Just inside the south entrance to Yosemite National Park is the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. As we have seen before, photographing trees - especially massively large ones - can be quite challenging, but you just can't pass up an opportunity to shoot such incredibly impressive organisms.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10mm f/2.8 EX DC HSM Fisheye (borrowed), 1/40 sec at f/5.6. ISO 800. Raw processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

Normally, I try to eliminate random other people from my photos, but in this case, it helps to serve as a point of reference to show just how huge these trees are.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10mm f/2.8 EX DC HSM Fisheye (borrowed), 1/20 sec at f/5.6. ISO 800. Raw processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

In both of the above shots, I used a friend's fisheye lens to help me get the entire tree in the shot - here in the second shot, Anya provided a lovely model to provide the point of reference. The natural distortion of the fisheye lens certainly creates a distinct view, and to some extent, it actually hides the immensity of the trees.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM AF at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f/5.6. ISO 800. Raw processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

We even got a shot with the two of us... and yes, if you're wondering - sequoias make me feel short.

- Bill

PS: As an additional trivia note, Sequoia is one of the shortest English words that contains all five vowels!

Continuing along on our recent California trip (yes, I am posting in order now), we made a visit to Hearst Castle. I'm not going to go too in-depth as to what exactly Hearst Castle is all about, but suffice to say it is the result of someone (William Randolph Hearst) with ridiculous amounts of money and a bit of craziness... The place is pretty well over the top in terms of lavishness for even today's standards, and was started back in the 1920's.

As I usually do in situations like this (where crowds of people make it rather difficult to take photos of the larger setting), I tended to focus in on details and tried to eliminate random people in my photos. Add to that, any time we were inside, the conditions were dim and poorly lit with incandescent lighting, and then outside was a harsh mid-day light that made the contrast very stark.

I'm just going to give a nice little mega-set today to get through all of these photos in one posting. Enjoy...

The trip is far from over, so be sure to stop back again tomorrow. We go back to some marine mammal photos...

- 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

Well - the weather today is brisk and certainly gives the feeling of fall, so I looked back through the archives and came up with this fun autumn shot using Tom's Sigma 10mm fish-eye lens.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10mm f/2.8 EX DC HSM Fisheye (borrowed), 1/50 sec at f/12.9. ISO 200. No post production. Ohiopyle, Fayette County, PA.

What Works: The distortion caused by the fish-eye lens produces a nice effect of making both sides of the creek loom a little larger while causing the hillside at the middle of the frame where the creek turns seem much smaller. The 10mm focal length allows the floating leaf in the foreground to appear much larger than it might have otherwise looked.

What Doesn't Work: Unfortunately, the clouds are completely blown out, and there is absolutely no detail there, producing a large area of dead space and a very uninteresting sky. The position of the leaf is just a little bit off - preferably it would have been a little more up and to the right... and ideally on a slightly different rotation (but it drifted out of reach before I could get it right).

Hopefully we'll have a colorful fall and I can get out and get some more autumn shots this year.

- Bill

Last weekend, my friend, Tom loaned me his Sigma 10mm Fisheye lens. So we decided to take a trip out to Ohiopyle.

I have always found trees to be very intriguing - yet almost impossible - subjects. There is just something about photographing trees that I struggle with, but I keep trying. In fact, I have some specifically tree photo projects simmering on the back burner, so hopefully some day they'll see the light of day and I can share them here.

In the meantime, let's look at this tree through a fisheye lens...

Technical Data Canon EOS 7D, Sigma 10mm f/2.8 EX DC HSM Fisheye (borrowed), 1/12 sec at f/22.6. ISO 200. No post production. Ohiopyle, Fayette County, PA.

Why This Photo: As I said, I am intrigued by photography of trees, and I like this perspective giving the full feeling of the size of the tree. Also, using the fisheye lens, gives a very interesting perspective with the surrounding trees. When I saw this tree off the side of the trail, I knew it was worth trying to shoot.

What Works: Despite ignoring the rule of thirds and placing the trunk of the tree dead center, I like this layout composition. Also, though the distortion of the fisheye is constant in the frame, the placement of the surrounding trees actually does a good job of making it appear offset slightly to the top of the frame.

What Doesn't Work: The lighting was tough with fairly quick moving clouds shifting the brightness of the scene repeatedly and with little warning - thus the frame is not evenly lit and the colors are not as nice as they could be. Also, I wish there was more variety in the colors in the leaves, but then again, I guess I don't get much control over that.

Unfortunately, I had another shot I really wanted to get on this trip with this lens. I don't want to give away the details because I have a whole project I want to try and start up that is related, so I'm going to be a little vague here. But there is what I would call an iconic subject out on Route 51 that I wanted to photograph only to find it was covered with some very offensive graffiti. I knew there was graffiti, and that was part of the attraction to it - I was hoping that it would help to make the photo more engaging, so you can imagine my disappointment. I am still hopeful to eventually figure out a way to get the photo I planned without the offensive elements, and then I'll have to borrow that fisheye lens again.

- Bill