Sunset Crater
2011
Sunset in a field of Maize,Nr Glenanne
Sunset along the Columbia Gorge in Oregon.
Sunset along the Columbia Gorge, near the town of Hood River.
May 20, 2013

Traveling the Backroads

I love to explore, find new places, or things to photograph. I have made it a goal to try to stay off the beaten path when I travel so I can find new photographic treasures.  These are the little known beautiful spots that are all around us. Like this shot of an old country road and a windmill.  On this day though,  Carol and I were out driving the backroads taking shots of old barns and windmills that I knew about.  We were on our way to a barn that I wanted to shoot when we passed this spot, and Carol spotted this windmill and advised me to turn around. So I spun the car around and went back to the windmill which was kind of hidden behind a stand of trees. Probably why I hadn’t noticed it before.  What I found was amazing! I had an old dirt country road along a barbed wire fence with a windmill just on the other side.  The sky looked beautiful with the white clouds and the sun setting behind the windmill. So I got out and set up my equipment, which was my Nikon D3 with a Nikkor 14-24 f2.8 lens on a tripod with a cable release.  In this situation I knew the only way to make the camera see what I was seeing was to shoot several images so I could create an HDR. Because I was shooting directly into the sun the exposure range was greater than what a camera can record. If I exposed for the sky the foreground would be dark, likewise if I exposed for the foreground the sky and the sun would be blown out. So I took a series of shots at the same f-stop (f/16) but varied my shutter speed to go 3 stops over and 3 stops under the desired exposure value. Then in post processing I used my Photomatrix software to stitch them all together so I could create the beautiful scene my wife and I had witnessed. To see more of my landscapes click on the following link...http://countryimages.smugmug.com/F/Open-Edition-Art/Landscapes-A/28521693_x35HfH#!i=2515151954&k=mLTsVWQ
This is the view from Inamura-ga-saki in Kamakura. Looking west, the beach in the foreground is Shichiri-ga-hama. (Disclosure: this view required quite a bit of post processing to remove unsightly florescent lights.) This was taken with a 70-180mm f4.5 macrozoom on my old D70s.
An evening shower in Tucson. I once told a Japanese friend that one can "smell" rain in the desert, but he scoffed at the idea. In that moment, I realized how hard it is to convey experiences unique to a place and time to those who do not have a similar background. In the dry climate of the desert, we do become quite sensitive to the "scent" of humidity the precedes a rain fall.  

For Tucson, this is a "monsoon" rain.
Lake Superior sunset
Sunset Crater
2011
Sunset Crater
2011
Sunset Crater
2011
See photo in original gallery.