A very prominent 22° Halo around the moon on Christmas night...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM AF at 12mm, 1/3th sec at f/11. ISO 800. Raw conversion and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw,

- Bill

So I made several attempts at capturing a time-lapse video of the recent Perseid meteor shower. I don't think the meteors show up in the video (the streaks you see shoot across the sky are airplanes), but you do get to see the Milky Way move across the sky...

I've posted it to both Vimeo (above) and Youtube (below) to try and figure out which rendering I like better.

- Bill

So for a recent assignment on a photography forum that I post to regularly, one of the members picked "Time and Motion" as the theme. That instantly got me thinking time lapse! I've been wanting to try my hand at time lapse for a long time, and as things usually go, procrastination got the better of me.

Anyway, this apparently was the right motivation!

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II at 31mm, 1 second at f/5.0. ISO 2500. 695 frames taken every 5 seconds. RAW processing Adobe Camera Raw, video rendered in Adobe Premiere Elements 11.

As you can see, it isn't the best attempt, but I definitely learned a few things to keep in mind for next time.

Thanks for stopping by.

- Bill

Ok - I know I promised this literally months ago, but I finally got around to creating a composite image from the New Castle 2014 Balloon Quest. I've included the four images I used to create the composite below - I'm bummed that I never got any shots of that fifth balloon lit up, but it really never did!

Composite	Image 1	Image 2	Image 3	Image 4

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM AF at 11mm, 1/25 sec at f/5. ISO 800. Raw conversion Adobe Camera Raw, Composite image built in Photoshop CS5.

This technique is really useful. It can be tricky - especially when your subjects are moving (as these balloons were). I'm sure if you started looking really closely as a fullsize version of this composite, you could find the lines where I blended things together, but for a smaller view like this, it works well enough. I may have to see what I can do about taking some screenshots and writing up a bit of a tutorial on how I do this kind of composite.

- Bill

Ok - as promised, here is a brighter version of the photos from the other night with the ORS-3 Rocket Launch. Mouseover each image in the sequence and you will get to see a bit of how it looked to have the rocket move across the sky (I was trying to figure out how to make it cycle automatically, but don't have the time to do so right now).

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM AF at 13mm, 15 sec at f/8. ISO 1250. Raw conversion Adobe Camera Raw.

And in case you are having a hard time finding it, here is a 66% crop to show the rocket a bit more magnified...

Thanks for stopping by!

- Bill

So thanks to my father-in-law, I got some last minute notice that there was a rocket launch scheduled to take place from Virginia and would be visible along the east coast. Since we had a clear night, I figured it was worth seeing what I could capture with the camera.

I think I might have to reprocess these photos as looking at them again, they look like I processed them a bit dark (I was in the middle of a migraine at the time, so you'll have to give me a pass).

Anyway, here's the first attempt at it - I'll see if I can get a better cleaned up version later.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM AF at 13mm, 15 sec at f/8. ISO 1250. Raw conversion Adobe Camera Raw.

I know it is hard to see, but the rocket is a tiny orangish streak to the left of the tree on the right hand side of the image.

- Bill

So Friday night, our one dog kept going to the back door and making a fuss. He was acting like he was seeing something outside, but we just couldn't see anything. Finally I grabbed my night vision binoculars and scanned the yard. I saw a shape on the ground and so I snuck outside without the dogs and discovered that there was a pheasant hanging out in the yard.

So I decided to see how the camera would perform with the flash at night. At first I thought I would need my Better Beamer to increase/direct the flash since I was working at a bit of a distance; however, that simply made a very strong vignette to the shots. So in the end, I went with just the flash itself (and even set to flash compensation of -1 stop).

I took a few shots from behind the fence and then finally decided I wanted to see if I could get a better angle of the bird. He was being fairly calm, so I went around the house and approached him slowly from the front. I was staying low and almost crawling on the ground - I managed to get fairly close until he popped up and I got this shot. I then tried to rotate the camera to get a vertical orientation and that must have been too much for him because he took off running....

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/60 sec at f/4. Canon Speedlight 580EX II flash in auto mode with -1 EC. Image Stabilization on. ISO 1250. RAW processing and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw.

Fun stuff. I might have to take a nocturnal wander around the property some bright moonlit night and see what I run into...

- Bill

And to wrap up (at least for now, I might revisit some of the photos in the set in the future), here is a set of night photography in Yosemite.

If the one looks familiar, it is the same photo I used as a sneak peak, but I've gone ahead and fixed the yellow color cast that was showing up to light pollution.

- Bill

This photo is one that I am really pleased with how it turned out. Our last night in Yosemite, we stopped at Tunnel View (remember that from the other day?) and I took some last photos of the valley with the Milky Way above (more on those later).

As I turned around to head back to the car, I saw this scene and knew it would make for an interesting image. Well - to be honest, I didn't see it exactly like this - that would have been impossible. Instead, I was able to visualize how an extended exposure would make the tunnel look against the dark sky. I knew that the exposure time I would need to make the sky visible would cause the lights inside the tunnel to over-expose or "blow out".

The scene ended up looking almost exactly like I expected it to... and when I look at it, it has a very primordial feel to it - almost like that cave contains a burning fire like a volcano, ready to spew forth new life. Almost like Middle Earth existed in Yosemite...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM AF at 10mm, 7 sec at f/4. ISO 12800. Raw conversion Adobe Camera Raw with additional edits in Photoshop CS5.

I'm not normally one for titles on my photos, but something tells me that this one deserves one... I just don't know what would work. Any suggestions?

- Bill

Ok - it looks like the photos from this last trip are going to take me a while to process and upload, so I figured I would share a quick sneak peek (or should that be peak) to whet your appetite.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10mm f/2.8 EX DC HSM Fisheye (borrowed), 30 sec at f/4. ISO 12800. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS5.

As you can see, I even need to go back and redo this one and get rid of that yellow color cast the sky has picked up (not quite sure where that even came from and how I hadn't noticed it before). But that is just one of the awesome things we got to see on this trip... if you're wondering, that's the Milky Way over Half Dome (the peak on the right side of the center valley).

More to come - albeit slowly more than likely.

- Bill