Sunday, October 11, 2009

Someone please explain this...

Today was a reasonably warm day. Up near 70 today. I took this photo here at 4pm of our thermometer.


As you can see it is 63º F outside. A nice decent temperature. Inside our house it's a little stuffy, around 73 degrees, so I have the windows open to enjoy the nice fresh air. And so it will cool down a little bit in here.

Except the air is not all that fresh. This next photo was taken about 20 seconds after the above photo. It's the house on the street behind our house.


Please someone explain why one would need to burn in thier fireplace when it is 63º? And for that matter, why people can't burn dry wood, instead of green evergreen wood that smokes like this. Every night we have to shut our windows because of this. There are times it's so hot and stuffy in the house, I need to run an Air Conditioner, even though it's in the 50's outside.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Busy, Busy, Busy

I started this blog about 2 years ago, and didn't post much. Seems work got in the way. My job sometimes takes up way too much of my time leaving me with little free time. I've been on overtime (60 hours a week) since February, and I definatly need a break. Hopefull this is my last week of overtime.

What I'm hoping to do is post more often. Yesterday I posted about one of my favorite photographs, so I think I may continue doing that. Hope to see you back here.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

My best (Water)Fall photo ever...

2 years ago I had the opportunity to go to Ricketts Glen State Park in Pennsylvania. About a 2 hour drive from where my parents were living, we went there for a day of hiking. Rickett's Glen has 21 waterfalls, about 17 of them can be seen in a single hiking loop. I photographed 16 of them on our trip. We got there in November so the fall color was starting to fade as it was late in the season. But there was still a good deal of orange leaves around there. My favorite shot is of this specific waterfall. I believe it's named R.B. Ricketts Falls

When we got there it was mostly overcast, but by the time we finished the hike, the sun was poking through clouds. When I took the above photo, the sun just started peeking out and backlit the leaves giving them an almost unreal glow.
I definatly want to go back to Rickett's Glen again, and this time photograph all of the 21 waterfalls. If you'd like to see most of them, you can check out the rest of my photos from the trip here:

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Eastern Sierra Fall Color Report 9-26-09

Before I go into the details of the fall color and the locations I visited, I wanted to warn anyone going, be careful. I seen more reckless drivers over this past weekend then I've seen ever. On Rock Creek Road above the lake, I was almost hit head on a few times by people driving 30-40 mph on the one lane section. Most of the drivers wouldn't even move to the side of the road and slow down. The worse section of road was near Lake Sabrina, one guy driving a large truck ran me off the road.

But by far the worse thing I saw was a woman driving a Ford Taurus wagon almost running over a pedestrian. Just below Lake Sabrina, 2 female photographers pulled over on the one side of the road near a bridge. When one of them was crossing the street, the driver in the taurus doing about 30-40mph came up behind her. Instead of slowing down, they floored the gas as they went around the pedestrian, scaring her because she couldn't hear the car comming. So watch yourselves out there.

Ok onto the report. My trip started out friday night (Sept 25) when we drove up to Eastern Sierras from Big Bear Lake. I decided we'd camp in Rock Creek area. So we drove up Rock Creek Road. All of the smaller campgrounds were full, so we stayed at East Fork, which was less then half full. Next morning we woke up at 5am and drove to North Lake in Bishop Creek Canyon. Most of my best photos were in this area. I'd say most of the trees are near peak or peak here. There are still some green trees around, but all and all I'd say it's good here.

The sunrise was great.
As the sun came up farther in the sky, it lit up the area. And I took this panoramic.


This is from a meadow near North Lake.
The road from North Lake to the campground.

After North Lake and the area's around there, I went up to Lake Sabrina. Some good color here.

After this area the sun was up pretty high and the photography wasn't as good, so we returned to the campground in Rock Creek. The trees in East Fork Campground were half yellow half green. The trees above Rock Creek Lake were peaking or past peak. Some of the leaves already fell off the trees. But there was good color here and there.

Panoramic of Rock Creek Lake

Panoramic of Rock Creek between the lake and Mosquito Flat

We left later in the afternoon to head home. On the way I stopped at Convict Lake and took this shot. There's a little color here but it's got a way to go yet.

You can see the rest of the photos from our trip on my Flickr album.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42490701@N05/sets/72157622343043947/

You can see my other photography at my website.
www.luminous-exposure.com/pics.html