Storm Cell at Sunset

The storm came in from the south. With lightning flashes and thunder rolling, we decided it would be a good idea to get off this hill top.

.:

Desert Dusk in black and white

It's better in black and white, I think.

.:

Old Tanker

One more image from Mike's 5 Fingers Ranch. HDR from a single RAW image.

.:

Desert Sky

HDR, but just enough to push the dynamic range closer to the human eye.

.:

Nailed

This is an old bench I found at Mike's "5 Fingers Ranch." My D50 doesn't have a depth of field preview and it was my intention to keep the DoF pretty shallow. The change from focus to blurred seems rather abrupt. It seems fake, but I can assure you that I didn't blur this with Photoshop.

.:

Old Car

Mike P. was kind enough to let me photograph his collection.

.:

Night Splash

Okay... here's the story... my wife decided to have a party last night. As it was dying down, my next-door neighbor and I we're just kicking back and talking about photography. He knows very little about cameras, so all too often, he'll point out a picture to me and ask me how it was accomplished. While looking at the fountain in the middle of our pool, he wanted to know if I could stop the water in a picture. I said, "It's easy. Just use a flash." He found that hard to believe, so I had to trot out the camera and prove it.

I got a couple of images up high with the drops suspended in air, but they weren't as interesting as the riot down at the surface.

.:

Willow Springs (Lomo)

Rather than use the online tool, picnik, I think I've figured out how to make Lomo-type images using PhotoShop. Here's my first attempt.

Fairly simple really... create a vignette... jack around with the contrast of the red and green channels, and then push the saturation a bit.

.:

A Distant Fire

A smoke filled sunset.

.:

Union Pacific 6187

So... I'm driving along the Garlock road. I see a train in the distance as I pass Goler Road. Do a quick u-turn and get to the crossing. Grab the camera. Aarrrgh... it's set for bracketing. Into the menu, turn off the bracketing and rush towards the tracks. I get one picture with the white balance set to clouds and program is in P-mode. P-mode? I NEVER shoot P-mode. Crap!

Given a bit more time, I think I would have went for a shallower DoF.

Decided to blog this because it made it to "explore" today.

.:

Ruth Wails

"Paid in Full" played Friday night at Nickoletti's. Mike, Roger, Steve, and I we're all there playing photography dorks to the best of our ability.

I shot this with another of Steve's lenses, not the big 70-200, but something else. IIRC it was a zoom and had VR (I think).

A fair amount of post-processing on a sub-standard capture.

.: