Death Valley

My company (in my day job of Software Engineer) decided to have a furlough this quarter due to the ailing US economy. We could use vacation days, so at least I was paid, but I really did not want to waste a vacation week just sitting around the house like I did over the Christmas break. But where could I go in February that wouldn't 1) cost a fortune and 2) get the wife mad at me and 3) have to risk bad weather. Ultimately I decided to do a trip I nearly did a few years ago - fly into Vegas (and using miles this cost me nothing) and drive to Death Valley for a few days. (A few years back we flew into Vegas and then went to Zion for a few days instead in Winter).

I'd seen some incredible images from Death Valley and it seemed to be exactly what I was looking for to take my photography to the next level. Lots of interesting shapes and colors to do some more abstract landscapes than some earlier work. I knew going in that most of time would be spent at the Dunes and at Zabriskie Point. I was also hoping for some good shots of the salt flats and of the Racetrack, plus some sweeping vistas and some canyon shots.

I flew into Vegas on a Sunday and then immediately drove the 3 hours to the park. It was well after midnight when I checked into my room at Stovepipe Wells. And, of course, my body was still on East Coast time, so I was pretty exhausted. I would get up at 5:30 am every day to make it to a prime photo shooting destination. My first of this would be the nearby dunes (Mesquite Springs). The first morning would be something of a dud when it comes to light (the most important ingredient of photography), but I did wind up with a few I liked. No real sunrise though, and things soon turned to a rainy day. I was hooked by what I saw though and knew I would have to return to the dunes later in the trip. I ended up returning for late afternoon the next day and then for another sunrise my final day. Although hiking up and down the dunes with a full bag of camera gear was exhausting, it was well worth it to this all three times. As you can see by some of the images.








I could go on and on posting incredible images just of the dunes. But I'll refrain. Check out the gallery at http://rodneyboles.zenfolio.com/deathvalley for more.

While the Mesquite Springs Dunes were my favorite, Zabriskie Point wasn't too far off. It has been shot and shot and shot, so finding that image that really says something is a bit more difficult. I did end up with some pictures I loved and some I liked an awful lot though.




Again, more in the gallery.

After those two spots, a lot of the rest is anticlimactic. I had some good hikes (including a fun ranger-led hike in Mosaic Canyon learning about the geology of the park) and enjoyed just driving around in the middle of the day with the windows open and music playing taking in the massiveness of the park. I enjoyed walking out to the salt flats. Sadly, the combination of rain on my first day and the midday sun made for less than ideal photographing of the Badwater salt flats. And forget about getting to the Racetrack on muddy roads, as it was flooded anyway. So there remains plenty to see and do the next time I visit.

I did get some interesting Canyon pictures. I'll post just one here in the blog and save the rest for the gallery. This one is of Golden Canyon, which connects to the bottom of Zabriskie Point. And, yes, it is an HDR, although I've been careful to make it as realistic as possible to capture what my eyes were seeing.


The trip was too short, especially with the first day having so much rain. I returned to Vegas and had a quick overnight before an early morning flight. My time in Vegas mainly consisted of walking across the street from the Flamingo (where I was staying) to the Bellagio for the Buffet, but I did venture out a bit and snapped a few nighttime pictures of the Strip.




A few takeways from the trip:

1. Shooting RAW (NEF), using Mirror Lockup and Photix Wireless cable release on a solid tripod was essential to getting the best image quality. The RAW files gave me a lot of leeway in the digital darkroom to get the look I wanted (which were often quite different than the default that Apple's Aperture applied to the file).
   
2. Getting up well before dawn and getting out there for the shot more than paid off. The distances were always further than the looked. The light changed incredibly fast. I was often disappointed just how little of a shooting window I had.
   
3. Patience, grasshopper. Instead of just shooting because I felt like I should be shooting something, I really took my time, especially at the dunes, to find the right shot.
   
4. Lens selection - I was a bit surprised to analyze my "keepers" when I got home. Nearly all of them were shot with my 70-200mm. Oftentimes you think about landscape photography being wide angles, but the distances in the West are so vast it really took a long lens to isolate the interesting subjects. And this was on a DX body (D300). On further review, the 70-200mm on an FX body like the D700 would have been absolutely perfect for this trip as most of the shots were at the short end of the 70-200mm on the D300, and most of the other keepers were at the long end of my 17-55mm.
   

I think I got possibly the best pictures I've ever taken on this trip. Certainly up there among the best. And I also got probably the best ratio of keepers to shots taken. It was just a resounding success and really makes me all the more dedicated to this great hobby/artform/etc.

Thanks for looking (and don't forget to check out the gallery).

Snow Day!

This week was the first time in years that we got a decent snow in the Raleigh area. No way I was driving in it, so I worked from home that day. But over my lunch break, while the rest of the country was watching Obama flub his Inaugural Oath (thanks to the Chief Justice), I grabbed my geat and heading out for some shots (I did get the DVR to capture the historic moment).

I'm in a fairly new neighborhood in the middle of what used to be farmland. There isn't too much left in the way of the old life around here, but I'm lucky enough to be a short walk to several farms. One old farm was recently bought my the town and going to be converted to a park focused on the agricultural heritage of this area. But the town has done nothing yet, so I was still able to capture the beautiful old buildings in a great snow storm.




I decided these pictures would look great as B&Ws, so used the Alien Skin Exposure 2 software I talked about in my previous post. They have a "Fog" option for the B&W exposures, and it gave the pictures a beautiful effect - blowing out highlights a bit to make the snow whiter and making the tree look like it is in fog.

Alien Skin's Exposure 2

I recently discovered that there was a software company here in Raleigh that did some pretty nifty photography software. As a photographer and software engineer, this was pretty interesting to learn. Then I discovered I actually knew the wife of one of the engineers. I decided to try out one of the companies more interesting offerings, Exposure 2. The program is available as a Photoshop plugin that takes a digital photo, with its typically flat curve and often "blah" colors, and lets the user mimic the effect of various classic films. They've profiled Velvia, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, T-Max 100, and tons and tons of others. Whether Color or Black & White, Slide or Negative film. The software tries to match the contrast, the color, and even the grain.

Pretty cool stuff. And I am happy to say that it works. And the plug-in offers plenty of tweaking on top of all the different film presets. The only downside to this program is that it is damn expensive. Is it worth it? If you are making money with your photography, it may be. It does a fantastic job and it simplifies stuff you might otherwise be able to do in Photoshop. For me, in this economy, with this just as a serious hobby....I think I'm gonna pass for now. But I've still got a few weeks left with the fully functional demo. So we'll see.

More in a future posting.