Archive for the ‘Street’ Category:
On a Dark Desert Highway
… cool wind in my hair.. warm smell of colitas.. rising up through the air…
No, this isn’t California.. and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to stay at whatever the closest hotel is to this spot, though there is a pretty nice campground at the Valley of Fire.
The obvious question would be:
“If you are in a place like the Valley of Fire that is famous for the bright reddish orange rocks, why would you do a black and white picture?”
There a a couple of good reasons. First, the subject of the picture is the road – not the rocks. Second, this picture was taken at midday when there light was very contrasty and there was a fair amount of dust/haze in the air. High Contrast + Black and White = worth a shot!
This highway is near the famous Elephant Rock. In fact, I’m pretty sure Elephant Rock is about 10 paces to my right as I’m taking this picture. Unfortunately I didn’t get a good picture of Elephant Rock because I didn’t realize that it is apparently okay to scramble onto the rocks for a better picture. I was erring on the side of caution and stayed down on the road.
Don’t miss a fun side trip to a unique area the next time you are in Vegas – Valley of Fire is only 45 minutes away!
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L @ 70mm ISO 100, f/6.3, 1/160 sec.
Number Eighty One
This my friends is Number Eighty One. She’s a Wissota B-Modified dirt track stock car – and she’s the pride of Jared Boumeester of Waseca, MN. Jared just finished building this Skyrocket-framed beast and yesterday was her maiden voyage at the Deer Creek Speedway in southeastern Minnesota. I was in Waseca yesterday to have my taxes prepared and I stopped by to take a few glamour shots of #81.
I decided to have some fun with these pictures and went for something really grungy and radical looking. It’s a dirt-track racer, after all! The processing is over-the-top, and some people are going to instinctively hate it. Others are going to love it. This image was made by taking 9 different exposures and merging them as an HDR with Photomatix Pro. Once I merged them, I tonemapped them into the wild scene you see above. This technique is like cilantro – little bits of it are good, but you’d never want to eat a whole bowl of it. I’d never use it on a nature shot – but unfortunately others do. Because of that, this technique gets an ill-deserved bad rap.
Because I stepped out of the box and went for it – I’ve got a vibrant image that I love. It fits the subject matter perfectly, and the car just looks fast sitting there. There’s your lesson for today – don’t be afraid to ditch the comfortable and do something that isn’t your style.. you may get some wild fun results!
Wanna hear her roar? Check out Jared revving her up yesterday on this iPhone video: http://yfrog.us/6bpj9z
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17mm TS-E f/4L. ISO 200, f/6.3, exposures bracketed from 1/6400 to 1/25 sec.
The Vltava Waterfront
The Vltava River runs right through Prague, Czech Republic. Heather and I were there in June, 2006 – just a few short months before our family became three. Prague is a beautiful city – the communists managed to not screw all of it up! This shot was taken near the opera house and is just up the street from the Dancing House.
Vital Stats: Canon 350D w/Canon 17-85 @ 59mm ISO 100, f/8.0, 1/400 sec.
One More From The Road
Here’s another RAGBRAI shot – this one from 2005. This one was from the last day that year at the top of a long climb. I made it up first – and stopped to wait for the rest of the crew. Again, this was shot with a cheap point and shoot – and I’m playing it up by using some Lomo-style processing.
Mister Seven
Recognize the man in black (and yellow)? Yep – it’s Mr. Livestrong himself. Since it’s the starting day of RAGBRAI, I thought I’d post a snapshot taken at RAGBRAI 2006 of Lance riding through a small town in Iowa.
Techically – it’s nothing to write home about. I had about 15 seconds to pull my cheapo point-n-shoot out of the saddlebag, run to the curb, and fire. I just love it because it’s photographic proof that for a few hours, at least – I was leading Lance Armstrong across Iowa.
Ah, what sad things we come up to make ourselves feel better. We’ll miss you in Iowa this year, Lance!
Lookin’ up Acorn Street
Here’s one last shot from my Acorn Street series – this one shot from the foot of the one-block historic alley. By this time, it was late enough in the morning that shooting from the top really wasn’t feasible due to the angle of the light.
I love the angle and perspective of the shot – your eye gets naturally drawn right into the picture.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 32mm ISO 100, f/16, 1/8 sec.
Lal Bagh Tower
This shot is of Lal Bagh Tower – situated in Lal Bagh Gardens in Bangalore, India. It’s sitting on the Peninsular Gneissic Rock hill in the gardens – which is supposed to be one of the oldest rocks on the planet clocking in at somewhere around 3000 million years old. Give or take a few, that is.
I was here on my last day in Bangalore after I had my business wrapped up. I was killing a few hours before flying home that night and I had a nice walk in the park – shortly before my guide tried fleecing me for $50. Sorry pal – I know what the going rate is.
Vital Stats: Canon 350D w/Canon 17-85mm IS @ 50mm ISO 100, f/9.0, 1/250 sec.
It’s the Ghost Light!
No, it’s not the moon. It’s actually a Sno-Cat out doing the nightly grooming runs on Blackcomb Mountain. Every night you can see several of these methodically working their way up and down the mountain getting the corderoy ready for the next morning. Like many ski resort towns – Whistler has itself all decked out with Christmas lights to make the atmosphere around the town merry.
Vital Stats: Canon 5D Mark II w/Canon 17-40 f/4L @ 20mm ISO 3200, f/4, 1/10 sec.
Stars and Cars
Last 4th of July, my family and I were on Whidbey Island in the state of Washington staying with our friend Beth. That little community pulled out all of the stops – parades, contests, food, and of course.. fireworks. I’ve never seen so many fireworks. At the end of the parade, there was a formation of old cars all decked out for the event. This was the front end of one of these beautiful old machines in the parade – proudly flying the flag(s).
Vital Stats: Canon 40D w/Canon 70-200 f/4L + 1.4x TC @ 280mm ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/800 sec.
Manarola Peschereccio
We’re back! Sorry for the short outage over the weekend – Apache wasn’t happy and the wizards behind the scenes at T3 Imagery had to make the appropriate sacrifices to get ‘er running again. Thanks to Wizard Erik for the support!
Today’s shot is from Manarola in the Cinque Terre. It’s one of the five fishing villages that make up the Cinque Terre, so you can expect to see lots of boats and gear to support that way of life. It’s a pretty steep rocky drop to the water from where these boats are sitting – but the locals have erected a crane to make it easier. We passed through here enroute to Riomaggiore and met up with my mother and William for the final part of the Via del Amore.
Vital Stats: Canon 350D w/Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 @ 17mm. ISO 100, f/4.0, 1/60 sec.