Landscapes

Calm before the Eclipse

This is back from the Idaho Great American Solar Eclipse. As we got ready for Solar Eclipse 2017, the morning had its serene calmness to it. First ray of lights hitting the McGown Peak that in turn shows its Golden wealth as the snow caps reflect the light back.

Which is the best camera?

Answer: The one that you have at hand and is in working condition. Before I go further into the details lets get the EXIF for this image out of the way. Exif: iPhone X, 1/40s, f/1.6 @ 4mm (28mm FF equivalent) Saturday afternoon, I was driving back from a birthday party. While driving I saw this huge puffing streak of clouds. I had an intuition that this would be an amazing sunset. Called my friend to see if he would be interested in driving to either Rockwall Harbor or Lavon Lake. Unfortunately, he had some errands and was busy. So I decided to head with my wife and her mom. I came home, quickly grabbed my camera, two lenses, my filter bags, tripod and shutter release and was all set to visit Rockwall lake. We arrived at this harbor well before 20 mins of sunset. Quickly scouted a spot, assembled my tripod and mounted the lens on the camera. All the people walking by watching me could tell that I was really excited. Well, now all I had to do was turn ON the Camera and compose my shot, so I did. My camera won't start, toggled the ON and OFF switch thrice, but no luck. Then I decided to check the batteries and noticed I left all my batteries at home. So here I was kicking myself, as the blue hour approached, the colors began to turn up and it was beautiful. Though I could not manage to get the image with my DSLR I did witness an amazing sunset and mobile photo did not disappoint

A tranquil sunset at Colorado Point

Continuing the journey of Mark Metternich Ultimate SouthWest 2017 Workshop from Tatahatso Point, on the 4th day, we came at this beautiful, yet surreal location. This was yet another one of those 2 - 3 hours off-roading which was a fun yet thrilling experience. We arrived at this spot hoping to image a distant thunderstorm that would be in the general direction of sunset, but however, the storm had its own plan and it drifted northwards. The purple-pink ambiance that you see on the right is where the storm went, making a clear path for sun rays to hit the canyons, through which the Colorado river flowed This point is aptly known as “the Colorado point” (yes, I googled, there are no references of it) because this is where the Little Colorado River flowing from New Mexico, joins the main steam of the Colorado River. I do have a beautiful picture where the tributary meets the river but I will save that for next time. This image was initially intended as a panoramic shot, but after a close critique with my friends, I decided to crop it into a single image.

Maroon Bells - The First light

Shot this exactly a month ago, right about the time when falls colors started to bloom in Aspen, Colorado. The very famous - Maroon Bells at Maroon lake. Crowded with hundreds of photographers (no exaggeration, literally 300+), I managed to get a decent composition next to a young couple who were generous to make some space for me and my tripod. Backstory: With all the hotel prices skyrocketing near Aspen for the weekend of Sept 24th (per night over $350), Khushboo and I did a compromise and managed to get a hotel about 2:15 hours away from Aspen. Sunrise was accounted at 7:24 am but Civil twilight for 6:59 am. It snowed that night (Yay, first snow in Aspen), so we knew road conditions may not be ideal and would have to account for some extra time. As a result, we woke up at 3 am and hit the road by 3:45 am. As it turns out we reached Maroon lake by 6:15 am, only to find a jammed up parking situation. With things clearing up, we rushed to the location just to find it swamped with photographers as ants would swamp on a drop of honey. Fortunately, a young couple allowed to lay my tripod near their setup and flexibility of my 16-35mm lens, helped me capture the first light falling on the Maroon Bells.

Sunset at Wotan's Throne - Cape Royal

Standing at an elevation of about 7600 feet, Wotan's throne is I believe one of the most magnificent views of the Grand Canyon, located in Cape Royal on the North Rim. Whether you go there at Sunset or Sunrise, you will be amazed at the lights and the majestic view you get. The distant horizon which is basically the plateau of the south rim, Grand Canyon, is perfectly horizontal and gives the illusion that the Wotan's throne and the sky at the horizon are two different frames stick together. As we (Tour group of Mark Metternich) came here and settled our camera, the sunlight falling through the gaps in the clouds, made distinct rays passing down the edge of the mountains of the right. The scene was really majestic.

Through the gaps

Shot this on the tour - The Ultimate Southwest, led by Mark Metternich. As we arrived at Cape Royal, the setting sun started to throw some colors on the clouds at a distant. This was uplifting as we didn't have much luck with clouds till this day. Mark carefully guided us to a point that would really give an emphasis on the scene we were shooting. And I'm being really polite by stating the location as "a point", as, in reality, we (or I) would not have dared to think to go there for a sake of photo. But as he started to jump on the rock (which was really an edge), inspected the friction beneath it, and how much support it has, we were assured that we can lay our tripod & cameras there. Our objective was to shoot close-ups shots of Wotan's Throne (which I did and will post the shots after a break), the drama that distant sunset was causing in the rifts and the valley to the right of Wotan's Throne was incredible. This is one of the shot. The edge shown in the frame is the last point followed by several feet of straight drop.

Dragons Eye

Do you see the eye? In Upper Antelope Canyon, there is another jewel that you can see, if you stand in right place and look up in right angle. It is called Dragon's eye. Handheld bracketed shot to accentuate the true colors seen during that. And yes, apologies for the noise in the image, this was another one of those 10000 ISO shot.

A lonely heart in the slots

In the upper Antelope Canyon, there are various spots that you can look up and put them into shapes. One of them is this Heart shaped opening.

Sunset by White Rock Lake

3 Days, 3 Sunsets, 3 Lakes from DFW area. Decided to go to White Rock Lake to get some shots of birds in flight. Disappointingly didnt find anything great and by the time I reached it was too late as the light was almost gone and with birds photography it becomes extremely difficult to capture any good shots in low light. I was about to head home then as slowly but steadily colors in the sky started to pop. This is what I managed to get from the deck at WRL

Sunset by Lavonia Park

Time was ticking as the Sunset was approaching and I had no opnion on where to shoot tonight's sunset which per sunsetwx.com was going to be a nice one. Friends had planned to go down to Lewisville Lake, but drive there was not possible before the last light of the sun was already down. Looking for large water bodies around, I stumbled across Lavonia Park and so I decided to drive there. Unlike my last image, this time I reached there 10 minutes early. Quickly scouted for a foreground object and was lucky enough to find this metal piece. As the Sun was setting the golden hour didn't look as great as it was predicted, but as the blue hour came by, things changed instantly. Sky lighted with highlights of red and joyful smile rose on my face. Couldn't had been much happier about this image.

Sunset by Rockwall Harbour

Driving out to an event, I noticed that the Sunset will be phenomenal today. Took a diversion and reached out to one of my favorite sunset spot at Rockwall Harbour. Shot with Irix Firefly f/2.4

Long Exposure Sunset at Lake Grapevine, Murrells Park

One of the difficult Long Exposure Photography that I executed till date. Moving clouds at horizon were throwing of my exposure calculation much and making it really tricky to get it right. This is a total of 251s at f/18 with 10-stop ND.