lscan's photostream  

We always argue about who will bring the chainsaw to get the trees out of the way of the falls but in this case I kind of worked the trees a bit to attempt and frame the falls.

This was the first stop of the day and of the shots from this area this is my favorite. It's a nice image large (larger then I post here) but you'll have to come to an art show if you want to see it bigger then 1024 pixels!

When I look at this shot I'm reminded that while Zion National Park is a long ways from here we have some nice canyons ourselves in Central Illinois.

I think we all just stood there at some point and admired this part of Matthiessen.

Made a quick trip up to Matthiessen State Park on Saturday with David and his darling bride. It was sort of a cloudy day with sunshine occasionally peeking through.

We hit the usual spots with Bathtub and of course Wishing Well. Right now this shot of Wishing Well is the only one really speaking to me although I do have a couple of shots of Dave and his bride I'll likely upload in the next day or two (Dave is already excited I can tell!!)

These days it seems I shoot more photos of events then I do of landscapes. While I prefer doing landscapes over events you occasionally get shots you sort of fall in love with and this is one of them.

I already love the deep reds that the Scottish Rite Cathedral offers but add the cross, people, lighting and I really like the result.

To provide a little detail... I shot this with the 24-70 f/2.8 and with the 5DII it at 24mm you get just that slight amount of vignetting and a little fisheye effect which just roks (no "c" means it's even cooler!! ;-)

For those interested in the event itself... This is a practice for a Scottish Rite event held every year just before Easter called "Feast of the Paschal Lamb' which honors those Scottish Rite Members who passed away since the last Feast. While we are not a religion we do leverage a lot of old/new testament lessons and this is one of them. It's a cool ceremony (and open to the public).

Our last night on the trip we decided to do a little night (aka astro) photography. So after eating dinner Dave, Tim and I headed back out to Arches for one last shoot. We all tried a couple of setups. Everyone did very long exposure (in the 20 minute plus realm) but we also did shorter exposure high ISO shots. I actually liked my high ISO images best. This was shot at 30 seconds at f/2.8 and an ISO of..... 6400!

The few people I've shown this to before posting it here have asked if there were really that many stars in the sky when I shot the image. The answer is yes although they may not be as bright as they appear in this image.

What I can say is that where we were there is very little light pollution. Meaning its really really dark where we were at. I don't think I've ever seen it this dark even in the middle of corn or bean fields in Illinois.