Balck Sheep - Anza Borrego desert state park startrails

In honor of earth day here’s a shot of the earth’s rotation as viewed from Polaris. I lined up the North star in between the 2 bighorns. This is a stack of about 100 photos using the D750’s internal intervelometer. The cool thing about these sculptures is that they look good both with detail and as silhouettes so I chose to go all black for these ones to really contrast against the bright star trails.

Nikon D750, Nikkor 20mm 1.8, f/2.5, 15 sec, ISO-5000

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Cholla and Milky Way - Anza Borrego

A pair of ocotillo under the Milky Way. Some of these things are pretty massive growing way over head. I was looking for some general desert stuff to shoot while we were out shooting the sculptures in Anza Borrego. Got pricked a few times by Cholla so didn’t wander off too far but found this pair and decided it was good enough. I ultimately wanted to find a nice big lone ocotillo but didn’t feel like getting violated by any more cholla.

Nikon D750, Nikkor 20mm 1.8, f/2.5, 15 sec, ISO-6400

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San Francisco, Golden Gate Bridge

Pulled this one out of the archives for a go at a re-edit. Dragged my wife to this spot in the rain on her birthday. Stood in the water, got my boots soaked and had to squish in them for the rest of the night taking pics up at battery spencer and hawk hill. Still one of my favorite photos of SF which isn’t saying much cuz I don’t have many. Excited to be heading back up here this summer. Hope to re-visit some old locations and shoot some new ones. Yall better have the LFE ready for me 

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 18-200, f/11, 30 sec, ISO-100

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Spring Training - elysian park los angeles wildflowers

Brought a re-edit to this shot from last spring. I love shooting landscapes. I love shooting cityscapes. When they come together it’s a win win for me. The wildflowers were lining the hills of Elysian park so it was a no brainer for me to use it as my foreground. It was quite windy this night tho, so instead of bumping my ISO up too much to introduce noise, I snapped one around 1/13 sec and then carefully put on my ND and snapped another at 15 sec to get some streaking in the clouds. The ND added a bit of tint which I kept in when I blended the sky into the foreground shot to add some mood. Haven’t been up here this spring so not sure how the wildflowers are doing this year.

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Anza Borrego Milky Way light painting

Maybe one of my favorites from this past trip to Anza Borrego. The sculptures are made of metal and it’s hard to capture the detail of them when its pitch black. Therefore I resorted to using my phone to light paint. I took 3 or so exposures focused on the dino to get some even light painting, then focused for the stars and blended them in post. Another thing I did was stack the three dino exposures to reduce noise as I do see quite a bit of noise shooting at 6400. There are programs out there you can use to stack files, but I just use the smart object stack mode mean in photoshop to achieve the same result. Digital noise isn’t in the same place in each shot so that method helps to reduce noise without sacrificing much detail. I’ll still use noise reduction software to further reduce the noise as needed.

Nikon D750, Nikkor 20mm 1.8, f/2, 15 sec, ISO-6400

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Joshua Tree golden hour

A golden hour scene from Joshua Tree National Park. Caught the sun right as it was dipping behind the rocks and it created a nice burst. All I think about when I look at this scene is memories of burning stuff using a magnifying glass. I want to try and get out here for one of the next new moons for some astro work. Clouds kind of screwed up plans for this past new moon, but hey at least we are getting some rain.

Nikon D750, Nikkor 20mm 1.8, f/16, 1/15 sec, ISO-500

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Anza Borrego bighorn sheep and milky way

Another from this past new moon out in Anza Borrego. We were shooting star trails from the other side of the sheep and the spring time change got us all messed up. I thought we had another hour or so but as we were finishing up we could faintly make out the core behind us so I snapped a test shot to make sure. Once we confirmed, we hopped over to this side to shoot it with the MW. As we were shooting another group of about 3 came up and they told us they were waiting on another 15 or so people to also arrive. Needless to say we got our shots and booked it out of there and headed over to the dinos.

Nikon D750, Nikkor 20mm 1.8, f/2.5, 15 sec, ISO-6400

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Field of Dreams - Lancaster Poppies

I always wonder if people ever realize that I’m taking pics of them. I use my telephoto so I’m pretty far away but I’m sure it would be obvious if they turned around. I liked the white dress against the golden poppies. I chose to place her towards the back of the frame to fill the foreground up with color. This was a few weekends ago when we went to go check the blooms out in Lancaster. Not much this year, I’m just waiting for a year where the poppies carpet the hills. That would be a sight to see.

Nikon D750, Nikkor 70-200, f/2.8, 1/4000 sec, ISO-320

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Warped Reality - white point sunset San Pedro

Came down to White Point when it was windy and there was a huge swell. There was lots of foam along the rocky shore which really helped emphasize the water movement streaking. I snapped this one just as a wave came in and it created this sort of distorted look to the foreground rocks. The water is causing all sorts of chaos in the foreground but I feel it makes the shot here.

Nikon D750, Nikkor 20mm 1.8, f/16, 0.3 sec, ISO-50

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Destroy and Rebuild

A compressed shot of the 6th street construction and downtown LA. Golden hour provided some nice cloud color while providing some nice side light on the bridge. It was so windy that these clouds completely cleared by sunset so I’m glad I took some handheld snaps before I whipped out the tripod to focus on other shots.

Nikon D750, Nikkor 70-200, f/11, 1/640 sec, ISO-1000

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