Zombies and Happy Blood Suckers

I didn't think vampires were supposed to look happy but he had a big grin on his face.


This zombie sure is trying to look menacing though. Friday was a Halloween celebration at work. In addition to several people dressing up, a group also put on a (short) remake of Thriller.


We had zombie brides.


And other creepy creatures bustin' a move in the cafeteria.




And then there were the geeky costumes...


The frighteningly well done costumes...


And finally the costumes that takes guts to wear and show off to a large group.

Hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween!

An Alien Landscape

I don't think I'll ever get tired of photographing tufa.

Sand Tufas

Just a few hundred yards from the south tufas at Mono Lake is Navy Beach where you can find these fascinating sand tufas.


Unfortunately the lighting conditions weren't ideal the time I was there which is why I've chosen to present these in monochrome.

Half Moon over Half Dome

This was taken from Olmstead Point. The light was unfortunately not completely co-operative so I had to do a little hue shifting to get what I wanted.

Technical Specs: Canon 1Ds3, 70-200 f/2.8 IS II @ 70mm, f/5.6, 8s, ISO 100.

Tufas by Starlight

Bodie in Monochrome

Bodie is a ghost town in the Eastern Sierras, about a 45 minute drive from Mono Lake. Last weekend was my first time there. Its now a state park but used to be a mining town. There are a lot of photographic subjects there (and a lot of photographers) and its definitely worth a revisit. I decided to stick mostly to monochrome here (except for a few interiors which have rich color).

Merope Nebula (NGC 1435)

The Merope Nebula is a part of the Pleides star cluster (M45). This open cluster of stars is currently moving through interstellar dust which is what causes the wonderful blue nebulosity around the primary stars.

The Merope Nebula (which the big nebula you see in this image) shouldn't be confused with Barnard's Merope Nebula which is considerably smaller and very close to Merope (the star). In fact, in my image, you can make out Barnard's Merope Nebula, its the slightly brighter area just below the main star. The finest image I've seen of this nebula was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope.

I am very pleased with the quality of this image. The combination of low noise and high resolution probably makes it one of my finest astro images. I can't wait to make a giant print of this one.

Technical Specs: 24" RCOS (4875mm focal length at f/8), Apogee Alta U42. R (10min x 2), G (10min x 2), B( 30min x 2) which is 1hr 40min total exposure.

Lake Sabrina

Lake Sabrina is a fishing lake near Bishop and is where we went for our sunrise shoot on Saturday.

Technical Specs: Canon 1Ds3, 24 TS-E II, f/11, 2s, ISO 100, 2 + 3 stop GNDs.

Blurry Landscapes

I like abstract art created from intentional blur. However, like the previous discussion on HDR, this too can sometimes be used as a crutch to enhance what is otherwise a poor photograph.

While trying to compose this shot I was trying to visualize in my head what the resulting blurred image would be like and framing the subjects in a way to get that shot.


The rich colors are a product of capture and of me tweaking the black point and tone curve in post (didn't touch saturation though). I would normally not have this much contrast in an image but this kind of abstract it works.

HDR Where It Makes Sense

I have been and continue to be a vocal opponent of the use of HDR to create over-the-top images, whether its garish color, poor contrast or thinking that halo-ing is feature rather than the defect that it is.

However sometimes, your scene has way more dynamic range than your camera can capture and so some dynamic range compression is needed to pull this off. I found myself in such a situation with this image. I took 7 images each separated by 2 stops and then combined them to create the final image.



This is one of the exposures to retain highlight detail, both in the light streaming into the room and onto the wall and of the world outside.



This is one of the exposures to retain shadow detail. As you can see this image and the final image have a similar level of color saturation.

I made this with Photomatix, which I continue to be impressed with, particularly the Exposure Fusion implementation in the new 4.0 version.

Mono Panoramic

Yesterday was a very long day. It started at around 4AM which is when I went out to Mono Lake to photograph tufas with the stars. I then set up and started the wait for sunrise. The above image was taken just before sunrise (around 6:50 AM) and really its those predawn colors that make the image.

I then took another image just as the sun had risen (around 7:10 AM) and started to light up the mountains. Even with graduated neutral density filters its difficult to get good tones on both the mountains and the tufas.

Its amazing to think that the light changes so much in just 20 minutes.

We also went to Bodie for an afternoon shoot, then photographed colorful Aspens at Conway Summit and finally ended the day at Olmstead Point. It was 11:30 by the time I got home. I made several decent images on this trip but nothing really spectacular, will definitely have to return.

Fall Colors

Lots of beautiful color here in the Sierras.

Technical Specs: Canon 1Ds3, 17 TS-E, f/22, 1/30s, ISO 200.

At Mono Lake

I drove through Yosemite today and arrived at Mono Lake this afternoon. I'll be spending the weekend shooting in the area, should be a lot of fun. Tioga Pass was closed the last couple of days due to snow, this image shows why. It was a spectacular drive.

Technical Specs: Canon 1Ds3, 24 TS-E II, f/8, 1/200s, ISO 100.

Witch's Broom Nebula

The Witch's Broom Nebula (NGC 6960) also known as the Western Veil is a very fascinating part of the sky to image. Despite the nebula being relatively bright (about a magnitude 7), its difficult to see with the naked eye. Imaging in Hydrogen Alpha helps bring out a lot of the tendril details.

Technical Specs: AstroSystems N8 (8" Newtonian, 700mm focal length, f/3.6), Apogee U8300, Ha (60 mins), R, G, B (30 mins each), total 2.5 hours. CCDStack and Photoshop CS5 for processing.

Galapagos Mockingbird

I have had a chance to go through many more images from our trip to the Galapagos earlier this year.


I had almost forgotten about these images of the Galapagos Mockingbird until I started processing them.

In National Geographic Interactive

I am very pleased to say that one of my images appears in National Geographic's October 2010 Interactive Edition. I took this image on my trip to Bosque del Apache in New Mexico at the end of last year, hopefully I can do even better this year.

Here is the image that appears:


On a different note, I have to say I am very pleased with what National Geographic is doing with their Interactive Edition. By partnering with Zinio, the interactive edition is available for a variety of devices including reading with a web browser.

A lot of digital editions of magazines are merely just a scan (or a series of images) of the print magazine. As the tools and technology matures more magazines are better able to take advantage of the interactivity of digital.

The October issue of National Geographic starts to take some of these steps. There are slideshows, interactive panoramas and video clips sprinkled through out the issue. This is really great stuff and I'm pretty sure this is the future of periodicals. Best of all, I think Adobe is in a good spot to help empower these content creators.