Sunday, June 28, 2009

Bryce Canyon Utah IR June 19 2009 DSC_8301

Bryce Canyon National Park is located in the south west corner of Utah. It's a tourist and photographer friendly location with numerous hotels, motels, etc. in and around the park. I'd recommend booking your hotel 4 to 6 months in advance - the place is that popular. Next trip I'll shoot for the Bryce Canyon Lodge which is located in the mid-north section of the park. From there it's a short walk to some of the most magestic views on the planet.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Bryce 02 2009 IR Rocks June 19 2009

Earlier this month (June 2009) my brother Mike and I finally fulfilled a long term dream and spent a long weekend capturing the beauty of the Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks in southern Utah.

Bryce is a nature photographer's Mecca and it was quite hilarious to see so many middle aged men in floppy hats with multiple cameras over their shoulders wearing an endless variety of photo vests. Myself included except that having discovered the wonders of 18mm to 200 mm zoom lenses I've grown beyond the need for a vest with 24+ pockets. :)

As it has turned out Infra Red treated Bryce Canyon with the respect this marvel of geology is due. My guess is that the High Dynamic Range sets I shot hold the same promise.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Mike the Photog in IR at Bryce Canyon Utah

Here's brother Mike in infra red light on the summer solstice of 2009 camera gear ready to shoot Bryce Canyon Utah.

He rocks. :)

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Queen Elizabeth Park IR 04 May 21 2009

The Bloedel Conservatory bio-dome looking south. Note the presence of indiginous life forms in the bottom right corner.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Queen Elizabeth Park IR 02 May 21 2009

I loved this shot the moment I took it and loved it even more once I'd removed a few extraneous bits like a rake. Even in the tiny review screen of my camera I could tell this would be one of those top shots for the year. The two groundskeepers in the photo merged an outer worldly garden captured in Infra Red with light a human touch.

Fashions from LL Bean - $245
Cost to book a quick getaway trip over the Internet via a shady travel agent named Zolton - $67
Winding up in a bio-dome on the third planet orbiting the star Rigel 7 - priceless.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Bloedel Conservatory Infra Red May 21 2009

The Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver is one of those hidden gems frequented mostly by tourists. This is quite a shame since the park is a photographer's dream during the spring, summer and fall.

Smack dab in the center of the park is the Bloedel Conservatory. A gigantic geodesic dome used to house an incredible collection of plants as well as numerous wedding receptions.

Here's the conservatory on a sunny May afternoon looking very much like an alien flying saucer caught in the ever mysterious glow of Infra Red light.

HDR - The Shape of Things To Come

I've become addicted to High Dynamic Range photography. This fascination comes from both the current day results (see above) and because what I create today will be orders of magnitude more awesome 5 years from now.

These days each HDR image I create is a composite of between 7 and 9 regular digital captures bracketed between 0.7 and 1.0 stops. [I use aperture priority to retain the depth of field and have the camera vary the exposure speed.] While this does represent a 50 MByte or higher storage hit to my photo archive for each image I'm like 'yeah, whatever' to the expense. The cost of mass storage continues to drop and I'm quite certain that within 5 years my 1,500 Gigabyte (that's 1.5 terabytes) of storage devoted to my photos and their backups will be contained both within the Internet 'cloud' as well as on a collection of 500 GB solid state flash cards about the size of a credit card.

Here's the deal - the software used to generate HDR images and the hardware (displays, printers and inks) used to present the images has hit critical mass and will be exponentially better, cheaper and faster by 2014. In keeping all of my source images I'm doing what photographers have done for over a century - archive the source material (the negatives or, in HDRs case, the multiple exposures) ready for the next evolution in darkroom chemicals and papers or artificially intelligent HDR compositing.

I can't wait to see what this image is going to look like 5 years from now when I revisit its "digital negatives". Hopefully the second glance and first blush of eroticism in the image will still be there only with something else. What that something else is remains to be, quite literally, seen.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Beach Avenue Spring IR May09 2009

Beach Avenue Vancouver from the Burrard Bridge overpass looking toward English Bay and Vancouver's West End.

Taken with a Nikon D100 DSLR modified to be sensitive to the infra red end of the near-visible light spectrum.

Cypress Falls HDR Jun 05 2009

I've finally discovered the Blogging feature on Flickr so, after over 2 years of no posts I'm back! :)

I'm still into using photography, whether it's still or video, to show time in unique ways. The photo above was taken last Friday up at Cypress Falls Park in West Vancouver. It's a fantastic location if you are looking for perfect slow exposure shots of water running over smooth rocks.