joe defao's photostream  

Just another one from last week's crazy sunrise.

Some low fog started to roll in the evening before, so I got up early and headed over to the GGB to see if I could catch some of it for sunrise. When I got there, there was no fog, but it was obvious that it was going to be a good sunrise. The color started building at least a half hour before it peaked, and when it did, it was really a kicking display of light. In fact, the colors were so intense that I had to tone them down a bit in post processing.

Although I was using a 3-stop GND, I ended up doing a blend of a second longer exposure to fill in some of the shadows in the foreground and the hillside. Some might refer to this process as HDR, but I like to think of it more as NDR (Natural Dynamic Range). I took some mental notes on what my eyes were seeing in the shadows during this sunrise, and I think this is a pretty accurate representation of the dynamic range that our eyes are able to process. Maybe someday our sensors will be able to do the same thing, but for now I’m OK with using our modern tools when the situation calls for it.

Well it's not really feeling much like winter around the Bay Area right now, so I guess my mind hasn't really made the transition out of fall yet. However, after hiking around today in mid 60 degree temps, it may seem more like spring already. Anyway, here's yet another from my trip back in October.

One of the things I'm most grateful for about Flickr is that it's been a great learning tool, and I'd like to use this image to have a little discussion about photographing flowing water. When I first got to this location, my initial inclination was to face the camera upstream; however, the light on the aspens in that direction wasn't good. So, I set up this shot facing downstream to capture the trees with some nice back/side light. My question to anyone who cares to answer is "Do you have a natural tendency to photograph water flowing toward or away from the viewer in your images? Do you think one way works better than the other, or is it simply dependent on the scene?". Hope you take a minute to answer so we all get a chance to learn a little more from each other. Thanks!

Here's yet another one from my fall camping trip in the Sierra. I think one of my favorite parts of this trip was the fantastic variety of shooting we got to do in just a handful of days. Check out Ivan's great take on this sweet sunrise here. He already told the story better than I could have anyway. By the way, I went with a blend of two exposures on this one to get enough detail in the foreground in the predawn darkness.

I'm still digging through the archives from my Sierra Fall Foliage/Canoe Camping Extravaganza. Here's a night shot from the campground. There was about a half full moon that was just rising on the opposite horizon, and it gave this long exposure some daytime qualities while still maintaining the stars in the sky and reflected in the lake. The glow on the horizon here is from light pollution as the sun had set several hours before.