Monday
Nov232009
Bike Station - Washington D.C.
Monday, November 23, 2009 at 5:28AM | in HDR, Travel, Washington DC 
Interesting architecture. This bike station was located between Union Station and the old Post Office building.
Welcome
to my personal blog. Here I post examples of my photography and writing. I specialize in making unique and highly detailed photographs. Notice I said making and not taking. Yes I take photos but a lot of time and work is involved in pushing and punishing the pixels in my images to achieve the look I like.
Please feel free make comments about any of my words or photos. I enjoy constructive critiques, learning about locations to shoot or photography techniques. Click on the "Share Article" link to share any of my photos via Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Want to use one of my posts in your own blog? No problem, but please make sure it links back to the original post here and do the right thing and give me credit. Don't copy my words, crop the images, remove the watermarks or claim my work as your own. This has happened more times than I can count so I've had to report copyright violations to ISP's and regrettably the violators blog is usually taken down.
Can't we all just get along?
Entries in HDR (365)
Monday, November 23, 2009 at 5:28AM | in HDR, Travel, Washington DC Monday
Nov232009
Cathedral Hallway
Monday, November 23, 2009 at 5:22AM | in HDR, National Cathedral, Travel, Washington DC 
The National Cathedral has lots and lots of little chapels and hallways. All of which were lighted beautifully by the abundance of stained glass windows.
Wednesday
Nov182009
Condor Flats and Chevron Gas
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 10:03AM | in Aviation, California, Disney, HDR 
Wonder if the restrooms are clean?
Wednesday
Nov182009
Make Believe California
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 9:58AM | in Bokeh, California, Disney, HDR, Lensbaby 
Dusk at Disney California Adventure park. This entire area is scheduled for demolition next year so I thought I should probably capture it for posterity. I used the Lensbaby Composer for this shot.
Sunday
Nov152009
Holiday Illumination
Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 12:17AM | in California, Disney, HDR 
Sleeping Beauty's castle illuminated for the Christmas season.
Thursday
Nov122009
Hail Columbia
Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 9:39AM | in HDR, National Air and Space Museum, Space, Spacecraft, Washington DC 
In July of 1969, Mike Collins, Edwin "Buzz Aldrin" and Neil Armstrong flew in this spacecraft and made history as part of the first manned space mission to land on another heavenly body.
This is the Apollo 11 Command Module which re-entered the earth's atmosphere at greater than 25,000 miles per hour and you can clearly see by it's burned and charred skin that it must have been a pure "E" ticket ride.
This photo was taken from the second floor of the National Air and Space Museum. Again they don't allow tripods so I used my trusty Gorillapod to steady my camera.
Wednesday
Nov112009
Korean War Veterans Memorial
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 11:34AM | in HDR, Korean War Memorial, National Mall, Travel, Washington DC 
19 United States soldiers on a night patrol
Kathy and I were walking around Washington D.C. on what would prove to be our longest day there. We had started out fairly early walking from our hotel over to the National Cathedral and then walked around the Smithsonian museums for quite a while. We both had our cameras of course and we took turns carrying our tripod which came in handy as the sun went down and darkness closed in. We walked from Union Station, along the mall all the way to the base of the Lincoln Memorial. Once there, it was Kathy's idea to walk over to the Korean War Veterans Memorial.
It was very striking and a little sad. Several of the figures of the soldiers seemed to have haunted or frightened looks on their faces. But they were brave. They answered not only their nations call, but helped another country facing aggression.
Taking photos here was a little challenging. There were just too many people milling around to risk setting up a tripod as somebody might trip on a leg and get hurt. I decided to use my gorilla pod, and just wrapped the legs around one of the metal poles that supported the chains that surround the memorial. This worked pretty well, with the longest exposures being 30 seconds long and still very sharp.
A plaque near the memorial reads "Our nation honors her sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met."
Tuesday
Nov102009
Check Six
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 11:46PM | in Aviation, California, HDR 
Following close behind a taxing 747-400
Taking HDR sequences from a moving car following a moving aircraft is difficult to say the least. Thank goodness for Photoshop's auto align function. We were riding in Mike's car who works at LAX in operations and were following this Singapore Airlines cargo plane. The tail was nearly overlapping the hood of the car. I have photos of it but being that my head doesn't tilt that far back, I had to extend my arms forward and just guess where it was when framing the shot. I guess I should try creating a vertorama. Being this close to such a large moving aircraft is amazing. You hear and feel it adjusting it's flight controls and throttles. When it turned in front of us the car rocked a little from the exhaust. Thanks to Kevin and Mike for an amazing day!
Tuesday
Nov102009
Objects in Mirror are Closer than they Appear
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 11:03PM | in Aviation, California, HDR 
I think we're being followed...
I was on a ride along with a very cool LAX airport operations guy. He was called on to escort a FedEx MD10 Aircraft that needed to taxi from one side of the airport to another. An escort was required since a mechanic was behind the controls and an active runway had to be crossed.
When I looked at the aircraft in the side mirror, I started laughing at the "Objects in this mirror are closer than they appear" text you see in the picture. It reminded me of that scene in Jurassic Park where the T-Rex was chasing the Jeep. That aircraft looked huge!