Good day, hope you are ready for Holiday cheer. Two of my bus and their wive and girlfriend arrived last night. My third son will be here today. Going to be a great weekend and Christmas. This shot was made on one of my three trips to Antarctica. It is in Deception BAy. THis is actually a collapsded volcano and it is really hard to get into. The place is huge and beautiful with an old whaling station on it. Very seldom do you find a crystal clear day like the one I did this picture on. I just love Antarctica and I am working on organizing a Photo expedition there in 2013.
This shot was made in Iceland at the Glacier Lagoon. I used a long lens on my 5dII to shoot elements of the ice. Tight shots of ice using the telephoto to compress the perspective together. It was amazing what you saw as a frame when doing this vs. what the overall scene looked like. I enjoy using the camera frame to isolate images. I do this both with the telephoto lens and macro lens doing close ups.
I love doing what is called street photography. This is a form of photography where you walk the streets and shoot pictures of things that are happening. while in new Zealand I received a NEW Fuji x100 which is kind of the old classic rangefinder camera in digital. This makes absolute no noise so it is easy to walk down the street and see something and shoot it with out a lot of fuss. Here is one of the street shot images from Queenstown, NZ. Just a man in the window with a glass of wine.
Close by to where I live there is a transportation museum. This museum is mainly focused on trains. There are a lot there. Most of them rusty and falling apart. I just love that. They do a fair amount of restoration on these trains and have a special building just for that. It is fun to shoot there and catch restorations in progress which is what this shot is all about. Made with a Canon 5dII in multi expose mode then using an HDR program I made it the gritty look. Then on the iPad using SnapSeed I worked on focus and some selective color to come out with this image.
No matter where you look there is ice. I guess Iceland gets the name with ice in it for a reason. In certain parts of Iceland there are many glaciers and I am talking really big glaciers. And these Glaciers loose Ice all the time. This is a shot of an iceberg with a big glacier behind it. I believe the glaciers is called Steinholtsjökull, good luck on pronouncing it. This glacier like a lot of others has a lake at the bottom of it that icebergs break off into and float around. With all good landscape shots it is good to have a foreground and the iceberg did a great job of providing the foreground against this large glacier.
While in Iceland last year I kept driving a route along the coast and I kept seeing this church way on top of a hill. I shot images of the church with long lens as clouds descended on it and birds flew around it. Finally one day I decided to find the church and searched for the roads leading to the church. It was a small church and I found my way to the top of the hill it sat on. From its vantage point you could see the ocean and coast for miles and the beautiful landscape all around. Of course I expected the doors to be locked but I was surprised to see them open. Inside was a warm cozy beautifully maintained interior. I had to shoot pictures so I shot the interior of the church and the organ, pews and alter as well as todays shot of the church bible. I was using a P65+ so detail was something I knew could be captured. I really liked this image because of the way the light came though and hit the awl and bible. Maybe I should have lit the candles, but I had no matches. Anyway the detail is so good that on the 30×40 print you can read all the works on the bible’s open pages. Maybe I’ll post the organ form the church in a future blog. I actually did a four exposure stitch of that one.
So many images. I now have quite a library stacking up for the daily blog here. Thought I would change it up today and put some rust back into the blog. Close by where I live there is a transpiration museum and the place has a ton of old train cars in various rates of disrepair and well as restoration and completed cars that are restored. I love wandering this place and also visiting the train shop where the work is done. This is shot is of an old locomotive that is being restored. I have kind of enhanced it a bit and made it somewhat vintage looking to add to the overall feel.
Seems I am getting a reputation of being an ice photographer. I really like ice. Unlike other landscapes ICE melts. So what you shoot today may not be there tomorrow. I shot a load of nice ice images in New Zealand. This one drew me in and I had the driver of the boat I was in drive around this mini iceberg until I found the right angle. The day was heavy clouds and many people think you can’t shoot good images on cloudy day. Quite the contrary. See how the clouds add a dynamic to the image. Over all I really like this shot. Hope you do too.
I moved my New Zealand images over to my main work station yesterday and there is over 80 gigs of images. Not hard to make this size file when you shoot with a Phase One IQ180 camera. So now the editing begins and then the post on each image. There are so many good ones. So I think through the rest of the year I’ll plenty to share. I have a ton of other images I haven’t posted here from Death Valley, Moab and other places. So, there is not a lack of content. Todays image was also shot in the Rees Valley of New Zealand. We were driving up this dirt road that they call tracks in New Zealand and came across this river or very large stream. Lots of rapids and mountains and greenish water. So we all stopped and did pictures. This is one of the images I made. Like the vertical and horizontal movements happening as well as the rooks and tree. Enjoy.
Hi, I am back to regular postings again. after enduring 34 hours of travel time to get back from Australia and throwing in another 6 hours for the trip from New Zealand to Sydney I am happy to be home and in my own bed. A 21 day trip is a long one but oh what a trip. I have enough images from this trip and others this year to keep me extremely busy working on images and making prints. So, there are plenty of images for my daily blog. Today’s image was shot in the Rees Valley of New Zealand where many of the Lord of The Rings movies were made. Small waterfall with trees. Shot with a Phase One 80 megapixel IQ180 on an ALPA Camera.
