PS 19 Photography

Final Approach

aperez1958 — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 02:55:16 +0000

This last week I had an opportunity to travel to Wyoming to visit Yellowstone National Park to add to my portfolio and gallery prints. My wife and 16-year-old daughter went with me. We traveled by car and drove straight through-16 hours-at night. We traded driving between the 3 of us so we all had some time to sleep. We arrived in Jackson around noon, had lunch and went to the visitors center to get more maps and as much information as I could to photograph the parks. I asked a young man at the center if he knew of the good spots to photograph and he replied,”I’m a photographer too, let me mark on the map where some good spots are.” And he did. I don’t remember his name but I would like to thank him for the information he shared with me. It made my time in Grand Teton National park much more productive. Also I want to thank Bruce for sharing with me his insights for shooting in Yellowstone, they too were invaluable. We spent two days at Grand Teton and five days in Yellowstone. We hiked the trail to artist point in the grand canyon of Yellowstone, explored the geysers and hot springs, and saw grizzly bears, bison, elk, moose, an eagle, osprey, to name a few. What a blast we all had. On Friday we left Jackson for our trip back to California and as we were traveling along Highway 89 I saw an osprey overhead and immediately pulled over (my family is used to this). There were actually a pair of osprey on a 15 foot perch, right next to the highway. They proceeded to fly all around me, circling overhead, turning towards me, eyes on me like, “what are you doing”, it was such a thrill to shoot so close to these beautiful raptors.While I was in the park I didn’t have the opportunity to shoot this close to the wildlife, except the bison which was a thrill too. (more on that later). But on the drive home I was given an opportunity to photograph up close and almost eye to eye- what a blessing.

Final Approach

aperez1958 — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 05:54:53 +0000

Mission Peak Sunrise

I had a few extra minutes before work this morning so I decided to bring my camera and drive to the base of the Mission Peak Trail. I pulled into the parking lot, parked my car and noticed the cloud patterns above the hills. I was originally going to shoot just the sky to have some stock shots of clouds but when I saw how the cloud patterns twisted from the hills I knew I had something special. Let me know what you think.

Sunset Pigeon Point Lighthouse

aperez1958 — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:21:19 +0000

Started the day in San Francisco trying to chase the moon set near the Golden Gate Bridge, that was a bust. Headed down the coast and stopped at Pigeon Point Lighthouse. I scouted the area and began to get excited about the images that I could possibly shoot at sunset when the light was better. Sherry and I continue south to Carmel, visited Point Lobos and McWay Falls in the Big Sur Area and enjoyed the day. The next day we worked our way back up the coast and timed it so we would be at Pigeon Point during sunset. I had several shots planned with flowers in the foreground and the light house in the background but all the elements just didn’t work the way I had envisioned in my mind. The sun had finally set below the horizon and I was just about to pack it up when I noticed the color of the sky. I pulled out my 70-200 f2.8 and had just enough time to get off a few frames. I like to pre-visualize my photos before I shoot, sometimes this works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. This time it didn’t work but I was still able to capture an image that I was pleased with.

The General Store – Bodie, CA

aperez1958 — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:16:28 +0000

One of tools that I often find myself using is HDR. HDR is an acronym for high dynamic range. It is a technique that begins at the photo shoot and is completed during post processing on the computer. Our eyes can see a high range of dark and light in a scene, but our cameras have a limited “dynamic range”. In order to capture the complete range a series of photos are taken. One is exposed for the shadows, one normal, and one for the highlights. (You are not limited to three exposures.) I use this technique a lot in my photographs.

General Store - HDR

This photo is an HDR that I took at Bodie State Park. Bodie is a old mining town in the Eastern Sierra’s with hundreds of abandoned homes and businesses. It has a look and feel of a town that lost its inhabitants to a plague, or an alien invasion. Furniture was left in the houses, cups and bowls in the cupboards, art on the walls, you get the idea. (nothing that mysterious contributed to the towns demise, the mines dried up, the winters were terribly harsh, water became scarce and people just got tired of living there.)

Most of the interiors are viewable through glass doors or windows and are fairly dark with bright splashes of sunlight on various parts of the scene. In order to get this image I had to shoot for HDR . With my 5d Mark II on my tripod, I placed the camera lens as close to the glass door as possible and took a series of 5 exposures. These images were then blended together in an HDR program. I then took the completed HDR into Lightroom , did a few more adjustments and converted it to black and white.

I am fascinated by how much was left in the store, it really gave me a sense of what it was like, almost 100 years ago, to step into the general store and shop for supplies. It was fascinating to walk around this town and view a virtual piece of history. It was fun to spend the day there with my wife Sherry and daughter Carly. And of course it was exciting for me to be able to photograph a piece of history and share my interpretation with you.

You can see more of Bodie images on my website, ps19photography.com.

Have a great day!

Hello world!

aperez1958 — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:22:43 +0000

This is my first post! Welcome. This blog is about me (You can check out my “about” page to see who I am, so I won’t repeat that here) and my photography. Mostly about my photographs. I love capturing moments in time and sharing them with friends, family and hopefully you.

My family was in Yosemite over the Valentine’s day weekend and as I was driving near Cook’s Meadow, a person caught my eye. He had his camera on a tripod and was photographing one of the many icons in the Yosemite Valley. The thought that went though my mind was how “timeless” that scene was. Transport yourself back to the earliest days when tourists started visiting the park and you would see that same scene played out over and over again as if time had stood still. Time literally does stop when we take a photo, a moment in time that can never be again. But we do get to experience it again. We get to see the image immediately on our LCD screens, then again when we post-process in our favorite editing software and finally when that image is shared electronically or printed and hung on a wall. As I write this I realize that is what I love about photography, experiencing the moment and reliving it again and again.

This photograph was taken on Valentine’s day in the early morning at Tunnel View. It is one of those iconic scenes that Yosemite has to offer. The morning was rather boring compared to what I had experienced the same time last year. There wasn’t any mist or snow, not even any clouds. I captured this by taking several exposures so that I would be able to composite them later in my HDR software. At the time I didn’t see anything to get excited about. Later though, as I processed the image , I was surprised and pleased to see how much better it turned out. The lesson here is don’t give up on a scene too soon. Take the time to create multiple exposures, play around with different settings and in the end you might be rewarded as I was. You can see a higher res photo of this at: www.ps19photography.com

Get out there and stop a moment in time!