went to shoot the temple for yet another new angle. I wish the moon had been higher.

The overall appearance of this shot appealed to me for several reasons. One, it demonstrates the capabilities of a newer lens (K200mm f2.5), and it is just simply gorgeous! Yeah, I'm biased.

There is a type of temple photo that is quite popular, the sepia toned, fake aged/scratched negative plug-in that takes a mediocre shot and makes everybody buy it. If you haven't seen it don't bother looking, they are really not all that good to my mind. This is as close as I will come to that. A lot of processing went into this shot, at least for me. Desaturation, and low opacity layer with a cloud rendering, vignetting. I like the result, a lot actually, it is soft and contemplative. Just not quite like my usual shots.

Slightly shifted vantage point,  more of my usual HDR processing. Really love the colors on the mountains behind and the delicate sky. On canvas it would be perfect!!!

Shot long enough for airplanes to go by and the clouds to move. I like this one the least, which means that I would probably sell more of it than any other!!!

Spotted From The Train

I saw this tank sitting in the middle of a field on my way to work on the light rail train. I just HAD to stop on my way home in my truck to shoot it. I like odd things, and this is odd. I am really not sure if I like the chain link or not, but I think it is interesting.

This is a view I see... probably too much, out the windshield of my truck. Except I am usually wearing the sunglasses.