Steven Christenson's photostream  

Andy is training to do something difficult: hiking rim-to-rim in the Grand Canyon. His goal provided me with a convenient excuse to tackle the mountain again (about my 70th time) to whittle down my Elevation gain debt. I set a goal to hike a total vertical elevation gain of 104,000 feet before August, 2012. So far I've knocked off 39,000 of those feet and have 65,000 vertical feet remaining.

You can read about Andy on his BLOG

© Copyright 2012, Steven Christenson
StarCircleAcademy.com

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This is a sequence of shots captured on the morning of February 15, 2012 as the sun rose behind the Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton. I had done some calculations and knew that the event was a possibility. I had even packed my camera the night before in anticipation, knowing that if I awoke in time, and the sky was clear enough I'd make a dash for Milpitas to capture the event. I had even pre-scouted the location(s) - which included a balcony or two at my work location.

But as usual I made a few mistakes. The first was packing the wrong camera. The second was not packing my new solar filter or my intervalometer - both of which would have made shooting a bit easier.

So why are the last two images "dark" even though the sun is rising/risen? I shot them at very high speed to capture as much detail as possible. The flare due to the very narrow aperture produced some interesting results.

From upper left to lower right the settings were:

ISO 200, f/11, 1/80
ISO 200, f/11, 1/640
ISO 200, f/11, 1/8000
ISO 100, f/36, 1/2000

The sun is BRIGHT I tell 'ya.

PS I was glad to see the recent snow was still hanging around!

© Copyright 2012, Steven Christenson
StarCircleAcademy.com

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All rights reserved. Curious what "all rights reserved means?" it means that without written permission you may not: copy, transmit, modify, use, print or display this image in any context other than as it appears in Flickr.

Brought this out of the archives for Valentines Day, and because it is featured on the California Wine Institute website and brochures.

Many people think that Half Dome is the highest peak in Yosemite. That's not really close to being true, but the summit of Half Dome certainly is the most hiked to summit in Yosemite - and here you can see why... but this is not a view many people will see. To be at the summit at sunrise means hiking up in the dark, cool of night. Want to go higher? You can look DOWN on Half Dome from Clouds Rest which stands over a 1,000 feet higher (and by the way is an easier hike!). And yes, I hiked Clouds Rest at night, too.

Tenaya canyon and the "wall portion" of Half Dome are visible.

A tiny bit of sunlight has begun to hit the mountaintops to the left of the picture - but this 2.5 second exposure makes it look brighter than it actually was.

f/22 ISO 100 2.5 seconds at 20 mm. Canon 16-35L lens.

© Copyright 2008, Steven Christenson
StarCircleAcademy.com

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Mount Whitney shrugs off clouds at sunrise.

One of the shots left over after a glorious morning following the Alabama Hills Star Circle Academy workshop. I have so many I have a hard time deciding which ones I like best...

© Copyright 2011, Steven Christenson
StarCircleAcademy.com

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This view of Seattle is more typical of my experiences - except that there was some color in the sky even though it was 1 in the afternoon. The color is exaggerated a bit here, however. I was tempted to try to clone out all of the reflections from the interior lights, but, well that seemed like actual work. :-)

© Copyright 2012, Steven Christenson
StarCircleAcademy.com

BLOG || Events || FaceBook || Twitter || 500px

All rights reserved. Curious what "all rights reserved means?" it means that without written permission you may not: copy, transmit, modify, use, print or display this image in any context other than as it appears in Flickr.