Merry Christmas!

Not to sound like a Grinch, but the magical feeling of Christmas seems to have diminished year after year.  Is anyone else feeling this?  Perhaps I am just getting older.  Or maybe because it has been a while since I spent Christmas back home.

Rain and photography has helped to fill that void though, and for that I am thankful.  And Christmas will never really lose its magic.  Not as long as there is a copy of Home Alone to be found.

A few things:
1) I have started a facebook page.  Here is the link.
2) I have decided that I will focus more on landscape type photos.  I still have much interest in portraiture, and will continue to try and develop that skill (and post about it as the opportunities arise), but I think landscape photos fit Rain and I better.
3) I gave away my first camera to the two boys of the family that I got Rain from.  Rain got me into photography.  Now I'm giving photography to them.  Full circle.  Or so I like to think.


Here are some shots from Christmas weekend:

Lindon Harbor.

Utah Lake.  This was a really cool sight.  I'm guessing the lake froze over several times and each time the current would push a layer of ice against the rocks.

Also Utah Lake.  I went back the following day to see if there would be a cool sunset.  There was.  By this time though, the ice had started to melt.

  
I have started to use a two capture process more in my pictures now.  With the dynamic range of my camera, it is hard to adequately capture details in the sky and the ground because the contrast is usually pretty large in sunset shots.  I've also started to add a signature in my pics as well.  I forgot to for the middle one, and am too lazy to do it right now.

And here are a few shots of Rain:

I was able to get this shot because she was intently following a plane as it slowly made its way across the sky.  Otherwise she would have been whining, or exploring, or trying to make her way back to me.

That camera there belonged to my dad.  It could be older than I am.  No idea how to use it.  Neither does Rain.

Rain and I on a Christmas morning hike starting at 6:30 AM.  No, it's not a tradition.  Nor will it likely become one.

Stay Just A Little Longer

I work the evening shift Monday through Friday, so almost all my photography is done on the weekends.  I try to make it a point to go shooting every Sunday whether I feel like it or not.  Fortunately, most times I feel like it.

This Sunday I did not.

I often rent a wide angle lens because the majority of what I do is landscape photos and that wide angle lends a sense of drama to landscape shots.  The 35mm and 50mm that I own are too narrow for my taste, especially on the crop sensor of the D7000.  The local camera store near my house has a 12-24mm that I will try to rent each Saturday after 1:00 pm because then I can get it half off.  I stopped by on Saturday at 2:30.  The rental book showed that someone had already rented the lens...for half off.  Someone had beat me by less than two hours.  I tried not to be bummed out about it, convincing myself that it was going to be a lousy weekend to shoot landscapes anyway because the clouds for the most part had been the flat, boring kind that just make you want to sleep in on cold winter mornings.

But Sunday came, and I convinced myself to go shooting again.  Actually, it was probably more Rain that did the convincing.  The weekends are when I get to spend the bulk of my time with her outside.  So I thought that since I'm going to be outside anyway, I might as well bring my camera along.  After tiring Rain out a little at the park, we headed down to the nearby lake to see if there was anything interesting to shoot.  I didn't have my hopes up because the clouds still were the same clouds from Saturday.  We walked around the park for a bit, Rain sniffing every rock she came across, and me looking around for promising shots (and scolding Rain for always pulling on the leash).  After trying several shots, I settled on staying for the sunset and doing long exposure shots of the water and the mountain range.

About 10 shots in, I was ready to call it quits.  I had already spent well over an hour at the lake.  The clouds weren't budging, it was getting colder, and Rain kept on whining because I had tied her leash to a nearby post.  But as I put away my tri-pod, I looked across the mountain range at the slight orange glow that was just fighting to get through the clouds.  It took me moment, but I decided that I should wait a couple more minutes to see if anything would happen.

Rain hates being tied up.

And I'm sure glad I did.  The sunset was absolutely beautiful.  The clouds started to open up a little, and the clouds closest to me started to light up a bright yellowish orange color while the clouds behind them caught a bluish purple hue.  The edges of the mountains glowed a bright orange, but what was most amazing was the water.  The lake had turned into a rippling, golden-orange, beautiful mess that really looked like something out of a dream.

It lasted maybe 8 minutes at the most.  Just a fleeting moment, but it was a sunset that I'll remember for a while.

I'm glad I decided to stick it out just a little bit longer.  It made all the difference.

This was a two exposure shot.  The sky was around 1/10 of a second while the water was captured using a ND filter and setting the shutter speed at 20-25 seconds.  I had to boost the colors in post because the RAW files always come out dull.  Even then, I think the colors of the actual sunset were even more vibrant than this image.